[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/convocation_winners.jpg” caption=”Laura Banducci and Ningning Feng are winners of the Chancellor’s Gold Medal and Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal, respectively. “]An expert in creating and controlling light particles and an undergraduate student who combines a love of languages and song will both take the podium at today's Fall Convocation to accept the University's top awards.

Laura Banducci is the winner of this year's Chancellor's Gold Medal by ranking 'highest in scholarship, leadership and influence.' While graduate student Ningning Feng has been named the Governor General's Academic Gold Medal winner for achieving the highest academic standing in his degree program.

Banducci, in addition to achieving the highest GPA in the Department of Classics, was also the recipient of eleven awards and scholarships throughout her undergraduate degree. Among them were the prestigious Harry Lyman Hooker Scholarship and Harry C. Maynard Scholarship from the Ontario Classical Association, The Humanities Society Scholarship, and The Varey Scholarship. Laura also has a gift for languages – she has reading knowledge of six languages.

Not only has Banducci achieved success in her academic work, but she has also been deeply involved in the McMaster community. She has been an active member of the McMaster Choir since 2002, she directed The Vagina Monologues in 2004 and organized the accompanying V-Day McMaster 2005 Fundraising Campaign to end violence against women and girls, she co-founded the McMaster Classics Club and currently serves as its president, she was a student note-taker for the Centre for Student Development, and she is currently a senior student mentor for the Level I Humanities Inquiry course.

Beyond the McMaster community, Banducci has also been part of many interesting and meaningful projects. Notably, she has been associated with the Inter-Cultural Neighbourhood Social Services in Mississauga since 2003, an organization that provides settlement services to new immigrants in Canada. She has also acted as the Childrens Program Supervisor for the Westdale Fencing Club.

Ningning Feng joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at McMaster University as a PhD candidate in 2001 after earning his M.Sc from Nanjing University of Science & Technology (China) and working as a Research Engineer for Apollo Photonics Inc. in Burlington and Waterloo, Ontario for two years.

Feng has earned several scholarships as a graduate student including The Ontario Graduate Scholarship (2002-2005), The George and Alice Rivett Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and the TradePort International Corporation Ontario Graduate Scholarship.

Most recently, he received a prestigious Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) postdoctoral fellowship. Throughout the PhD program, Feng's course work was thought of as impeccable and he obtained a distinction in his comprehensive examination. His PhD dissertation on photonics technologies and his fifteen papers that have been published in or accepted by prestigious international journals (IEEE), have already impacted the international photonics community and earned him a reputation as an innovative researcher, providing the community with creative and original concepts.

A successful presenter at International conferences, Feng's colleagues describe his talks as lucid, logical, and well-thought out; he is also known for his care and patience as a teaching assistant. After serving as a post-doctoral fellow at McMaster, Feng now holds the position of post-doctoral associate in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.

More than 920 graduands from McMaster's six Faculties will receive their degrees at this year's Fall Convocation ceremony on November 18, in the Great Hall at Hamilton Place.

Undergraduate and graduates degrees will be conferred on students from the Faculties of Business, Humanities, Social Sciences and the Arts and Science Program during the morning ceremony.

In the afternoon, undergraduate and graduate degrees will be conferred on students from the faculties of engineering, science and health sciences.