Overview, Operational Results, & Opportunities of the Graduate Nuclear Security Program at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.
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Accelerating innovation and integration of industrial decarbonization technology solutions is crucial for achieving industry-wide net-zero greenhouse gas emissions targets. This can be accomplished in various ways through increased utilization of low-embodied carbon materials and the adoption of advanced manufacturing techniques in construction practices. At the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), we facilitate dialogue and action across all sectors to uncover industry needs to inform innovation, and explore ways we can help with implementation of emerging solutions in the real world. As an applied laboratory, NREL sits between academia and industry to fully bridge the gap from foundational science research to examining the feasibility of market applications. Integration of innovative technologies and solutions that are efficient, resilient, and grid-interactive will play a pivotal role in supporting a clean energy future. However, it is imperative that these solutions prioritize equitable outcomes, addressing the challenges faced by all communities. By embracing decarbonization, the construction industry can revolutionize itself, promoting sustainability, reducing carbon emissions, conserving resources, while enhancing performance and durability - all major steps toward a greener and more sustainable future.
The Computing Research Association’s Committee on Widening Participation (CRA-WP) aims to increase the number of individual researchers from underrepresented groups in computing (UGC) (including women, underrepresented minorities, and persons with disabilities) who participate and succeed in computer science research at every stage of the research pipeline. Achieving these objectives requires that an increasing number of individuals from UGC start and progress to the next stage. The CRA-WP Grad Cohort Workshops are focused at the graduate level to maximize the likelihood participants will successfully complete their graduate degrees. Factors such as role models, skills, competence, confidence, mentoring, social support, and development of identity as a researcher help students to persist in graduate school, while factors such as sexism, racism, and dissatisfaction with their graduate program may cause them to leave. We, therefore, help first, second, and third year students build their skills, research strategies, and confidence; meet potential mentors from outside their institutions; develop connections with each other and with their research communities; and inform them about strategies for successful publishing, speaking, and advisor management strategies. By targeting early graduate students, we seek to help them stay in graduate school and in research.
Sandia National Labs has created a noteworthy and effective internship program whose focus is creating a talent pipeline for the laboratory. Our program utilizes industry standard conversion calculations to examine the effectiveness of the program and to compare to our competitors. Sandia defines students eligible for conversion as graduating in the given fiscal year and in their final degree program. Students indicate to SIP upon hire and at certain checkpoints throughout their internship if they are in their final degree program or not. This means that they will not continue to a higher degree program after they graduate. For instance, someone who is graduating with a master’s degree in the current FY and does not plan to pursue a PhD would be considered eligible, while an undergrad student who is graduating in the same year, but plans to pursue a graduate degree, would not be considered eligible for conversion. Conversion data pulled for this report includes all eligible interns for fiscal year 2021. We use a rolling population, which includes anyone who was an intern at some point during FY21. To calculate conversion, we narrow our population down to the students who graduated between October 2020 through September 2021, who have indicated that they are in their final degree program. The conversion data was pulled on 10/29/2021, so any conversions completed after this date will not be included in the calculation. Our conversion data includes students who separated from Sandia and returned as a staff member. Conversions also include FTE, LTE, and postdoc positions. We do not include conversion to contractor positions in our calculations.
The CRA–WP Grad Cohort Workshops are focused at the graduate level to maximize the likelihood participants will successfully complete their graduate degrees. Factors such as role models, skills, competence, confidence, mentoring, social support, and development of identity as a researcher help students to persist in graduate school, while factors such as sexism, racism, and dissatisfaction with their graduate program may cause them to leave. We, therefore, help first, second, and third year students build their skills, research strategies, and confidence; meet potential mentors from outside their institutions; develop connections with each other and with their research communities; and inform them about strategies for successful publishing, speaking, and advisor management strategies. By targeting early graduate students, we seek to help them stay in graduate school and in research.
