From Penn State Live
Tuesday, August 17, 2010

University Park, Pa. – The United States Department of Energy's Office of Science Graduate Fellowship Program has selected 150 students throughout the U.S. to receive graduate fellowship awards in an effort to strengthen the nation’s scientific work force. Deemed part of our nation’s “next generation of scientific and technical leaders” by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, two of these fellows are Elizabeth Essinger-Hileman of Masontown, Pa., and Kara Sulia of Cookstown, N.J. Both are currently graduate students conducting research at Penn State.

Essinger-Hileman, a third-year graduate student studying chemistry, is working to improve nanomaterial purity and to assemble complex nanoscale heterostructures with interesting and useful properties. Her previous accomplishments at Penn State have earned her a Roberts Fellowship and an Incoming Graduate Student Award. Following graduation she would like to be a professor.

Kara Sulia, who received a bachelor of science degree in meterology from Penn State, started her graduate studies in January 2010, continuing research she began as an undergraduate. Her work focuses on improving understanding of physical meteorology and atmospheric cloud systems. Her goal is to earn a doctoral degree in physical meteorology, then to extend her career as a research scientist at a national laboratory or within a university setting.

Each Department of Energy Graduate Fellow will receive tuition funding, living expenses and research support. Support for the Department of Energy Graduate Fellowship Program comes in part from $12.5 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This investment was proposed by President Obama and enacted by Congress to affirm the essential role scientific inquiry and discovery play in both short-term recovery and long-term economic growth.