Ten new Paper Science & Engineering (PSE) Fellowship projects have been selected for PhD students beginning fall 2015.  These 10 will join the continuing 33 fellowships for the fall through spring 2019.  In all, including the 10 new awards, there will be a total of 33 academic faculty supervising 43 PSE Fellowship recipients.

“This is always an exciting time because it gives us a glimpse at the future – what they see as the next frontier in research, what they are excited about,” said Norman Marsolan, RBI executive director. “Add to that the energy new students bring to the table, it really allows us to celebrate this convergence of established, successful researchers with the brightest young minds in the field. Our entire RBI team congratulates all those whose projects were selected.”

The following faculty received new PSE Fellowships:

• ChBE:  Yulin Deng, Ryan Lively, Carson Meredith, Sankar Nair
• MSE:  Satish Kumar, Meisha Shofner, Preet Singh
• ME:  Cyrus Aidun, Karl Jacob, Kyriaki Kalaitzidou
• Chem:  John R. Reynolds, Pamela Peralta-Yahya

Data on PSE Fellowships for the fall 2015:

• New Student Awards: ChBE, 3; MSE, 3; ME, 2; Chem, 2
• Carry Over Awards*: ChBE, 13; MSE, 11; ME, 6; Chem, 3
• Faculty New to PSE Program: ChBE, 1; MSE, 0; ME, 1; Chem, 2
• Current Faculty: ChBE, 14; MSE, 8; ME, 6; Chem 1

New PSE Fellowship awards for fall 2015 are:

• Yulin Deng, Carson Meredith, Meisha Shofner, “Design of Natural Nanofiber Composites: An Integrated Approach to Control Barrier and Mechanical Properties of Cellulose- and Chitin-Based Nanomaterials”
• Karl I. Jacob, Kyriaki Kalaitzidou, “Nanocellulose-Based Bio-nanocomposites”
• Satish Kumar, “Bi-component, functional and eco-friendly textile fibers with synthetic polymers as the sheath and lignin as the core”
• Sankar Nair, 
Ryan Lively, “Advanced Porous Materials and Processes for Biorefinery Separations”
• Pamela Peralta-Yahya, “Upgrading lignin-derived aromatic monomers into value-added chemicals via pterin-based monooxygenases”
• John Reynolds, Robert Moon, “Electrofunctional Paper: Highly Conductive and Switchable Displays”
• Preet Singh, “Corrosion Control in Superheaters to Increase Kraft Recovery Boiler Efficiency”
• Cyrus Aidun, “Multiphase forming technology for Papermachine Headboxes”

Students participating in the PSE program as of May 1, 2015, include the following: Hannah O. Akinosho, Trevar Augustin, Aydin Bedi Baykal, Brian Robert Beatty, Alex D. Brittain, Mark Canatelli, Huibin Chang, Mason Chilmonczyk, Alex Dagg, Xiaotang Du, Xu Du, Michael Dutzer, Nathan C. Ellebracht, Liang He, Chad Hume, Lu Jiang, Nikita Kevlich, Thomas Kwok, Vincent Chi-Fung Li, Hsiang-Hao Liu, Yitao Liu, Arie Mulyardi, Yoon Joo Na, Matthew Orr, Dennis Oztekin, Ke Qui, Bailey Elizabeth Risteen, Nikolay Semenikhin, Jungseob So, Allison Tolbert, Songcheng Wang, Gaoxiang Wu and Yuanzheng Zhu.

 For more information regarding the PSE fellowship program and full details of projects, please visit http://www.rbi.gatech.edu/current-faculty-and-projects.