SEAS grad students receive DOE fellowships

The DOE Office of Science Graduate Fellowship program, a $22.7 million program to support outstanding students pursing graduate training in the sciences, received an infusion of $12.5 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

As a result, 150 graduate students, including Emily Gardel, a Ph.D. candidate in Applied Physics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and Cassandra Freyschlag, a Ph.D. candidate in Engineering Sciences at SEAS, will receive three-year graduate fellowships, which includes tuition, living expenses, and research support.

Gardel's current adviser is Joanna Aizenberg, Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials Science; Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology; and a core faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. She is also pursuing work under the direction of Peter R. Girguis, Assistant Professor of Biology in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and has worked in the lab of Vinothan Manoharan, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and Physics.

Gardel will use the fellowship to examine how to use bacteria to generate electricity. “I am interested in how we can harness the electrons deposited by bacteria during respiration as a potential energy source,” says Gardel. “This fellowship will not only help me financially, but it will allow me to get together with all of the other fellows and energy scientists.”

Gardel, who anticipates graduating from Harvard in 2012, earned her undergraduate degree in physics from Smith College. She serves as a co-chair of Harvard Graduate Women in Science and Engineering (HGWISE),an organization of graduate students and is dedicated to the personal, academic and professional development of women in science and engineering at Harvard University.

Freyschlag's current adviser is Cynthia Friend, Theodore Williams Richards Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and Professor of Materials Science in SEAS.

She will use the grant to explore the fundamental chemistry occurring on catalyst surfaces, with the aim of efficiently predicting and optimizing highly selective reactions as well as giving insight to solution phase catalysis.

In particular, Freyschlag is using silver and gold as model catalysts to look at cross-coupling reactions with amines, alcohols, and aldehydes to form amides. By studying these reactions using Temperature Programmed Reaction Spectrometry (TPRS), and various spectroscopic techniques, she is looking to fully understand the catalyst-promoted reaction mechanisms and the intermediates on the surface.

Freyschlag, who participates in the Graduate Consortium on Energy and the Environment, is interested in "working for greater energy efficiency, as well as alternative energies using fundamental chemistry." A native of Colorado, she moved to the Boston area for undergraduate studies at Gordon College before enrolling at Harvard.

The Graduate Fellowship program reflects the Office of Science’s strong commitment to the nation and complements the President’s mission to support math and science education, especially in areas of national need like energy. This program is unique because it introduces young scientists to our national laboratories to accelerate their work on energy-related topics.

The 2010 graduate fellows were selected from a competitive pool of young scientists from across the country.

Adapted from a press release by the Department of Energy.

More information from the DOE