Abstract Background Transition into clinical practice for newly graduated nurses is a difficult time, with high stress levels defined by a demanding period of personal and professional acclimatisation. Transitions are complicated and multi‐dimensional, and to understand this process, it is crucial to identify the factors that facilitate or stand in the way of a healthy transition. Aim The phenomenological study aimed to describe newly graduated nurses’ expectations of transitioning into the nursing profession at the start of a clinical nursing introduction programme, including education, supervision, and critical reflection with peers. Method The study was based on seven group interviews with newly graduated nurses. The interviews utilised open‐ended and follow‐up questions and were carried out as a dialogue to enable reflection on the phenomenon of interest. This was explored and illuminated using the reflective lifeworld research approach, based on phenomenological epistemology. Findings “Expectations of transition into the nursing profession via the Clinical Nursing Introduction Programme” is signified by an oscillating movement between uncertainty, security, challenge, and growth on the threshold of a new identity. The phenomenon is constituted by the courage to grow, responsibility and fear, belonging and vulnerability, and support and challenge. Conclusion Transitioning into the nursing profession via the Clinical Nursing Introduction Programme means having the best of both worlds. Newly graduated nurses have the opportunity to receive education and structured support at the same time as they work independently in clinical practice.
This Final Technical Report (FTR) summarizes the work conducted at the Center for Power Electronics Systems (CPES) under the Wide-Bandgap Generation (WBGen) fellowship and traineeship program established by the Advanced Manufacturing and Technologies Office (AMMTO) of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) at Virginia Tech, which had as main objective to train the next generation of U.S. citizen power engineers with wide-bandgap (WBG) power semiconductor expertise, with the intent to aid in fulfilling the future workforce needs in this field. The latter was deemed of strategic importance given the fast-paced growth observed—and predicted—in the demand of this technical expertise, whose practitioners have become the enablers and executioners of the electrification transformation process that not just the U.S., but the whole world, is currently undergoing as it seeks for more effective and efficient ways to use energy. As such, the WBGen program set forth to achieve its educational goals, which in addition sought to broaden the range of WBG-based power electronics by conducting research and development on high-efficiency grid apparatus and high-efficiency electrical power systems, and to also enhance the power engineering curriculum by formalizing WBG-oriented design procedures replacing existent yet now obsolete design procedures developed for Silicon (Si) based power electronics. This effort led CPES to spearhead the development of a new major within The Bradley Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at Virginia Tech, namely Electronic Power and Energy Systems (EPES), which coalesced power electronics and power systems courses to provide undergraduate students with a strong formation in the power engineering field, while creating a pipeline of graduate students that could pursue the WBG-based curriculum and conduct research at CPES. In all, in what is considered a true success, eight of the twenty WBGen fellows that graduated program were recruited from the ECE department undergraduate cohort. The traineeship emphasized as well, from its beginning, the partnership with industry and national laboratories, which took advantage of the successful industry consortium at CPES that has historically been formed by 80–90 power and energy companies working in close collaboration with the center. This gave WBGen fellows the accessibility and possibility to conduct internships at partner facilities during the summer months, focused solely on the evaluation, testing, and adoption of WBG devices, which were many times tightly related to their respective research work and plans. In addition, WBGen fellows conducted their main research work within the confines of research programs at CPES conducted with these industry partners, providing them with a unique opportunity to develop not just their technical expertise—while advancing their knowledge, but to also learn and practice a slew of skills needed for their professional growth. As such, the fellows tackled a variety of WBG-related research topics, from device reliability and capability aspects as well as packaging and integration, encompassing the use of advanced materials and new structures, current sharing challenges, and insulation systems, to advanced gate-drivers with integrated sensors and protection mechanisms and active current- and voltage-based control, to optimized layouts seeking to maximize the switching and power processing performance of these devices, to power processing solutions adopting Gallium-Nitride (GaN) and Silicon-Carbide (SiC) power semiconductors for a variety of applications; including radiation-hardened converters for space dc distribution systems, direct three-phase ac-to-ac power converters for aerospace systems, dc-ac inverters for automotive traction drives, high-frequency isolated dc-dc battery chargers also for heavy transportation systems, and medium-voltage dc-dc and dc-ac converters for distribution systems and future power grids. The WBGen program ultimately graduated a total of 20 power engineers, all experts on WBG-based power electronics, awarding 18 M.S. and 2 PhD degrees in the process. These fellows, all U.S. citizens, allowed CPES to increase the number of citizens students to 33 % at the peak of the program, as the traineeship made possible the recruitment of talent with more attractive graduate research assistantship (GRA) contracts. Unfortunately, the present U.S. citizen enrollment at CPES has declined back to historic levels—approximately 10 %, as the regular GRA rates are not competitive enough when compared with entry-level industry jobs. In all, WBGen fellows published a total of 7 peer-reviewed journal articles, 44 papers at international technical conferences, made 42 presentations at international technical conferences, and filed 4 invention disclosures and patent applications, which have since then been granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Their contribution to CPES, Virginia Tech, the United States, and the world, has been significant, and continues to yield results thanks to the exemplary career that the fellows have initiated at many of the partners of the program, which include Wolfspeed, Raytheon Technologies, Infineon, Lockheed Martin, Dominion Energy, Northrop Grumman, Rivian, Aerospace Corporation, Sandia National Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, John Hopkins University, and Virginia Tech.
