Undergraduate and Graduate Outreach

2012 Summer Fellowship Program

***Applications for this year’s Summer Fellowship Program are no longer being accepted.***

CCEI is proud to once again host a Summer Fellowship Program to give undergraduate students an opportunity to perform ground-breaking research on advanced biofuel technologies. During this 10-week internship, undergraduate students will be paired with faculty, graduate students or staff scientists to conduct research on a variety of topics related to catalysis synthesis, characterization and analysis.

Summer fellows receive a competitive stipend and have the opportunity to conduct research at our partner institutions (campus housing at the partner institutions is provided by CCEI). In addition to conducting research, summer fellows participate in career development activities, such as:

• Creating a professional research poster
• Presenting research to peers and faculty
• Field trip to industry
• Lab safety training
• Refining technical writing skills

Highlights from 2011 Summer Fellowship Program

CCEI hosted 19 undergraduate students as part of the 2nd annual Summer Fellowship Program. CCEI faculty, graduate students, postdocs and staff from the University of Delaware, University of Massachusetts, North Carolina State University and Brookhaven National Lab worked closely with CCEI Summer Fellows to develop projects related to various aspects of the center’s research efforts.

In addition to gaining hands-on, laboratory and computational experience, CCEI Summer Fellows also participated in numerous student development activities throughout the summer. Students learned how to prepare an effective resume and enhance their interviewing skills during a training provided by University of Delaware’s Career Services Center. Many CCEI Fellows also had the opportunity to communicate their research accomplishments in the Undergraduate Research Symposium held at the University of Delaware. CCEI Fellows designed posters highlighting their research and presented them to university faculty, staff and peers at the symposium.

To gain exposure to chemical engineering career opportunities, CCEI Fellows toured the Dow Chemical manufacturing site in Newark, Del. This unique learning experience gave students insight to all aspects of an industrial setting, including R&D, product quality control and consumer relations. The knowledgeable staff at Dow also facilitated an in-depth discussion with the students that included topics such as career path decisions, life experiences as an engineer and advice for job seekers.

All of the 2011 Summer Fellows were talented young researchers and a pleasure to work with, but a few students in the group surpassed the expectations of the program by helping out with a summer engineering day camp at the University of Delaware. Volunteering their time and expertise, these Fellows designed and facilitated an hour-long activity for 80 day campers. During the session, the Fellows explained CCEI’s research goals, helped campers investigate the process of catalysis through a hands-on experiment and answered questions about college life. Both the day campers and CCEI Fellows valued the experience.

Thank you to all CCEI Summer Fellows for making a significant contribution to the research of the center and to all the faculty, staff and students who contributed to the success of the 2011 Summer Fellows program!