ND EPSCoR Announces UND doctoral dissertation assistantship awards
The North Dakota Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (ND EPSCoR) has announced the 2014 – 2015 Doctoral Dissertation Assistantship (DDA) awards at the University of North Dakota.
ND EPSCoR’s DDA awards are designed to increase the completion rate of Ph.D. students enrolled in the science, engineering, and mathematics disciplines at North Dakota’s research-intensive universities. Because of the close connection of outstanding graduate students and the competitiveness of North Dakota researchers for receiving merit-based grants and contracts in support of science and technology research from federal funding agencies, the DDA awards are expected to have very high impact.
DDA support is available for up to 24 months to enable doctoral students to dedicate their time to dissertation research. Applications are made by the students with supplemental information provided by their advisors, along with endorsement from their Graduate Program Director and Department Chair.
Four competitive awards were made at UND. The review committee was very impressed by the overall quality of the proposals and noted that funding limitations precluded some otherwise deserving proposals from being awarded.
The 2014 DDA students, their departments, faculty mentors, and the topic of their approved research proposals are as follows:
Kathryn Gruchalla, Biology, Dr. Turk Rhen, “Atrazine Effects on Hypothalamus and Pituitary Development in the Snapping Turtle, Chelydra serpentina.”
Thomas McKenna, Biology, Dr. Kathryn Yurkonis, “Do below ground feedbacks contribute to productivity responses in diverse grasslands?”
Xu Wu, Chemistry, Julia Zhao, “The Development of Multifunctional Graphene-Based Nanomaterials.”
Corey Bergsrud, Electrical Engineering, Sima Noghanian, “A Space-to-Space Microwave Wireless Power Transmission Experimental Mission Using Small Satellites.”
For additional information concerning ND EPSCoR or the DDA program, please contact Dr. Mark. R. Hoffmann, Associate Vice President for Research Capacity Building and Co-Project Director, ND EPSCoR, Twamley Hall, Room 101, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND 58201-7093, 701.777.2492, or visit www.ndepscor.nodak.edu.
