One for the Rhodes

Dunnmon: Oxford bound.

Les Todd

Duke senior Jared Dunnmon has been selected for the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship—the forty-third student in Duke’s history to receive a Rhodes. Dunnmon is an A.B. Duke Scholar and past recipient of a Goldwater Scholarship, which is aimed at top students in science, mathematics, and engineering. He was chosen from among 837 applicants at 309 colleges and universities throughout the country.

Dunnmon, from Cincinnati, is a mechanical engineering and economics double-major whose research has focused on novel and renewable energy sources. Working with Duke engineering professors Earl Dowell and Jonathan Protz, Dunnmon designed and tested clusters of microturbine devices in a wind tunnel to determine how much power they could produce from unusual types of wind, such as those that blow between tall urban buildings.

At Duke, Dunnmon has served on a committee that helped develop an academic certificate program in energy and the environment. He has also worked as an environmental-policy intern for the mayor of San Francisco through the DukeEngage program, sung with the Duke Chapel Choir, and served with student organizations related to sustainability and social entrepreneurship.

At the University of Oxford, Dunnmon plans to research the use of renewable fuels and other fuelefficient measures in both industrial gas turbines and jet engines.

Rhodes Scholarships, created in 1902 by the will of British philanthropist Cecil Rhodes, provide two or three years of study at Oxford. The thirty-two recipients are selected on the basis of high academic achievement, personal integrity, leadership potential, and physical vigor, among other attributes.

Jared is a second-generation A.B. Duke Scholar, an honor shared by his father, Preston Dunnmon ’80, M.D. ’84, M.B.A. ’02. His mother, Kara Haas Dunnmon ’80, also attended Duke, and his brother, Evan, is a freshman.