Kwang-Yu and Lee-Chien Wang Graduate Fellowship

The intent of the Kwang-Yu and Lee-Chien Wang Fellowship is to support excellence in Chemical Engineering research at the graduate level. The fellowship targets research in UR ChE’s strategic focus areas:

• Sustainable energy and sustainable process engineering
• Optical, photonic, and electronic materials
• Computational driven materials discovery

Eligibility

Full-time graduate students in UR’s Chemical Engineering doctoral program who have successfully passed the PhD proposal exam are eligible to apply. Students can apply to the award annually, and can win the Fellowship up to two times.

Financial and Programmatic Support

The fellowship covers the department’s annual academic stipend with expectation that the student’s advisor is willing to cover half of the total stipend for that year (1/1/24 to 12/31/24).

Beyond the stipend, the fellowship provides and additional $12k in research funds to be spent in consultation with the fellow’s PhD advisor and up to $2k to present results at academic conferences.

Funds should be expended during the one-year fellowship period.

Nomination Details

Applications comprise of the following:

• A three-page research statement (11 pt, Times New Roman, 1” margins, 1.1 spacing, excluding references) that summarizes research progress made to date, intellectual contributions of your thesis work, and plans for spending the allocated research and travel funds;
• A two-page resume / CV
• The applicant’s UR academic transcript
• A letter of support from the student’s advisor

Selection Criteria

Applications will be reviewed based on the following criteria:

• Prior scholarly achievements and research productivity
• Connection to chemical engineering focus areas
• Merit and feasibility of proposed research plan

A maximum of two awards will be made each year.

Review Committee

The review committee comprises of three ChE faculty chosen by the Department Chair who are not advising or co-advising students that have applied for the award.

The review committee will evaluate applications and make recommendations to the Department Chair.

Deadlines

This year, all application materials must be received by the graduate coordinator, Ms. Vicki Heberling (victoria.heberling@rochester.edu) by December 1, 2023. Decisions will be made by December 15, 2023.

Obligation of Fellows

In January, the 2024 fellow and the 2023 fellow are asked to confer with ChE graduate students to nominate candidates for the 2024 Kwang-Yu and Lee-Chien Wang Lecture.

This distinguished lecture should reflect the same qualities entailed in the fellowship: impactful and inspiring research with connection to ChE focus areas.

Fellows should work together and make the nomination to Prof. Yasmine Basdogan for her advice /consent by February 1st, 2024.

The annual lecture will be held in late September or early October, and both the 2023 and 2024 winners are obligated to prepare a 20 minute lecture to be delivered preceding the invited speaker’s keynote lecture. Fellows are also obligated to provide a two-page post-fellowship report due that summarizes their research and describes how they used the fellowship funds.

Past Recipients