Bethany Kersten, a first-year doctoral student in the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, is Case Western Reserve University’s first recipient of a new graduate research fellowship through the Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP) Integrated University Program (IUP). CWRU was approved to administer the fellowships by the U.S. Department of Energy in April.
Kersten’s graduate research will focus on electrochemical methods for recycling spent nuclear fuel. As part of the fellowship program, she will complete an internship at Argonne National Laboratory in the Chemical and Fuel Cycles Technologies Division.
The IUP program at CWRU is led by Christine Duval, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering. It is supported by Rohan Akolkar, the F. Alex Nason Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, an Ohio Eminent Scholar, and faculty director of the Great Lakes Energy Institute (GLEI), and Benjamin Monreal, associate professor of physics. Graduate and undergraduate students interested in learning more about the program are encouraged to reach out to one of the faculty listed above.