Senior becomes Gates Cambridge scholar

Senior Stephen Filippone was selected as one of 40 nationwide recipients of the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, a prestigious honor awarded to outstanding students from outside the United Kingdom.

The scholarship will enable him to do independent research for a year at Cambridge University as he completes his Masters degree. After his year at Cambridge, Filippone hopes to return to the United States to pursue his PhD.

Filippone plans to do research in the area of organic solar cells and eventually go into academia. He sees solar cells as an energy source becoming more prevalent in applications like powering homes and possibly even small devices such as cell phones.

“When I came to Hopkins, I [thought] I wanted to be a doctor, but I realized that I wanted to be a doctor for all the wrong reasons,” Filippone, a Materials Science and Engineering major, said.

Filippone’s first research experience was an NSF-funded Research Experience for undergraduates at Vanderbilt University the summer following his freshman year. His project was to improve the strength of concrete using carbon nano-fibers.

“After that summer I started working for Dr. Falk [at Hopkins] doing computational material science,” Filippone said. “I was more interested in energy materials so that’s what I was working on the next two summers at Northwestern, and that’s what I’m doing now.”

Filippone has a variety of interests outside of research. For one, he is very passionate about education.

“My parents inspire me. It’s cliché but true,” Filippone said. “They never pressured me to study anything, they just pressured me to study something. They stressed a large importance on education.”

Filippone has worked with children through the Incentive Mentoring Program during almost all of his time at Hopkins. The program helps underperforming students graduate from high school. Last semester, he started working with the Principal Investigator of his lab to develop a STEM education program in Baltimore schools.

“I’m interested in education, especially K through 12. I want to end up as a professor and teach at a level that’s more interesting to me, but I really see myself going back, maybe later in life, and teach at a lower grade level. I think it is way more important and more crucial to teach at that level because once you get college-aged students they either made it or they didn’t,” he said.

Filippone also directs his effort to other causes such as social justice issues.

“The one that strikes closest to home is immigration reform,” he said.

Filippone is from Los Fresnos, Texas, a small town near the US-Mexico border.

“My Mom is from Mexico, and I grew up on the border my whole life. Luckily she was a dual citizen since birth. My Dad was working in Mexico when they met. After that they moved to the United States, and I was born a little later,” Filippone said. “When I grew up there [Los Fresnos], I kind of didn’t know who they [undocumented immigrants] were, and I was surprised to find out later. I lived in a little bubble of ignorance for a long time, and I didn’t realize that a lot of the people I knew, people who were friends, were undocumented.”

In college, Filippone has volunteered with Casa de Maryland, a non-profit that helps immigrants find jobs, take English lessons and become legalized.

According to Kelly Barry, director of the National Fellowships and Scholarships Program at Hopkins, Filippone’s combined outstanding academic record and interest in leading social change helped him stand out during the Gates application process.

Barry began working with Filippone last year when he was applying for other scholarships.

“He has not only an excellent transcript, coursework and GPA, but he also has multiple research experiences in three different universities,” Barry said. “For the Gates Cambridge, you have to be a complete person with the right interests and Stephen has those things as well. In particular, they are looking for applicants who tend to have some real social impact in the world.”

As Barry helped Filippone with writing applications and preparing for interviews, she got to know his disposition.

“He’s absolutely unanxious [sic] which is unusual in the context of today’s undergraduates at a high pressure place like Hopkins,” Barry said. “So even though he’s working at a very high level, he’s not worried by anything at all, and I find that very refreshing.”