Graduate Student Seminar Series Top Presenters

The department is pleased to announce top presenters for this year’s Graduate Student Seminar Series, as voted by attending first-year and third-year Ph.D. students:

Top Presenter

Jackson Stolle (Korgel Lab)
Photonic Curing of CuInSe2 Nanocrystals for Inexpensive Solar Cells

Jackson’s research uses semiconductor nanocrystal “solar inks” and low-temperature processing to fabricate inexpensive, highly-efficient solar cells to absorb electricity-producing sunlight.

Runners-up

Alex Rettie (Mullins Lab)
Metal Oxide Photoelectrodes for Solar Water Splitting

Alex’s work is developing materials and processes to split water using sunlight, producing clean, renewable hydrogen for use as a fuel or chemical feedstock.

Brandon DeKosky (Georgiou Lab)
High Throughput Antibody Sequencing

Brandon is enhancing our understanding of the immune system by learning how antibodies develop and respond to different vaccines or diseases.

A special thanks to corporate partner representatives Sadasivan Shankar (Intel), Jean Tom (Bristol-Myers Squibb), Joan Schork (Air Products) and Jim Zega (Merck). Partner support funded a top prize of $1,000 and runners-up prizes of $500. We’re extremely grateful for these partnerships and recognition of this seminar series.

Thanks to all the speakers for their thoughtfulness in presenting, to graduate students Aileen Dinin and Adam Pacsi for organizing these weekly seminars and to Professor Hal Alper for overseeing the program

Tags: Air Products, alternative fuel, antibodies, bristol-Myers Squibb, chemical engineering, chemical feedstock, diseaes, electricity-producing sunlight, graduate students, immune systems, intel, Merck, research, seminar series, solar cells, solar inks, The University of Texas at Austin, UT, UT Austin, vaccines