Brian Wilson, a 2009 Lake Travis High School graduate,has been awarded the prestigious Welch Foundation Scholarship by the University Interscholastic Leagues Foundation.
An applicant must compete at the state level in order to be eligible for any UIL Scholarship. Brian placed 6th in State in Extemporaneous Speaking as a sophomore. He placed 1st in State in Science as a senior.
“None of this would have been possible without the exemplary teaching, support and dedication of the outstanding teachers, staff and administration of LTISD from kindergarten through high school,” a family spokesperson said. “TEA gets it wrong when they don’t grant LTISD an Exemplary Rating.”
The Welch Foundation scholarship requires that the recipient be involved in research in chemistry, biology or chemical engineering as a college undergraduate. Brian has already participated in research at UT’s Cockrell School of Engineering in Chemical Engineering starting the summer before his senior year of high school and continued it this past summer. He is prolonging this summers research in the Department of Chemical Engineering for pharmaceutical drug delivery mechanisms for class credit.
Wilson has been published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry as one of the contributors to Mehul N. Patels PhD thesis nanotechnology thesis: Hybrid MnO2/Disordered Mesoporous Carbon Nanocomposites: Synthesisnd Characterization as Electrochemical Pseudocapacitor Electrodes.
Wilson is studying Chemical Engineering on a full four year academic scholarship from the Cockrell School of Engineering. He has so many college credits from the AP classes taken at LTHS that it allows him to make research part of his four year plan and he is taking several sophomore level courses in his first year at UT.