Political science, engineering, biology, health sciences, chemistry, physics and astronomy are some of the disciplines uniting to support 13 future WVU doctoral students who will collaborate with K-12 schools and regional industry to enhance West Virginia’s economic development in evolving energy.
Led by Edward Brzostek, professor of biology and associate chair for graduate studies at the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, the graduate fellowship program is funded by a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research.
Working with Brzostek are Brenden McNeil and Alan Bristow from the Eberly College, Aaron Robart for Health Sciences and Srinivas Palanki from the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources.
The NSF grant enables the participating departments to recruit students who applied for NSF Graduate Fellowship awards and received honorable mentions. No financial support comes with an honorable mention; however, it qualifies graduate students to apply for the WVU fellowship. The fellowship offers comparable funding for three years, including a tuition waiver, stipend and cost-of-education allowance.
“This is going to bring the best and brightest to West Virginia — the top students who have received the NSF honorable mention,” Brzostek said. “Because their research is going to focus on benefitting the state, and we’ll be placing them in internships here to prepare them for careers outside academia if that’s what they pursue, we hope many of them will choose to stay.”
All of the graduate students will work with public schools or other community organizations to design K-12 outreach programs reflecting their individual areas of research. The research might range from bioenergy crops or carbon credits to the electrical properties of fungi or the effect of the Clean Air Act on West Virginia’s forests.
“This highly interdisciplinary fellowship will span bioeconomics, ecosystem resilience, environmental chemistry — and even photophysics,” he said. “Our goal is to enhance the University’s leadership in future economic transitions.”