RCS participant Nishita Dalal received high honors at USC's 2006 Discovery Day competition for undergraduate researchers. Dalal won first place ($300) in the Engineering and Computer Science category and received the Milliken Award for Best Overall Poster ($500 award) for her presentation "Analysis of dipicolinic acid released from spores treated with supercritical CO₂".

Dalal has conducted research under the direction of Dr. Michael A. Matthews and graduate student Jian Zhang in the Dense Phase Fluids Lab in the Department of Chemical Engineering at USC.

Dalal's poster represents the culmination of several semesters of research on sterilization using supercritical CO₂, the subject of her Honors Thesis. As she graduates (May 2006) we congratulate Dalal in her outstanding achievement and wish her well as she enters the School of Medicine at the University of South Carolina (Fall 2006).