A Starkville Super-Scholar

ORLANDO, Fla. – Mississippi State track and field and cross country runner, Reese Dunne, has been selected as a 2021 Astronaut Scholar, the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (ASF) announced June 9.

The ASF annually awards these scholarships to promising students in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. They look to inspire those chose to embody the respected astronaut characteristics of intelligence, ambition, self-motivation, high ethical standards, persistence, tenacity, adaptability, and a passion for science, exploration, and innovation.

He and his Mississippi State peer Britain Steele will be recognized at the 2021 Astronaut Scholarship Gala in Orlando this coming August.

This isn't the first time Dunne has been recognized for his academic successes. Far from it, in fact.

In April of 2021, he was selected to receive the prestigious Barry Goldwater Scholarship. He was the 19^th MSU student to be recognized with that scholarship since its inception. Overall, 1,256 students were nominated, and the Foundation named 410 Scholars.

The Starkville native is an MBA Venture Pathway program student, a G.V. "Sonny" Montgomery Presidential Scholar, and is a senior mechanical engineering major. He is also a recipient of the James Carl and Hazel Forbes Endowed Scholarship through the college of engineering and is a member of the Shackouls Honors College. In 2019 he was also awarded the Yokohama Tire Manufacturing Mississippi Endowed Scholarship.

He is a six-time President's Scholar and six-time Bulldog Honor Roll member. The same is true for earning the Top Dawg Award, given to student-athletes maintaining a cumulative GPA of 4.0 during the academic year. He was named to the SEC First Year Honor Roll in spring of 2019, and has been named to the SEC Honor Roll in both 2020 and 2021. He was also track and field's representative for the Extra Yard for Teachers campaign in the fall of 2020.

In addition, he was one of just five American students selected as Fulbright U.K. Summer Institute recipients in 2020. He was the second Mississippi State student to be selected for the three-week summer institute at the University of Strathclyde and Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. Participants immerse themselves in other cultures while focusing on Scotland as a technological, innovative and creative society. He'll return to Glasgow with his Fulbright cohort in July of 2022.

He has done countless hours of undergraduate research, including work as part of a Research Experience for Undergraduates at Johns Hopkins University in the Whiting School of Engineering. He was selected as one of nine students in the U.S. to participate in the Computational Sensing and Medical Robotics Summer REU program. Dunne worked in the PULSE Lab to explore simulation-based photoacoustic image guidance during minimally invasive surgeries.

At Mississippi State, he worked with two professors in mechanical engineering and in the department of physics and astronomy during the summer of 2019, where they investigated the use of laser interferometry to measure fringe patterns in crystallized lead tungstate, "with hopes to explore and minimize the uncertainty of the gravitational constant." Currently, he is working with a professor in the mechanical engineering department to "develop and implement a magnesium-based finite element degradation model to ultimately synthesize degradable bone implants."

He participates in MSU's Undergraduate Research Symposium, where he placed second in October of 2020 and first in April of 2021 in the Biological Sciences and Engineering category. At the Mississippi Undergraduate Honors Conference this spring, he placed first for his oral presentation in the STEM category. Also in April of 2021, he received the Outstanding Research Award from the Shackouls Honors College.

Not to be outdone, he is a member of the Lambda Sigma Honor Society at MSU. He was nominated and selected as the sole National Student Representative, where he serves on the National Board and is the liason between the board members and the presidents of every Lambda Sigma chapter across the country. In addition, he was invited and initiated into the nation's second-oldest honor society, Tau Beta Pi, in April of 2021. Members consist of the top 1/12 of engineering seniors and top 1/8 of engineering juniors at MSU, considered the highest-performing achievers in all of engineering. He currently serves as the Social Coordinator.

Somehow, he finds time to give back and be involved in the community. He became part of the inaugural class of ONE at MSU in the fall of 2020, which is an organization devoted to fighting preventable disease and extreme poverty through governmental policy and partnership. He serves on the programming committee. He's a member of the State Singers Choir, the most prestigious of MSU's four choirs. He's also the lone singer at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. In May of 2016, he started Nonnie's Notes, a service organization dedicated to his grandmother, Nonnie, who has Alzheimer's disease. He rounds up musically inclined students from the Starkville area and Mississippi State and perform at local retirement homes.

He plans to pursue his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and conduct interdisciplinary research on biomedical-based products and someday teach at a major research university.

For more information on the Bulldog track and field program, search "HailStateTF" on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

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