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Bearden High School's Allison Campbell wins UT-Battelle Scholarship

UT-Battelle Scholarship winner Allison Michelle Campbell with ORNL Director Thom Mason.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., May 16, 2017 – Bearden High School senior Allison Michelle Campbell has been named recipient of the 2017 UT-Battelle Scholarship to attend the University of Tennessee.

The scholarship is awarded to a graduating senior planning to study science, mathematics or engineering at UT. The competitive scholarship is presented annually to a graduating student with a parent employed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory by UT-Battelle, ORNL's managing contractor.

The scholarship is renewable for up to four years and is worth a total of $20,000. Campbell is the daughter of ORNL staff member Amy C. Campbell, who works in the Business Services Directorate, and Michael A. Campbell.

Among numerous activities at Bearden, Campbell is president of Bearden's National Honors Society chapter and a member of the Mu Alpha Theta mathematics honors society. In the summer of 2015 she was selected for the Governor's School for Science and Engineering and the National Science Foundation's Young Scholars Program.

Campbell was inspired by her Governor's School experience to incorporate advanced manufacturing technology into a personal goal to improve the design and fabrication of ventricular catheters used to treat patients with hydrocephalus, a serious and often fatal buildup of cerebrospinal fluid on the brain.

Working with doctors and professors at the UT Medical Center and with UT-ORNL Governor's Chair Suresh Babu, Campbell has experimented with 3-D printing at ORNL's Manufacturing Demonstration Facility to improve the design of biocompatible shunts that relieve pressure on the brain, making them more effective and more reliable.

"Hydrocephalus patients and their families are in constant fear of shunt failure, so designing a more reliable shunt would immediately improve their psychological health as well as the patient's physical health," Campbell wrote in her application essay.

Other activities and achievements include earning the Girl Scouts of America's top Gold Award and serving as an ambassador for East Tennessee Children's Hospital. Campbell is a Key Club executive board member and plays in the Bearden High School orchestra.

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy's Office of Science. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit http://energy.gov/science/.