Alumni
Graduates of the Saint Peter’s University Honors Program go on to further studies and careers in a multitude of disciplines. Recent graduates have been placed in graduate programs at Harvard University, The London School of Economics, The University of Pennsylvania, The New School for Social Research, Montclair State University, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Mary Baldwin College and The American Shakespeare Centre, The Actors Studio of Pace University, Yale Law School and Princeton University. Here’s some information about a few recent grads:
Prajwal Niraula (’15) graduated with majors in Physics and Mathematics. During his time at Saint Peter’s, he worked with Dr. WeiDong Zhu on cold plasma, more specifically Self Organization in Cathode Boundary Layer Discharge. After graduation, he worked for a year with Atacama Cosmology Telescope in Chile, a project led by Princeton University in finding B-mode in Cosmic Microwave Background. He is pursuing a Master’s degree in astronomy in Wesleyan University, expecting to graduate in 2018. His current research deals with characterizing the exoplanets through optical phase curve.
German Rojas ’15 was hired by the Academy for Enrichment and Advancement in the Union City school system as a full-time Honors Biology teacher and research mentor. According to German, he is using much of what he learned during the formulation of his senior thesis project to help his students. German Rojas was chosen to attend the Premedical Urban Summer Leaders Summer Enrichment Program (PULSE) at the Cooper Medical School of Rowan University in the summer of 2016. 
Cassanda Demosthenes ’14, a Biology major, composed her Honors thesis on the “Effects of Curcumin and Epigallocatechin Gallate (EGCG) on Neurulation in Xenopus laevis,” employing tadpoles to assess the anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidative, stress and tumor reductive, and neuroprotective properties of these agents. After graduation, she attended Franklin Career Institute and became certified in Phlebotomy and Electrocardiography, and then graduated with her MPH in May 2016, from Downstate Medical Center. Cassandra volunteers in a research associates program for the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at Downstate and serves as an on-call youth counselor for homeless youth.
Jeff Kane ’08 is a litigator in the Washington, DC law firm of Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck, Untereiner, and Sauber. He joined the firm after serving as a law clerk to Judge Kevin McNulty on the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, and to Judge Richard G Taranto on the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Jeff attended Yale Law School, where he and a co-counsel won the Potter Stewart Prize for Best Overall Written and Oral Argument in the school’s moot court competition. During law school he worked at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he helped prepare the government’s response to suppression motions and habeas petitions. Before law school, Jeff audited financial statements for hedge fund and fund of fund clients at an accounting firm in New York City called Rothstein Kass. At St. Peter’s Jeff studied Accountancy and Philosophy of Literature in the Honors program through a Presidential Scholarship. He graduated summa cum laude as a member of the Most Noble Order of the Peacock.
Samik Adhikari ’11 graduated from Saint Peter’s University with a double major in Economics and Mathematics. After graduation, he worked at the Center for Micro Finance (CMF), a non-profit research organization committed to improving financial access and livelihood opportunities for the poor in India. Upon completion of his work in India, Samik received a fellowship to attend the Master’s in Public Administration and International Development program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
During his time at Harvard, Samik worked with the World Bank in Washington, DC, conceptualizing impact evaluation studies designed to improve education quality and equity for slum children in Bangladesh and assessed the impact of a community-based cash grant program in Nepal. Samik’s master’s thesis, titled Reducing the Cost of Migration in Nepal, was selected as one of the best policy analysis papers in his class. Samik plans to continue working in the international development space and is committed to solving some of the most pressing problems in the world today through the use of data and research.
At Saint Peter’s, Rezma Shrestha ’10 worked as an assistant to Dr. Leonard Sciorra, chairman of the Department of Applied Science and Technology and Schuh Professor of Health and Natural Sciences. Dr. Sciorra and a group of undergraduate students developed a tissue culture procedure that yields numerous multi-potent cells capable of in vitro differentiation into cells with the morphologic appearance of nerve, adipose, hepatic and muscle tissue using human fibroblast cells taken from adults. For this promising innovation, Saint Peter’s filed for its first patent in University history. Rezma went on to further her studies in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University.