Day: March 31, 2011

DOE Announces New Scholarships

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has announced two new postgraduate fellowship programs in clean energy technologies. DOE says the purpose of the fellowships is to “attract the country’s best and brightest scientific minds to work on advanced clean energy technologies.”

One is a postdoctoral fellowship program that will fund up to 20 fellows nationwide for two years. Selected fellows will be encouraged to pursue innovative, independent new projects that could include working with local community organizations, providing expertise to start-up companies or pursuing grant funding for new work. Applications are due by June 30, and the fellowships will begin this fall. For more information, see www.energy.gov/education/postdoctoral_fellowships/.

The second program, the SunShot Initiative Fellowships, will select recent Master’s or PhD graduates who want to focus on critical technology innovations that can help reduce the total cost of solar energy systems by about 75 percent, making them cost-competitive with other forms of energy without subsidies by the end of the decade. SunShot is a collaborative national energy initiative. Applications for the SunShot Initiative Fellowships Program will be accepted on a rolling basis. For more information, see www.energy.gov/education/stp_fellowships.html.

Published in Tech Today.

What’s the (Business) Plan?

Students participated in the second annual Business Plan Competition Tuesday night, and great ideas were flowing in Fisher 139.

Sponsored by the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the School of Business and Economics, the competition featured future businessmen and women promoting their ideas in front of a panel of judges, who had previously reviewed their written plans.

The five-minute pitches covered a broad range of business ideas, and the winning plan was Books With Purpose by Jodhbir Singh, master’s student in EE, and Aman Bamra, bachelor’s student in CS. “Books With Purpose would be India’s first nonprofit online bookstore,” Singh explained. “Thirty-five percent of India’s population is illiterate, and we would help address this problem by donating one book to under-supported schools for every five we sell.”

Singh and Bamra would approach India’s middle and upper classes to support their mission and their business, especially targeting rural areas, where illiteracy is more prevalent. They took home $1,500 in cash and $2,700 worth of local consulting services: logo, accounting and legal services for their winnings. Singh planned on returning to India after graduation to pursue the business.

See Tech Today for the complete news story.