Three EPS Students Win NSF Graduate Research Fellowships

Rene Boiteau, Carl Ebeling, and Rebecca Fischer

Three EPS students--doctoral candidate Carl Ebeling and undergraduates Rene Boiteau and Rebecca Fischer--have won National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships. Awarded to the nation's most promising graduate students in math, science and engineering, the fellowships provide three years of funding at an annual rate of $30,000.

Because competition for these awards is typically fierce, the NSF fellowships rank among the nation's most prestigious financial awards for graduate students. Over its 50-year history, the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship program has funded fewer than 10% of its applicants. Many past winners have risen to leadership positions within their fields, and current recipients are expected to become prominent researchers and teachers who will significantly contribute to the nation's science and technology infrastructure.

The fellowships will allow Ebeling, Boiteau, and Fischer to focus exclusively on research in their chosen graduate programs. Ebeling will continue his work at Northwestern where he has begun analyzing an extensive archive of ambient seismic noise records to help determine if rising sea-surface temperatures are contributing to increasing hurricane frequency. Fischer, who will begin graduate work at the University of Maryland this fall, will study high pressure-temperature mineral physics. She is specifically interested in investigating silicate-metal partitioning in Earth's core to determine the origin and composition of light elements there. Boiteau, meanwhile, will not decide upon the trajectory of his project for another year. Having already won a coveted one-year Churchill Scholarship for graduate study at the University of Cambridge, he will first embark on a paleoclimatology research project and assess its results before defining a specific course of study in his doctoral program at the MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

EPS congratulates Carl, Rene, and Rebecca on their outstanding work!