The American Chemical Society (ACS) selects two groups of graduate students each year to plan and host a one-day symposium at each national meeting (both fall and spring).This year our Graduate Student Symposium Planning Committee (GSSPC), composed of seven students from four universities, proposal entitled “A Solar Fuels Nexus: Molecules and Materials for Light-Driven Catalysis” was selected for the “Crossroads in Chemistry” ACS Meeting that will take place March 23-26, 2023 in Indianapolis, IN. All members of our GSSPC are affiliated with the DOE Fuels from Sunlight Energy Innovation Hub, with two from the Liquid Sunlight Alliance (LiSA) and five from the Center for Hybrid Approaches in Solar Energy to Liquid Fuels (CHASE). Here we request funds to support this symposium. This symposium will highlight research progress and perspectives in the solar fuels generation field and seeks to advance the four priority research objectives (PROs) established by the Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences (DOE-BES) Roundtable Report that are also central to many research goals within LiSA and CHASE. The symposium will consist of research presentations from 10 invited senior researcher speakers on topics such as molecular catalyst design, computational modeling of electron transfer systems, microenvironmental effects on CO2 reduction and H2O oxidation catalysis, and intelligent design of semiconductor interfaces with ample time for discussions. These research topics fit very well with the Solar Photochemistry supported research areas of “light-driven electron and energy transfer in condensed phase and interfacial molecular systems,” “electrocatalysis and photocatalysis of solar fuels reactions,” and “semiconductor photoelectrochemistry.” More broadly, this symposium seeks to advance the DOE-BES’s mission to: “support fundamental research to understand, predict, and ultimately control matter and energy at the level of electrons, atoms, and molecules” by providing a diverse atmosphere where such research will be disseminated, discussed, and debated. There will be a strong focus on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity (DEI) in our symposium. Of our 10 speakers, 7 will be from underrepresented demographics in STEM, including 5 who identify as women. Furthermore, we have representatives from academia accompanied by one national lab scientist and one officer from the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management at the DOE. All speakers will be holding a short DEI moment ahead of their talks. In order to support the career development of attending early career scientists, we will also be hosting a luncheon specifically for graduate students and postdocs to provide them opportunities to network with the distinguished speakers and other attendees. DOE funds for this symposium will be used to support the attendance and participation of 15 graduate students from US institutions by defraying travel and registration costs. These funds will promote engagement and conversation between early career scientists in the solar fuels field, while disseminating solar fuels research funded by and relevant to the DOE.
This book aims to provide perspectives on important questions that undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics ask themselves. Each chapter gives readers a taste of a different mathematician’s work, presented with enough background material that an advanced undergraduate or early graduate student can understand the key ideas of the research. Each mathematical contribution is prefaced by a short biography of the mathematician who wrote the chapter, to give the reader a connection to the author and provide examples of paths from undergraduate education, through graduate school and beyond.
