UA raises $850,000 for scientist grants

A five-year $850,000 grant is intended to increase the number of scientists graduating from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

It includes $599,770 from the National Science Foundation and about $250,000 from the university. The money will pay for annual scholarships to about 60 financially needy undergraduate and graduate students to study microelectronics-photonics, with a focus on drawing more women and minority-group members to the field.

"This grant will help create more opportunities for students, and ultimately it will bring more economic development to Arkansas," Ken Vickers, professor and director of UA's microEP program, said in a news release.

The Scholarships for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics will be awarded to about 33 graduate students and 20 undergraduate students during the regular school year. They also will aid about eight undergraduate students during the summer session.

Graduate scholarships would cover tuition and about $10,000 as "launching money" for students entering the microEP program, Vickers said.

Each undergraduate scholarship will be about $7,150 during the academic year and $2,400 in the summer. UA started a microEP minor for undergraduates this semester.

The grant also will help pay recipients' travel expenses to professional meetings.

Vickers will manage the program with Leonard Schaper, a UA electrical engineering professor, and Lin Oliver, a UA physics professor.

UA launched its graduate microEP program in 1998. It is an interdisciplinary program of UA's J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Engineering. Graduates have started their own companies, become professors and taken jobs at companies such as Intel, Texas Instruments Inc., Northrop-Grumman Corp. and Entergy Corp.

Microelectronics is electronics with miniature components, and photonics - also known as fiber optics - involves the study or application of electromagnetic energy.

This article was published 10/06/2007