Maura Koehle, a second year Ph.D. candidate in Dr. Ashish Mhadeshwar’s research group, has received a prestigious summer internship at the ExxonMobil Process Research Laboratories in Clinton, NJ to conduct Catalysis and Reaction Engineering research. The goal of ExxonMobil Process Research (EMPR) is to develop innovative technologies for clean-burning gasoline and diesel, to find innovative ways to make refineries increasingly environmentally friendly, and to expand the production capabilities of the company to meet the growing demand for energy worldwide.

In 2011, Maura received the Kokes Award for the 22nd North American Catalysis Society (NACS) meeting in Detroit, MI. The Richard J. Kokes Travel Award program of NACS aims to encourage undergraduate and graduate students to attend and participate in this biennial conference. She presented 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 gets 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 selected for the NSF GK-12 fellowship during the 2011/2012 academic year. As a teaching fellow, she worked 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.

---