Three doctoral students were selected for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science Graduate Student Research (DOE SCGSR) Program’s 2023 Solicitation 2 Cycle.
Michael Colletta, a doctoral candidate in applied physics; Virginia McGhee, a doctoral candidate in chemistry and chemical biology; and Liana Shpani, a physics doctoral candidate, are three of 86 graduate students selected for the program.
This solicitation cycle’s graduate students represent 31 states and Puerto Rico, come from 57 universities, and will be conducting research at 16 DOE national laboratories.
“Working at the National Renewable Energy Labs (NREL) will provide me with access to specialized instruments not available at Cornell,” said McGhee. “I will learn synthesis techniques from the field’s leading experts and will bring back that knowledge to share with my colleagues.”
DOE SCGSR awardees “work on research projects of significant importance to the Office of Science mission that addresses critical energy, environmental, and nuclear challenges at national and international scales,” according to the award announcement.
Colletta’s research at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory will be in the DOE’s basic science for clean energy and decarbonization research area, McGhee’s research at NREL will be in instruments and techniques research and development for electron and scanning probe microscopy, and Shpani’s research at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory will be in accelerator science.
“I am honored to be selected for the SCGSR Program,” said McGhee. “I am excited to work with and learn from the world’s leading scientists in renewable energy research.”
