The College of Engineering is proud to announce the names of current students and recent alumni awarded prestigious national grants and fellowships—or both—this month, including awards from the Fulbright US Student Program Grant, and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program.
Valerie Niemann
A Fulbright US Student Program Grant for 2018-2019 has been awarded to Valerie Niemann, BS Chemical Engineering ’18, Honors. Her faculty mentor is Aaron Fafarman. Niemann has done research in the Nanocrystal Solar Lab, as well as on topics in renewable energy and power generation, such as solar cells, hydrogen evolution reaction catalysis, thermal management for power devices, and thermoelectrics. Niemann has a minor in physics. She is dedicated to promoting effective scientific communication and international exchange. She plans to pursue a PhD in chemical engineering, researching renewable chemical processes for energy applications. Niemann’s Study/Research Grant will take her to Switzerland. She was also awarded a 2018 NSF fellowship (see below).
Fulbrighters address critical global challenges – from sustainable energy and climate change to public health and food security – in all areas while building relationships, knowledge, and leadership in support of the long-term interests of the United States and the world. The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the US government. It is designed to build relations between the people of the United States and people of other countries in order to solve global challenges.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships for 2018 have been awarded to three CoE students and one alumnus. Honorable mention has been awarded to one CoE student.
The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) acknowledges and supports exceptional students who are pursuing research-based graduate degrees. Fellows receive a three-year annual stipend of $34,000 along with a $12,000 cost-of-education allowance. According to the GRFP, “Fellows are anticipated to become knowledge experts who can contribute significantly to research, teaching, and innovations in science and engineering.”
Graduate Research Fellows for 2018 include:
Anthony Abel
Anthony Abel (alumnus), BS/MS Chemical Engineering/Materials Science ’17, Honors. Abel’s Drexel faculty mentor was Jason Baxter. Abel is currently a PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley. His research uses biological engineering to enable long-duration space missions. At Drexel, he developed deposition and testing methods on low-cost semiconductors to be used for solar water splitting.
Valerie Niemann, BS Chemical Engineering ’18, Honors. Her faculty mentor is Aaron Fafarman. Niemann has done research in the Nanocrystal Solar Lab, and on topics in renewable energy and power generation, such as solar cells, hydrogen evolution reaction catalysis, thermal management for power devices, and thermoelectrics. She has a minor in physics. She is dedicated to promoting effective scientific communication and international exchange. She plans to pursue a PhD in chemical engineering, researching renewable chemical processes for energy applications. She also won a 2018 Fulbright Grant (see above).
Jacqueline Tawney, BS Mechanical Engineering ’18, Honors. Her faculty mentor is Leslie Lamberson. Tawney has a passion for space, nature, music, and scientific research. As a Hess scholar undergraduate researcher, she did research in Drexel’s Dynamic Multifunctional Materials Lab characterizing the dynamic material behavior of basalt and granite, and in designing and building new laboratory experimental equipment. She will pursue a PhD in aerospace engineering at the California Institute of Technology.
Sophie Lee
Sophia (Sophie) Lee, PhD student, Chemical Engineering. Her faculty mentor is Maureen Tang. Lee’s work focuses on studying surface interactions at battery interfaces. She is currently working on surface-specific modification of carbon electrodes to enable better control of Solid Electrolyte Interphase formation in Sodium-ion batteries and to improve mechanistic understanding of the process.
Graduate Research Fellow Honorable Mention for 2018 includes:
Erfaun Noorani, BS Electrical Engineering ’18. His faculty mentor is Kapil Dandekar. Noorani is working in the Drexel Wireless Systems Laboratory on a senior design project supporting Drexel’s “Dragon Radio” submission to the DARPA Spectrum Collaboration Challenge. He also worked on projects looking at cybersecurity issues in smart grids.
--By Wendy Plump, Staff Writer, CoE