Sergey Smolin, a third year Ph.D. student in the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department, has been accepted into the prestigious DAAD RISE PRO fellowship program to conduct research in Germany. The program fosters international research collaboration between Germany and other countries including the U.S. by offering German research internships for Ph.D. students for three to six months. Sergey is one of roughly sixty students from the U.S. chosen for this program. In Germany, he will work with Dr. Marcus Bär at HZB to study interfacial properties in Perovskite oxide thin films with x-ray techniques including XPS and other synchrotron-based techniques. The epitaxial thin films for the research are grown and characterized by the Steve May group in the Materials Science Department at Drexel. The research in Germany is complimentary to the research that Sergey performs at Drexel University--using ultrafast spectroscopy to study the solar energy potential of perovskite oxide thin films. Sergey is very excited to begin the research in Germany and would like to thank his advisor Prof. Jason Baxter for his guidance and support.