Astronaut Scholar William Zunker
Civil Engineering major William Zunker (class of 2021) has been awarded a scholarship for the 2020-21 academic year by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. The prestigious, competitive scholarship is awarded to students who demonstrate leadership, imagination, and academic excellence in the study of mathematics, science or engineering. Initiated by the Mercury-7 astronauts, it is awarded annually to outstanding sophomores and juniors who intend to pursue research-oriented careers in mathematics, engineering, and the natural and applied sciences. The scholarship awards up to $10,000 for a year of undergraduate study. In addition, recipients will receive mentoring and professional development support, attend the Astronaut Foundation’s Innovators Gala in Washington, D.C., and have the opportunity to participate in other Astronaut Foundation events.
Zunker has been working with Professor Stefano Gonella on the design of metamaterials with unconventional mechanical properties. A native of Verona, Wisconsin, he arrived on campus with an interest in geoengineering and spent his first summer as a surveying intern drafting maps and construction plans. As a sophomore, Zunker joined the Gonella lab and began working with auxetic lattices that exhibit peculiar deformation mechanics. Excited by the behavior of these materials and their potential applications, he received a UROP grant to support further work. The following summer, he was awarded an NSF-funded REU at Harvard to design and build an aquatic robot that employed a bi-stable beam to mimic the locomotive action of fish. Returning to UMN with additional experience in mathematical modeling and prototype construction, he has continued his work in the Gonella lab, extending his work with metamaterials into the area of topological mechanics. He plans to continue this work in a Ph.D. program that explores applications of metamaterials in aerospace or robotics.
On campus, Zunker is the president of the Chi Epsilon Civil Engineering honor society and a member of the Tau Beta Pi honor society. He volunteers with the CSE mentor program and is a member of both the rock climbing and break dancing teams. At home in Wisconsin, he has a long-standing involvement with the American Legion’s Badger Boys State, where he works as a counselor and is helping to develop a science and engineering curriculum.
A second College of Science and Engineering student also received an Astronaut Scholarship: Marcos Zachary, a Biomedical Engineering major. The Astronaut Scholarship Foundation was founded in 1985 by the Mercury 7 astronauts. One of them, Donald “Deke” Slayton, graduated from the University of Minnesota with a BS in Aeronautical Engineering in 1949. Prevented from piloting the second U.S. manned orbital space flight by an irregular heart rhythm, Slayton served as NASA’s Director of Flight Crew Operations and later was cleared to pilot the docking module in the Apollo-Soyuz mission of 1975. The Astronaut Scholarships are awarded to students at 35 universities with historic ties to the U.S. space program who demonstrate leadership, imagination, and academic excellence in the study of mathematics, science or engineering. Thirty-five students from the University of Minnesota have been recognized as Astronaut Scholars.