Highlight
IGERT Trainees and Affiliates Receive Numerous Prestigious Awards
Achievement/Results
During the past year, trainees and affiliates of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program in Indoor Environmental Science and Engineering at The University of Texas (UT) received numerous awards. These awards were generally linked directly to their IGERT research, and reflect the quality and importance of research being done in our IGERT program. Since the inception of our IGERT program our trainees and affiliates have received 15 American Society of Heating Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Grant-In-Aid (GIA) awards, an unprecedented number for any university. Each GIA provides students with $10,000 to be used for travel, supplies, and publication costs. During the past year trainee Jordan Clark and affiliates Shichao Liu and Steve Bourne each received a GIA award from ASHRAE to continue their innovative research related to improvements in indoor environmental quality. Clark is studying the moisture transport in building environments, Liu is studying aerosol dispersion, and Bourne is studying accumulation of dust in attics and its impact on radiant barriers.
Trainee Brandon Boor received an NSF fellowship to study human exposure in the sleeping microenvironment. Trainee Sarah Taylor received an EPA STAR fellowship to study alternative cement formulations and their impact on both concrete properties and indoor air quality. Trainee Elliott Gall received a scholarship from the Air & Waste Management Association for his research focused on primary and secondary emissions of volatile contaminants from several popular green building materials. Trainee alumnus Michael Waring (now a faculty member at Drexel University) received the 2010 ASHRAE Transactions paper award from ASHRAE for a paper from his dissertation on the role of heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems in secondary aerosol formation. IGERT affiliate alumnus Donghyun Rim (now researcher at NIST) received a distinguished associate award from NIST for his research in on ultra-fine particle formation and transport.
Address Goals
Almost all of the awards received by our IGERT trainees and affiliates were based on the importance of their research or specific research accomplishments. As such, the awards reflect the importance of research discoveries made possible through the Indoor Environmental Science and Engineering IGERT program at the University of Texas at Austin. Some of he awards received by IGERT trainees and affiliates required students to summarize their research findings to date and to develop short proposals related to their future work. This proposal process has an important learning component for IGERT trainees and affiliates, as many of them will likely develop careers in academic or other research positions that require an ability to plan and develop research proposal.
