Seventeen engineering faculty members and students at West Virginia University have received a total of $188,000 in grants and fellowships from the NASA West Virginia Space Grant Consortium to help propel their research to new heights. The funding will support research in a wide variety of areas, from sensor fusion and wind turbines to bacterial infections.
The Consortium’s Undergraduate Fellowships are awarded competitively to undergraduate students in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) disciplines who participate in research during the academic year or in the summer. Receiving these awards this year are engineering majors Derrick Banerjee, Matthew Boots, Adly Noore and Byron Patterson.
Graduate Student Research Fellowships are awarded on a one-year basis to graduate students as well as to students who have been admitted to a graduate program in a STEM discipline. WVU engineering students receiving these fellowships include Amber Bartlett, Jason Gross, Steven Hard, Allison Krumanaker, Matthew Williamson and Christina Yarborough.
WVU engineering faculty members Yu Gu and Ashish Nimbarte received Research Initiation Grants, which provide initial support to beginning faculty researchers, helping them to establish a long-term relationship with NASA.
Faculty members James Smith and Kevin Chang received a grant through the Consortium’s Joint University-Industry Research Program, which fosters and cultivates collaborative research between researchers at member institutions and aerospace-related and other high-tech companies in West Virginia.
Faculty members Xian-An Cao, Yu Gu, Brad Seanor and Srikanth Gururajan received NASA EPSCoR Seed Grants. The program supports faculty at all West Virginia colleges and universities. Its aim is to initiate research activities, conduct pilot experiments or demonstrate new concepts that might lead to significant projects in the future.
Established in 1991, the NASA West Virginia Space Grant Consortium is headquartered in the WVU College of Engineering and Mineral Resources and includes many colleges and universities around the state. The Consortium’s mission is to develop a statewide infrastructure that will enhance the state’s competitiveness in research, education and industry.
For more information about the Consortium and its programs contact Candy Cordwell (Cordwell@nasa.wvu.edu) at (304) 293-4099.
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nr/5/24/2010
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