Recent YSU grad awarded prestigious NSF Research Fellowship 

Just 10 months after earning an undergraduate degree from Youngstown State University, Jennifer Miller of McDonald, Ohio, has been awarded a prestigious, three-year Graduate Research Fellowship by the National Science Foundation.

Miller, a spring 2016 YSU graduate, is pursuing a PhD in Physical Chemistry at Penn State University.

The NSF fellowship will pay her tuition plus a stipend for the next three years. “The timing couldn’t be better,” she said, explaining that the Penn State Fellowship she was awarded initially covers only her first-year tuition.

The NSF awards 2,000 Graduate Research Fellowships each year to outstanding students in science, mathematics, engineering and technology who are in the early stages of their graduate training. Miller was selected from among 13,000 applicants in the national competition.

Besides the monetary rewards, Miller said, NSF Fellows have opportunities to do graduate research internships with sponsoring agencies, along with international research opportunities.

Miller gives some credit for her success in earning an NSF Fellowship to YSU faculty and the hands-on laboratory experience she had in her undergraduate years. “I had four years of research and lab experience and professors that mentored me personally,” she said. “I felt extremely well prepared at YSU.”

She said her experience in extracurricular leadership on campus, including a year as president of the YSU American Chemistry Society, also helped develop her communication skills.

At Penn State, Miller’s research focus is nanochemistry, the exploration of things too small to see with the naked eye. She’s working on a collaborative research study on lasers with an optical engineering group at Penn State.