2023 NSF Fellowships
Seven students of Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering won 2023 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships. GT-ChBE grad student winners: Emily Heckard, KC Jacobson, Henry Kantrow, Felicia Oentoro, David Pando (pictured above left to right) Former undergrads: Chris Allen (BS, 2023) and Max Kazman (BS, 2022)
Ziegler Award - Best Paper
Ziegler Award - Best PhD Proposal
Rahul Venkatesh won ChBE’s 2023 Ziegler Award for Best Paper for “Toward Gene-Correlated Spatially Resolved Metabolomics with Fingerprint Coherent Raman Imaging”
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In my senior year, she urged me to explore bridge programs as she believed it would be a good fit for me.” While transitioning from a small mining town to the large city of Atlanta was an adjustment she learned to enjoy, adapting to the rigors of the PhD program without an engineering background could be a tough road at times – especially as the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted some of her research.
But she said the excellent support system of GT-EQUAL made a huge difference. Her professional development mentor, Associate Professor Blair Brettmann, was especially helpful in navigating challenges, Dobbs said. So much so that she joined Brettman’s lab for her PhD studies after completing her MS. Together Brettmann and Dobbs spent summer 2023 at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), collaborating with the Lab’s materials science experts. “It was great to expand my understanding of the entire manufac-
Victor Brandão won ChBE’s 2023 Award for Best PhD Proposal for “Microenvironment Engineering for the CO2 Reduction Reaction Over Copper Electrocatalysts”
turing process and learn about key challenges in the field from experts at the lab,” said Dobbs, who is now considering national lab positions after she finishes her PhD in 2026. Dobb’s accomplishments to date include winning a 2022 best poster award at the ACS Colloid and Surface Science Symposium, three co-authored papers, and a first-author publication that is in the pipeline. “I would not be in this position now if it were not for tbe ACS Bridge Program.”
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