The Graduate School is pleased to announce the following programs have new theses and dissertations available in the J.R. Van Pelt and Opie Library:
The annual Student Award Program provides a $3,000 stipend to doctoral and medical students enrolled in Michigan universities to fund a wide range of applied health care research including pilot programs, demonstration and evaluation projects.
Supporting research in science and technology is an important part of NASA’s overall mission. NASA solicits this research through the release of various research announcements in a wide range of science and technology disciplines. Please bookmark and visit often http://nspires.nasaprs.com/external to search for NASA research opportunities that may fit with your graduate research focus.
Current Opening: NASA Space Technology Research Fellowships (NSTRF)
This Fall 2011 Fellowship opportunity is open to US citizens and permanent residents who are pursuing Master’s or Doctoral degrees in relevant space technology disciplines in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Selected fellows will perform research on their respective campus and at NASA Centers and US Research and Development laboratories.
The maximum amount of an NSTRF award is $60,000 per year for a Master’s candidate and $66,000 per year for a Doctoral candidate – this includes a faculty advisor allowance of $9,000.
If interested, please contact Jodi Lehman (jglehman@mtu.edu).
The mission of the NRC Research Associateship Programs (RAP) is to promote excellence in scientific and technological research conducted by the U. S. government through the administration of programs offering graduate, postdoctoral, and senior level research opportunities at sponsoring federal laboratories and affiliated institutions.
In these programs, prospective applicants select a research project or projects from among the large group of opportunities listed on this website. Prior to completing an application, prospective applicants should contact the proposed Research Adviser to assure that funding will be available if their application is recommended by NRC panels. Once mutual interest is established between a prospective applicant and a Research Adviser, an application is submitted through the NRC WebRap system. Reviews are conducted four times each year and review results are available approximately 6-8 weeks following the application deadline.
There are four review cycles annually. Deadlines for 2011 are:
February 1
May 1
August 1
November 1
Click here for more information: http://sites.nationalacademies.org/pga/rap/
The Expeditions Council consists of representatives from National Geographic editorial divisions (magazines, television, books, and so on) who review and vote on grant applications and an advisory board of external consultants.
The Expeditions Council is editorially driven; projects must have the potential to yield compelling stories and images. Applications are also judged on the qualifications of applicants and their teams and on the merit and uniqueness of the project.
Major fields of study the Expeditions Council funds:
– Adventure
– Culture
– Mountains/Volcanoes
– Natural History and Conservation
– Underwater Exploration
In addition to financial support, the Expeditions Council offers its grantees the opportunity to work effectively with the National Geographic’s many divisions. Grantees are therefore able to share the results of their expeditions with National Geographic’s global audience.
Eligibility
International applicants are encouraged. However, submissions must be made in English if they are to receive timely consideration by the Expeditions Council.
Applicants are expected to have qualifications and experience pertinent to the expedition or project they propose, and advanced academic degrees are not required. Those planning work in countries other than their own should consider including at least one local collaborator as part of their expedition team.
Grant Amounts
Grants generally range from U.S. $5,000 to $35,000 and are to be used for direct field expenses: transportation, supplies, subsistence, and permit costs as well as other related fees (e.g., interpreters, guides, and porters).
The Expeditions Council does not provide fees for photography, videography, and writing. Such fees are negotiated separately with editorial units.
In order to generate the best story, coverage of the expedition may be assigned to National Geographic photographers, writers, and film crews.
Grant Requirements
Grant recipients must provide a full accounting of their expenditures on completion of the project. They are also required to submit a report summarizing their findings within two months of returning from the field.
National Geographic requires that grant recipients give right of first refusal for coverage to National Geographic magazine, National Geographic Television & Film, and all other publication and broadcast media of the National Geographic Society and its subsidiaries. This right specifically includes books, all other National Geographic Society magazines, lectures, exhibits, our Web site and other electronic media, as well as publicity about the project.
Grant Restrictions
National Geographic Society grants may not be used for indirect costs, overhead, and other expenses not directly related to the project. Fringe benefits are also excluded, as are salaries. Funds may not be used for travel to scientific/professional meetings or conferences, legal actions, land acquisition, endowments, construction of permanent field stations, or publishing research results. Grant recipients are expected to provide the National Geographic Society with rights of first refusal for popular publication of their findings.
Obtaining a Grant
Applying for a grant from the Expeditions Council is a two-step process.
Step 1: Pre-Application
Before receiving an application form, each team leader must submit a pre-application form online. There are a few things you should know before doing so:
Within eight weeks, the team leader will receive a decision. If the pre-application is approved, the council will send the team leader an email with a link to the full application online.
Step 2: Application
After receiving an application, the team leader must complete and submit their application online. There are a few things he or she should know before doing so:
Expeditions Council
National Geographic Society
1145 17th Street NW
Washington, DC 20036
U.S.A.
Society of Women Engineers has posted updated funding opportunities for undergraduate and graduate level students majoring in any area of engineering.
For a complete listing of graduate scholarship see: http://societyofwomenengineers.swe.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=264&Itemid=131
For a complete listing of undergraduate scholarships see: http://societyofwomenengineers.swe.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=230&Itemid=128
The National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) awards this fellowship to a graduate from an ABET-accredited engineering program entering a graduate program in engineering. To be eligible for the fellowship, a candidate must be a senior in an undergraduate engineering program that is accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission (EAC) of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). The candidate must also have taken and passed the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam and must have been accepted into a graduate engineering degree program at a school with an EAC-ABET-accredited graduate or undergraduate program. U.S. citizenship is required.
