NEES News

NEES student selected for U.S. DOE Graduate Student Research Award

NEES student selected for U.S. DOE Graduate Student Research Award

A PhD student working with the Nanostructures for Electrical Energy Storage (NEES) Energy Frontier Research Center will spend the summer accessing the supercomputing resources of Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque after being chosen for a select national honor from the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE).

Christine James, in chemical engineering and materials science at Michigan State University, is one of only 53 in the country to receive the DOE Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Award. The recognition is based on her academic accomplishments and the merits of her proposed research, “The Effect of Oxygen Vacancies on Manganese Dissolution in High Capacity Cathodes."

She will spend June – August at Sandia’s facilities in New Mexico, working with Kevin Leung, staff scientist for biomolecular materials and a NEES principal investigator.

“While there I will have the opportunity to use supercomputer resources, learn new computational techniques from Dr. Leung and conduct research that will advance my thesis dissertation project,” James explained.

Yue Qi, associate professor of chemical engineering and materials science, a NEES PI and James’ PhD advisor, said the SCGSR Award is an excellent opportunity for her.

“Christine will be able to access the state-of-the-art computational facility and network with scientists at the DOE labs. Her basic research on manganese dissolution mechanism understanding will help to design methods to mitigate Li-ion battery degradation.”

“My goal for the future is to have a career researching materials with energy applications,” James added.

The 53 SCGSR awardees represent 45 universities and will carry out part of their doctoral dissertation and thesis research in 14 DOE national laboratories this summer.

May 30, 2017