Each year, the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) identifies and honors the country’s most promising young scientists and engineers. More than twelve thousand applicants propose a research project, which are then assessed based on not only their potential for academic success, but the broader impacts that research could have.
Only two thousand or so applications are selected in a given year, so for any research community, producing even a single GFRP winner is a mark of excellence and cause for celebration.
This year, the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Utah is home to four of them.
As GRFP winners, Ethan Gallup, Carl “Ty” Mellor, Nathan Searle and Tata Serebryany will each receive an annual stipend of $37,000 for the next three years. Each awardee also receives $12,000 that goes directly to their home department to cover educational costs and support their career progression.
“A lot of applicants have strong intellectual merit, but these four students have strong dedication to the broader impacts of their work and the creation of a culture within our department that promotes community engagement,” says Tony Butterfield, Associate Chair and Professor (Lecturer) in the Department of Chemical Engineering. “This culture is evident in the fact that our department is about a tenth of the size of the College, but our students represent nearly half of our winners.”
The GRFP winners’ proposed research projects are:
Ethan Gallup
“Spatiotemporal neural networks to build and enhance empirical and first-principles models”
Ty Mellor
“Advancing Molecular Machine Design: Optimizing Substrate Recognition for Enhanced Efficiency”
Nathan Searle
“Low-Cost Smart HVAC Systems for Schools and Hospitals”
Tata Serebryany
“Recycling of Food-Contaminated Expanded Polystyrene through Pyrolysis”