Rachel Nixon has spent more time than most shining lasers through liquids. As a graduate student in the Jain lab, she was awarded a two-year fellowship from the Link Foundation for her research on synthesizing ammonia as a fuel source. The Link Foundation awards one- to two-year fellowships to doctoral students in the fields of modeling, simulation, and training, ocean engineering and instrumentation, and energy.
The project that won Rachel the energy fellowship was “Ammonia Fuel Synthesis Through Plasmon-Assisted Electrocatalysis.” As Rachel explains, “scientists are interested in ammonia as a fuel because of its advantages over hydrogen—it’s easier to store, has a higher volumetric energy density, and, because it’s already used as a fertilizer, infrastructure is in place to transport it.” But the current method of mass-producing ammonia isn’t sustainable (it uses hydrogen sourced from methane, causing greenhouse gas emissions), among other disadvantages. “Whether ammonia synthesis can be powered by a combination of electricity and light using metal nanoparticle-based catalysts”—in other words, how to make ammonia more sustainably—has been the focus of Rachel’s doctoral research.
The Link Fellowship was not Rachel’s first fellowship application. She applied to the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF-GRF) in her first year of graduate school and the Department of Defense (DOD)’s National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship (NDSEG) in her second, winning honorable mentions in both competitions. Developing these applications helped her understand the importance of establishing “fit” with the funder’s interests. “Going through the process of applying and getting a sense of what those funding agencies—the NSF and the DOD—cared about helped me realize what this one cared about,” Rachel explains. To develop a sense of the Foundation’s focus on energy across disciplines, Rachel looked through the project titles and even read the available reports of previous winners. And she made use of the Office of External Fellowship’s individual advising service when developing her NDSEG application.
Rachel attributes her success with Link to this preparation, plus the fact that when she applied, she already had preliminary results to demonstrate the feasibility of her proposed method. At just 500 words, the research statement required for the Link Fellowship is quite brief. Rachel’s advisor helped her to focus on the most important points, and she was careful to underscore the importance of the proposed research in terms accessible to an interdisciplinary audience.
The Link Fellowship allowed Rachel to focus wholly on her research, leading to insights into the mechanisms of combining light (the “plasmonic” part) with electrochemistry. As she explains, “applying light can have many different effects, and we were able to narrow down what was unique to the light. This was important to show that this method has benefits over other methods.”
Rachel is on track to defend her dissertation in April and hopes to continue her research career in developing materials for energy and environmental applications.
The Link Foundation was established in 1953 by Edwin A. and Marion C. Link to “perpetuate and enhance the recognized Link legacy of technical leadership and excellence established by the founders in their fields of interest.” Fellowships are open to doctoral students of any nationality studying in the U.S. or Canada and offer a $35,000 stipend for one or two years. See the Fellowship Finder listings for modeling, simulation, and training, ocean engineering and instrumentation, and energy fellowships for details.
Dana N. Johnson is Director of External Fellowships in the Graduate College, where she enjoys supporting Illinois graduate students as they compete for national and international fellowships and grants. Dana earned a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and continues to follow her research interests in Serbia, migration, and the socioeconomic aspirations of youth. You may see her around town at a lecture on one of these topics, picking through an antique mall or watching her dog chase squirrels.
