Graduate School Newsblog

Day: February 19, 2014

Scholarship Opportunity for Junior and Senior Engineering Students and Prospective Engineering Graduate Students

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The Michigan Tech SSEED program (funded by NSF S-STEM) will award 35 undergraduate scholarships of $1,000-$5,000 to junior and senior engineering students and five graduate fellowships of $8,000 to engineering students in 2014-15. Please share this information with qualified students.

The purpose of the undergraduate scholarships is to improve the retention of upper-division engineering students who have financial need and other risk factors that make it difficult to complete their undergraduate degree.  The purpose of the graduate fellowships is to improve the recruitment of women and minorities to graduate school in engineering. The program also features mentoring and professional development opportunities.  Additional information and applications can be found at www.doe.mtu.edu/sseed/.  Spring application deadlines are Mar. 17 for undergraduate scholarships and May 1 for graduate fellowships.  For questions, contact Michele Miller (mhmiller@mtu.edu, 7-3025).

Published in Tech Today.

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Graduate Research Colloquium Set for this Wednesday and Thursday

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It’s a chance for Michigan Tech graduate students to shine. The Graduate Research Colloquium, slated for Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 19 and 20, showcases the work of current grad students, as they present their findings to judges and visitors alike.

The event coincides with the University’s Career Fair, held Tuesday, Feb. 18 and the timing is great, according to Jackie Huntoon, associate provost and dean of the Graduate School.

“It will give prospective employers a chance to learn more about the types of research being conducted here,” she says. “Michigan Tech has long been known for conducting research that has direct benefit to society and is of interest to industry. In fact, 46 percent of our PhD students who have definite employment offers at the time of graduation are going to work in industry.”

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A Better Way to Purify Peptide-Based Drugs

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Members of Shiyue Fang's research team in his lab at Michigan Tech, where they developed a better process to purify peptides and other biomolecules.
Peptides are an intriguing class of drugs. They are made of amino acids, just as humans are, and because of their intimate relationship with our own biological molecules, they have the potential to fight some of the most intractable diseases, including cancer.

But they can be difficult and expensive to make. A year’s worth of the anti-HIV peptide drug enfuvirtide costs $25,000. Now a chemist at Michigan Tech has overcome an important hurdle in the manufacturing process by developing a quicker, simpler purification method. As a bonus, his technique also works on DNA.

Read the full story.

Published in Tech Today by Marcia Goodrich, magazine editor

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