Graduate student Rafal Dziedzic (Alexander Spokoyny lab) has been selected for a National Defense Science & Engineering (NDSEG) graduate fellowship.
“I’m extremely excited to work with the Department of Defense (DoD) and Air Force Research Laboratory (Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico) on developing new technology for space vehicles,” said the 2nd year Ph.D. student. “Over the past year we developed new functionalization strategies for boron clusters; and I’m excited to use our synthetic expertise to develop and test new chemical components for electrochemical devices!”.
The National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship is a highly competitive, portable fellowship that is awarded to U.S. citizens and nationals who intend to pursue a doctoral degree in one of fifteen supported disciplines. NDSEG confers high honors upon its recipients, and allows them to attend whichever U.S. institution they choose. NDSEG Fellowships last for three years and pay for full tuition and all mandatory fees, a monthly stipend, and up to $1,000 a year in medical insurance (this excludes dental and vision insurance).
Last year Rafal was selected for the AFRL 2015 Space Scholars Program to work on the development of devices for space vehicles. He spent the summer doing research as a paid intern at New Mexico’s Air Force Research Laboratory in Albuquerque.
Rafal was selected for the 2014 Space Scholars Program because of his undergraduate research experience in the Chemistry department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Prof. Song Jin’s group doing electrochemistry and nanomaterial synthesis. During that summer he worked on developing reversible electrochemical mirror devices that could operate in space vehicles.
To learn more about the Spokoyny group’s research visit their homepage.
