Doctoral student Bruce receives prestigious fellowship from Department of Defense

She works in the lab of Vijay Ramani in energy, environmental & chemical engineering

Beth Miller 

Maria Bruce, a doctoral student in the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has received a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense.

The highly competitive fellowship program was established in 1989 to increase the number of U.S. citizens receiving doctoral degrees in science and engineering disciplines of military importance. Since its inception, it has awarded nearly 4,400 fellowships from more than 65,000 applications to U.S. citizens and nationals. Fellows in the program study a variety of STEM disciplines of importance to the military.

Bruce is studying titanium redox kinetics and performance modeling of the Ti-Ce redox flow battery in the lab of Vijay Ramani, the Roma B. & Raymond H. Wittcoff Distinguished University Professor. She earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2020, where she also worked as an undergraduate research assistant. In addition, she completed internships at the Argonne National Laboratory and Jack Daniel Distillery.

The three-year fellowship includes tuition and stipend support, insurance, travel and professional development opportunities. Applicants must meet four requirements to be eligible: citizenship, discipline, academic status and the ability to accept the full benefit.

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