Month: March 2011

Maura Koehle received 2011 Kokes Award

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Koehle_MauraMaura Koehle, a first year graduate student in Mhadeshwar research group, received 2011 Kokes Award for the 22nd North American Catalysis Society (NACS) meeting in Detroit, MI, June 5-10. The Richard J. Kokes Travel Award program of NACS aims to encourage undergraduate and graduate students to attend and participate in this biennial conference. Maura will present her research on “Microkinetic analysis of sustainable hydrogen production from catalytic reforming of biomass-derived oxygenates”.

Maura was also accorded an Honorable Mention from NSF for her application to the Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Through this program, she will get enhanced access to cyber-infrastructure resources, including supercomputing time, through the TeraGrid.

Maura was also selected for the US Department of Education’s GAANN program during the 2010/2011 academic year to conduct research on sustainable energy technologies.

Finally, Maura was recently selected for the NSF GK-12 fellowship during the 2011/2012 academic year. As a teaching fellow, she will work closely with teachers in the State of Connecticut High School System to organize engaging, hands-on projects to convey fundamental engineering concepts, with a focus on the issues of sustainable design, efficiency, and conservation.

Wenzhao Jia receives Engineering Outstanding Senior Women Award

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Jia_WenzhaoWenzhao Jia receives Engineering Outstanding Senior Women Award. Wenzhao has proved to be an outstanding student with a distinguished academic background and exceptional research abilities. Her doctoral research concentrates on the preparation, characterization and sensing application of novel nnaostructured functional materials.

During her study in UConn, she has published seventeen peer-reviewed articles (seven first-authored and ten co-authored papers in highly prestigious journals such as Journal of Physical Chemistry C, Biosensors and Bioelectronics, etc.). In addition, she has published one co-authored book chapter. Another two first-authored research manuscripts and several co-authored research manuscripts are under preparation. Wenzhao Jia is also actively involved in mentoring undergraduate researchers.