Application deadline: March 1st
Award amount: $10,000
For more information visit: http://www.nspe.org/Students/Scholarships/steinman.html
The Graduate School is proud to announce the following students are recipients of a one-time Fall 2010 Finishing Fellowship:
The fellowships are made possible by the Charles L. Lawton Endowed Fellowship, Neil V. Hakala Endowed Fellowship, Doctoral Finishing Fellowship, and the Graduate School.
Pictures of our recent awardees are available online.
IAF Fellowships are available to currently registered students who have advanced to candidacy for the Ph.D. in the social sciences, physical sciences, technical fields and the professions as related to grassroots development issues. Applications for clinical research in the health field will NOT be considered.
Awards are based on both development and scholarly criteria. Proposals should offer a practical orientation to field-based information. In exceptional cases the IAF will support research reflecting a primary interest in macro questions of politics and economics but only as they relate to the environment of the poor. The Fellowship Program complements IAF’s support for grassroots development in Latin America and the Caribbean, and preference for those applicants whose careers or research projects are related to topics of greatest interest to the IAF.
IAF’s Fellowships provide support for Ph.D. candidates to conduct dissertation research in Latin America and the Caribbean on topics related to grassroots development. Funding is for between four and 12 months. The Inter-American Foundation expects to award up to 15 Doctoral Field Research Fellowships in 2011. Research during the 2011-2012 cycle must be initiated between June 1, 2011 and May 31, 2012.
For more information please visit:
http://www.iie.org/en/Programs/IAF-Grassroots-Development-Fellowship-Program
The Reading Room of the Van Pelt and Opie Library was packed recently, but it wasn’t full of students cramming. This day, more than fifty students were presenting their research via posters in the bright sunlight streaming in from a wall of windows.
It was a poster session held as part of the University’s kickoff of its Generations of Discovery Capital Campaign, coinciding with Homecoming.
Megan Killian, a PhD student in biomedical engineering, discussed her work with arthritis in knees, especially after traumatic injuries. She was looking at what can be done to stop or delay the onset of arthritis after a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), a common problem in contact sports.
“I’m looking at the changes in the meniscus,” Killian said. “Specifically, how the cells behave, how the meniscus degenerates over a short period of time. I am focusing on the molecular biology and histology, and other students in my lab, Adam Abraham and John Moyer, are looking at the mechanics.”
Her advisor, Tammy Haut Donahue (associate professor of mechanical engineering), is developing a better understanding of how the meniscus behaves mechanically and biochemically, and how it responds to injury and degenerative changes.
Together, the inquiry has Killian close to completing her PhD this semester, before she “goes on to a career in research-focused academia.”
Nearby, Carley Kratz presented her research in soils. The PhD student in forestry is comparing soil in special plots of the Harvard Forest in Massachusetts and the Ford Forestry Center in Alberta, with an eye toward the effects of warming.
“I’m studying how increased heat and moisture affect the soil microorganisms,” she said. “I’m mimicking future temperature and moisture increases to look at global warming, among other areas.”
She is focusing on the fungi and bacterial concentrations, she said, especially metabolic changes over time, including increased amounts of carbon cycling (how carbon moves through the global environment). “If more carbon in the soil cycles more rapidly, then that could lead to more carbon in the atmosphere, which could increase global warming,” she says.
Her research is sponsored by a US Department of Energy Office of Science graduate fellowship. Adjunct Professor Erik Lilleskov and Associate Professor Andrew Burton (SFRES), also worked on the research.
Kratz’s hopes include a postdoc in microbial ecology and an eventual professorship in the Midwest “or wherever life takes me.”
A senior in sound design, Nicole Kirch researched potential sound effects for the play, “I Am My Own Wife.” Set in Nazi and Soviet East Berlin, the play won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Awards for Best Play and Best Actor in 2004.
“I looked at the setting of the play and tried to figure out the best sounds,” she said.
That meant using items, some old and some new, from Marlene Dietrich audio to a music box to bombs and air raid sounds to John Kennedy’s Berlin Wall speech.
“I also worked with an old phonograph, with a wax cylinder,” she said. “I didn’t want to improve the sound,” aiming instead for realistic pops and scratches from the old machine.
The setting is the bar/museum Mulack Ritze in the basement of the protagonist, and Kirch had to account for a wall of shelved memorabilia that is used in the back of the stage in the play.
“I send the sounds through speakers behind it,” she said. And she had to create pre- and post-show audio, as well as the sounds that help carry the action, all for a play that was not actually being performed here.
She did “a lot of research while bored last summer.” She wants to be a sound effects editor when she graduates.
Finally, Bryan Franklin, a PhD student in computer science, was working with common subsequences of nucleotide sequences.
“This is important because, if one is a close match with another, it can be used to study viruses and illnesses in labs and then apply the findings to humans,” he said
He had one major surprise.
“The original, published algorithm I was working with was flawed,” Franklin said. “That made it really confusing at first. It was hard to debug.”
Franklin made progress, eventually, using multiple parallel processes, to get results faster.
“I was able to get results in 1/6th the time it would have taken on a single processor,” he said. “My results are also better than the previous work I based my research on, as it always produces the longest matching subsequence.”
After leaving Tech, Franklin wants to continue working as a researcher, either in academia or industry.
by Dennis Walikainen, senior editor
Published in Tech Today
