Four Princeton University graduate students are among 150 nationwide who have been selected as the first recipients of awards through the new Department of Energy Graduate Fellowship program.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the program is designed to strengthen the nation's scientific work force by providing support to young students during the formative years of their research.
The Princeton fellowship recipients are Nikolas Logan, whose work in the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) centers on fusion; Hou Keong Lou, whose research in the Department of Physics is in the field of high-energy theory; Brendan Lyons, who completed his undergraduate work at Princeton in 2009, and whose work at PPPL focuses on theoretical and computational plasma physics with applications to fusion science; and Elizabeth Zeitler, whose work in the Department of Chemistry involves understanding the fundamental chemical principles that control catalysis for solar energy conversion and carbon mitigation.
Each fellow will be provided $50,500 per year for up to three years to support tuition, living expenses, research materials and travel to research conferences or to Department of Energy scientific facilities.
Support for the fellowship program comes in part from $12.5 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. U.S Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the awards Aug. 5.