To date, chemical security education practices in postsecondary institutions are poorly understood. The purpose of this study is to provide an initial understanding of the practices, attitudes, and barriers toward chemical security education for undergraduate and graduate programs in the United States (US) by surveying representatives of American Chemical Society (ACS)-approved programs. All programs with ACS-approved undergraduate chemistry programs (n = 691) were contacted for participation: 21% (n = 148) fully completed and 6% (n = 41) partially completed the survey for a combined total of 27% complete and/or partially complete surveys (n = 189). We observed that most programs currently teach chemical safety (undergraduate >99%, graduate 73%); however, only about one-third of programs teach chemical security at any education level (undergraduate 32%, graduate 34%). We also observed that safety education is provided more frequently than security education. Further, ACS-approved programs reported that their chemical safety culture was stronger than chemical security culture and felt that safety should be taught differently than security. The overwhelming majority of respondents (96%) indicated that chemical safety should be mandatory at some level, while only about half of respondents (57%) indicated that chemical security should be mandatory at some level. More efforts are needed by the chemistry community to raise awareness of the importance of chemical security education so that more institutions commit to training their faculty and students on the topic. The authors suggest that adoption of chemical security education could be increased if ACS were to advocate for chemical security by including it in its guidelines for educational program approval.
Growth in the green jobs sector has increased demand for college graduates who are prepared to enter the workforce with interdisciplinary sustainability skills. Simultaneously, scholarly calls for interdisciplinary collaboration in the service of addressing the societal challenges of enhancing resilience and sustainability have also increased in recent years. However, developing, executing, and assessing interdisciplinary content and skills at the post-secondary level has been challenging. The objective of this paper is to offer the Food-Energy-Water (FEW) Nexus as a powerful way to achieve sustainability competencies and matriculate graduates who will be equipped to facilitate the transformation of the global society by meeting the targets set by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The paper presents 10 curricular design examples that span multiple levels, including modules, courses, and programs. These modules enable clear evaluation and assessment of key sustainability competencies, helping to prepare graduates with well-defined skillsets who are equipped to address current and future workforce needs.
We represent a selection of early career staff at LANL with backgrounds in mathematics. There are many possible paths to a position at LANL. The lab has very active graduate research and postdoctoral programs, and it is not uncommon for graduate students to become postdocs, who can then be “converted” to staff. Conversion from being a postdoc is not the only route to a position at LANL, nor is it a guarantee, but most of us did postdocs here before becoming staff. Being a postdoc here also gives you an idea of whether you’d like living in northern New Mexico, a rugged, beautiful, and somewhat remote area. It is important to say here that citizenship is not a requirement for many of the positions at the lab. The lab historically and currently welcomes investigators from all over the world. LANL offers a broad spectrum of mathematical challenges that are largely problem driven. Particularly to those who feel that academic mathematics can be stove-piped, with a focus on deep but not necessarily broad expertise, the LANL environment gives the flexibility to move and grow in many different directions. The lab encourages a team-based approach to problems, which not only enhances the breadth of our approach to solving problems, but also gives team members access to new fields. From the outside (academia), however, it can be difficult to see how fields map between academia and the lab. This is one of the reasons that having interaction with the lab as a graduate student or postdoc can be helpful in understanding if the environment would be a good match for you. An important advantage of working at the lab is our high visibility both in academia, as well as in industry and the government. Because of its mission-driven projects, LANL, and more broadly the Department of Energy Laboratories, help set research directions that are picked up by researchers in academia. For this reason, many lab staff have worked at LANL for a number of years, then have transferred into academia after having set the agenda for their field of expertise. Below, we will share some of our experiences, opinions, and reflections in order to give the reader a feel for our own early career experiences.
Many engineering employers are finding that graduates are not sufficiently equipped to begin contributing productively when they exit a 4-year institution and enter the workforce. The Intern Professional Development Center (IPDC) is a proposed business model that exposes engineering undergraduates to industry-relevant knowledge, while providing them with working experience during their degree. Using a tri-stage approach, the IPDC engages with students early in their academic careers, provides continuous training and development opportunities, and finally connects the students with potential employers. The two topics most commonly under-represented in engineering programs are: - Familiarity with drafting software - Knowledge of relevant codes and standards. The Intern Professional Development Center (IPDC): A tri-stage solution for recruiting, training, and encouraging the workforce of tomorrow. An IPDC allows students to be active members of industry during their undergraduate careers, leading to: - Improved local talent retention; - Improved graduation and academic performance statistics; - Near-guarantee for post-graduation employment. In March of 2019, the first IPDC prototype began operating in the Tri-Cities, Washington. Since then, 3 undergraduate students have entered the IPDC at Stage 2, beginning with the standard training and professional development. Of those 3 students, 2 have already moved on to Stage 3, with successful ongoing internships with local employers. At a performance review for one of the IPDC's Stage 3 students after 90 days of employment, the direct manager said: 'How soon can we get another one?'.
