Materials science PhD candidate wins DOE Graduate Student Research Program funding

A PhD candidate at Colorado School of Mines has received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to conduct part of her thesis research at a DOE national laboratory.

Allison Mis was among 78 graduate students from 26 states selected for the Office of Science Graduate Student Research Program, DOE announced late last week.

A PhD candidate in materials science, Mis will spend time at Argonne National Laboratory, where she will have access to microscopy facilities not available at Mines, as well as mentorship in specialized analysis techniques.

Mis, whose research focuses on cation ordering in novel ternary semiconductors, is co-advised by Geoff Brennecka, associate professor of metallurgical and materials engineering at Mines, and Adele Tamboli, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

“These new semiconductors are of great interest for applications including LEDs and multi-junction photovoltaic cells, but we need a better understanding of how the cations are distributed across the crystalline lattice before we can fully understand and control properties like band gap,” Mis said. “My goal is to use transmission electron microscopy to provide atomic-resolution understanding of cation ordering, a scale that has never been examined in these materials.”

The DOE program provides funding for PhD candidates to spend between 3 and 12 months at a DOE national laboratory conducting graduate thesis research in collaboration with a DOE laboratory scientist. The goal is to prepare students for careers in science, technology, engineering and math critically important to the DOE Office of Science mission.