Maura Koehle received 2011 Kokes Award

Koehle_MauraMaura Koehle, a first year graduate student in Mhadeshwar research group, received 2011 Kokes Award for the 22nd North American Catalysis Society (NACS) meeting in Detroit, MI, June 5-10. The Richard J. Kokes Travel Award program of NACS aims to encourage undergraduate and graduate students to attend and participate in this biennial conference. Maura will present her research on “Microkinetic analysis of sustainable hydrogen production from catalytic reforming of biomass-derived oxygenates”.

Maura was also accorded an Honorable Mention from NSF for her application to the Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Through this program, she will get enhanced access to cyber-infrastructure resources, including supercomputing time, through the TeraGrid.

Maura was also selected for the US Department of Education’s GAANN program during the 2010/2011 academic year to conduct research on sustainable energy technologies.

Finally, Maura was recently selected for the NSF GK-12 fellowship during the 2011/2012 academic year. As a teaching fellow, she will work closely with teachers in the State of Connecticut High School System to organize engaging, hands-on projects to convey fundamental engineering concepts, with a focus on the issues of sustainable design, efficiency, and conservation.