The WBG Graduate Student Traineeship funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO) provided several U.S. citizen graduate students with a first-class education in the application of GaN, SiC, and associated passives and controls.
The purpose of the grant was to increase the participation of underrepresented minorities and women in STEM disciplines that are critical for the energy industry. The grant was implemented by the Fort Valley State University’s (FVSU) Cooperative Developmental Energy Program (CDEP). FVSU-CDEP enrolled two cohorts of six academically talented freshmen students into its accelerated five-year 3+2 dual degree STEM program. In the 3+2 dual degree format, students enroll at FVSU for three years and earn bachelor’s degrees in biology, chemistry, or mathematics and transfer to a partnering university for two years to earn second bachelor’s degrees in engineering, geology/geophysics, or health physics. FVSU-CDEP partnering universities consist of Georgia Tech, Grand Valley State University, Penn State University, University of Alabama, University of Arkansas, University of Nevada-Las Vegas, and the University of Texas-Austin. Cohort I enrolled at FVSU fall semester of 2017 and cohort II enrolled fall semester of 2020. All six of the students in cohort I earned bachelor’s STEM degrees at FVSU and transferred to a partnering university. Five of the six who transferred to a partnering university earned the second bachelor’s degree. One student transferred from a partnering university to a non-partner university to continue pursuit of the second degree. All students in cohort I had internships, attended professional meetings, and made presentations. Cohort II enrolled the fall-semester of 2020 in the midst of COVID epidemic. Cohort II was only funded for one year, 2020/2021. The DOE Office of Economic Impact and Diversity informed the PI that there would not be any funding for the fifth and final year (2021/2022) of the project. All six of the students in cohort II earned bachelor’s STEM degrees from FVSU and transferred to one of CDEP’s partnering universities. One of the students in cohort II graduate with an MS degree spring of 2023. Currently, four are pursuing graduate degrees at partnering universities and one withdrew from a partnering school because health reasons. Students in cohort II opportunities to participate in internship were negatively impact by the COVID epidemic (2020-2022). Of the 12 scholarship participants, 8 were females. Fifty percent of the males pursued second degrees in Engineering while only twenty-five percent of the females chose Engineering as their second degree.
The history and philosophy of science (HPS) plays a special role in education. An elective HPS course onthe philosophy of scientific experimentation for young scientists and graduate students of natural scienceis presented. The course bears a pragmatic character, and its main aims include the development of criticalthinking (CT), familiarization with philosophical problems in the relevant areas of knowledge, and thecultivation of a taste for reflective, critical analysis, both individual and group-based, which contributes todeeper understanding of the features of scientific practice in the context of modern complex groupcooperation. Students are offered a classical HPS program that included debates on the relationship betweenempiricism and rationalism, the role of Kant’s transcendental philosophy, modern topics associated withthe practical success of rationalism in the emergence of modern natural science, and the theory-ladennessof experimentation. Particular attention during the course is paid to the problems of megascience, theinclusion of which is justified by the specifics of the students’ engagement with science, technology,engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Emphasis is placed on the structure and typology of the collectivesubject in the modern educational process as well as in experimental practice. Lessons on the methodologyof expert text analysis (META), which are aimed at the development of critical thinking skills and thecreation of an interdisciplinary discussion space, are included in the course and relied on the example ofthe history and philosophy of high energy physics to motivate professional reflection. META classesincluded in the course prepare graduate students for teamwork in big science, proto-megascience, andmegascience. The course offers practical recommendations that could be applied to students’ own researchand could be useful for practitioners.
Multiple efforts have been made in recent years to establish national benchmarks for research productivity among US radiation oncology residents. Morgan et al found a mean of 1.01 first-author, PubMed-searchable articles published by US radiation oncology residents over 4 years of residency between 2002 and 2007, whereas Verma et al found a mean of 1.97 first-author, PubMed-searchable articles published by members of the graduating US radiation oncology residency classes of 2014 and 2015. In this study, we sought to establish new national benchmarks for US radiation oncology resident research productivity and characterize the scholarly work produced by graduating US radiation oncology residents.