(Note: A high resolution photo of Keivan Stassun is available at VUCast, Vanderbilt’s news network, at www.vanderbilt.edu/News)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A Vanderbilt University physics professor is one of 13 young scientists named a 2006 Cottrell Scholar, a $100,000 fellowship designed to encourage early-career science researchers who show promise.
Keivan Stassun, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, was on the list of winners released May 26 by the Research Corporation (http://www.rescorp.org/). It identifies him as a future leader in research who will also make significant contributions to teaching, especially at the undergraduate level.
The awards are named for Frederick Gardner Cottrell, a chemist who founded the Research Corporation, a foundation dedicated to the advancement of science, and endowed it with the patent rights from one of his inventions.
Stassun plans to use the funding to support his ongoing research into the process of star formation and to intensify his efforts to recruit minority students into careers in scientific research.
Some of the $100,000 will be used for salaries and research-related travel expenses for two graduate students and a post-doctoral fellow. The rest will go toward expansion of the Fisk-Vanderbilt Master’s-to-Ph.D. Bridge program, a partnership of Fisk University and Vanderbilt that allows minority students in the sciences to earn a master’s degree in physics at Fisk and then a Ph.D. in a related science at Vanderbilt. Stassun directs the program, which this fall will include its first students from a second historically black university, North Carolina Agriculture and Technology State University in Greensboro.
“Vanderbilt is one of the few major research universities located in the Southeastern states, which contain 90 percent of the historically black universities,” Stassun said. “This gives us a unique advantage when it comes to recruiting top minority students.” Currently, U.S. universities are awarding only three to four doctorates in astronomy and astrophysics each year to underrepresented minorities.
For more information about Stassun, his research and his minority recruitment efforts, go to http://www.vanderbilt.edu/exploration/stories/browndwarf.html.
Contact: David F. Salisbury, (615) 343-6803
david.salisbury@vanderbilt.edu