Mines graduate student wins DOE funding to conduct research at national laboratory

A graduate student 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.

Sarah Zaccarine was among 52 graduate students at 43 universities nationwide selected for the 2020 Office of Science Graduate Student Research Program, DOE announced this week.

A PhD student in applied chemistry, Zaccarine will conduct electrolyzer degradation studies at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to correlate individual catalyst layer constituents and interactions with specific degradation phenomena observed in these devices.

“Using the extensive electrochemical capabilities at NREL combined with physicochemical characterization available at Mines, this project aims to provide a closed loop between performance and characterization of electrolyzer catalyst layers and devices in order to identify potential pathways towards optimization,” Zaccarine said.

Zaccharine’s PhD advisor is Svitlana Pylypenko, assistant professor of chemistry at Mines.

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.