Broadening Participation
Broadening Participation Pledge
Throughout the decade, as SRC defines, selects, and manages its research and education programs, we will look to grow our student base, establish a balanced mix of bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D.-level initiatives, and create a more diverse and inclusive community.
Undergraduate awards at SUPREME
- Undergraduate Research Award: $3000 each (direct cost). The purpose of this award is to support undergraduate researchers in the SUPREME PI’s group by covering their hourly salary, or the experimental expense including nanofabrication fee and material characterization cost, etc. One goal of this grant is to expose more undergraduate students to real lab research including cleanroom works. The eligible candidates will be undergraduate students working in the laboratories of the SUPREME PI’s, either internal or external to the PI’s institution. Awarding preference of the “SUPREME UG Microelectronics Fellows” awards is linked with that of the UG travel award (Award #2, see below) to attend the SUPREME annual reviews (the 2024 Review will be held in Boston in early June).
- Undergraduate Travel Award for SUPREME annual review: $1000 each (direct cost). This award is to bring undergraduate researchers in the SUPREME PI’s group to the SUPREME center annual reviews and allow them to present their research results with posters. In alignment with the travel support to graduate students for the annual review, this travel award is limited to non-Cornell groups. Meanwhile, we highly encourage local groups to send as many undergraduate attendees as they can to the annual reviews.
Application Process:
For both awards, the application materials will be sent by the nominating SUPREME PI to Jennifer LaMendola at supreme-admin@cornell.edu. The application materials for Award #1 (research award) include (a) a CV from the applicant, (b) a short (one page at maximum) research proposal. The application materials for Award #2 (travel award) include (a) a CV from the applicant, (b) a tentative title of the poster.
Application Deadline and Review:
For Award 1, the application is accepted on a rolling basis until the funding is used up. The decision on the award will be made monthly. For Award 2, the deadline is one month or more prior to the annual review and the decision will be made a few days after the deadline. This will give enough time for planning the travel to the annual review.
SUPREME Undergraduate Microelectronics Fellows (awarded to date)
Michael Bhopaul is an undergraduate senior majoring in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Under the supervision of SUPREME PI Professor Farnaz Niroui, he works on the development of molecular devices with designer functionalities for applications in memory and computing. During his free time, he enjoys watching sci-fi movies and playing chess.
Finley Donachie is a senior year undergraduate student in the Materials Science & Engineering department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He is working with SUPREME PI Prof. Daniel Gall on the resistivity size effect in interconnect materials, with a focus on Weyl semimetals depositions. He spends his free time bodybuilding and leading the RPI chapter of Material Advantage.
Yufan Feng is a junior-year undergraduate student at the Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Cornell University. She is working on transport measurements on metal delofossite materials, including PdCrO2 and PdCrO2 with SUPREME PI Prof. Schlom. In the future, she wishes to pursue a Ph.D. in chemical engineering or material science. Yufan enjoys swimming, kayaking, and playing tennis.
Clayton O’Dell is a junior year undergraduate student in the Computer Science and Engineering department of The University of Notre Dame. She is working with SUPREME PI Professor Michael Niemier to quantitatively assess the impact of the emerging memory devices being studied in the SUPREME center, at the application level, as compared to existing/state-of-the-art solutions (e.g., that may be deployed on a GPU or TPU).
Zekai Wang is a senior year undergraduate student in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. He is working on the optimization of gate stack design for multi-bit operation in FeFET for NAND applications with SUPREME PI and Thrust Lead Prof. Asif I. Khan. He is also an aviation enthusiast and a world traveler.
Ambrose Yang is currently a senior studying Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Cornell University. He is working on a project on AlScN, GaN, and NbN-based multilayer devices with SUPREME PI and Thrust Lead Prof. Debdeep Jena, and his academic interests are in semiconductor physics, quantum computation, and the theory of algorithms.
Tomas Kraay is a third year undergraduate student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell University. He is currently working on the surface termination of oxide single crystal substrates by laser annealing with Professor Darrell Schlom. Outside of class, Tomas enjoys working as an undergraduate teaching assistant, reading history books, and playing cello and piano.
SUPREME Undergraduate Travel Grant (awarded to date)
Andrew Hennessee is a senior year undergraduate student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. He is working with SUPREME PI Prof. Mike Niemier to benchmark the performance impacts of emerging memory technologies on machine learning workloads. He plans to pursue a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering and conduct research in distributed systems and computer architecture for high-performance computing.
Deniz Erus is a junior year undergraduate student in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department of MIT. She is working on the project of ‘Thermal Management in GaN High Electron Mobility Transistors’ with SUPREME Co-Director Prof. Tomás Palacios.
Jack Coyle is a senior year undergraduate student in the Materials Science and Engineering department of Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute. He is working on the project of the design and construction of a sputter deposition system to explore new interconnect materials and interfaces with Prof. Daniel Gall. In his free time, he enjoys going snowboarding in the various resorts in the area surrounding Troy, New York. In the future he looks forward to attending graduate school to pursue a Ph.D in materials science researching thin films in the microelectronics and sustainable energy industries.
Emma Sponga is a senior year undergraduate student in the materials science & engineering department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is working on designing and building the sample stage for a new sputter deposition system for new interconnect materials with Prof. Daniel Gall. She enjoys hiking and rock climbing in her free time.