The Glass & Optical Materials Division of The American Ceramic Society invites nominations for the Cooper Scholars Award. This undergraduate award is named in honor of the late Professor Alfred R. Cooper, Jr., member of the faculty at Case Western Reserve University and a prominent contributor to the understanding of many glass phenomena and glass problems. Donations to the Cooper Fund are always welcome.
The purpose of the Cooper Scholars Award is to encourage and recognize undergraduate students who have demonstrated excellence in research, engineering, and/or study in glass science or technology. The award will be presented during the GOMD Cooper Session at MS&T each October.
The Cooper Scholars Award recipient will receive an award plaque and a check for $500.
The student can be from any country. Membership in The American Ceramic Society, the Glass & Optical Materials Division, or Material Advantage is not required.
Nomination Process
How to submit nominations:
The nomination package can be submitted by the undergraduate student candidate and/or by the faculty advisor or other research mentor and should consist of the three documents listed below.
Information to be submitted:
A nomination letter from the faculty advisor and/or other research/development mentor for the project describing the role, contributions, and strengths of the student.
- A five page report written by the student describing:
- The cover page will provide the project title and student contact information
- Two pages can be used for technical description of the project
- The technical problem being solved or research project being undertaken
- The methods used to solve the problem or conduct the research
- The results obtained from the study
- An analysis of the results in terms of the goals of the project
- A description of future work to continue and expand the project
- One page can be used for figures, which must be publication quality
- One page can be used for citations to provide bibliographic information
- A two page essay written by the student describing:
- What was learned scientifically from the project
- What he/she enjoyed most about the project
- His/her future plans
The work described in the nomination package must have been completed while the student was an undergraduate student and had not yet earned the equivalent of the Bachelor’s degree. Nominations will still be accepted if the student completes the degree requirements in the fall, winter, or spring terms in the academic year of the award. For example, a student reporting work prior to graduation and then graduating in the fall of 2025 would be eligible to submit to this competition.
Only one nomination will be accepted per institution.
Contact
Submit your nomination to:
Steve Martin and copy Vicki Evans
Award Winners
John Bussey
John Bussey is an undergraduate student and researcher at Washington State University studying Materials Science and Engineering. Working within Dr. John McCloy’s Nuclear, Optical, Magnetic, and Electronic Materials Laboratory, his research focuses on investigating glasses and glass-ceramics for nuclear waste disposal and other applications. For example, his current interests include advanced x-ray characterization of phase separation, crystallization, and degradation, salt formation and detection during waste vitrification, and the behavior of halides, transition metals, and actinides in glasses. Previous research includes cement-rock interactions, mineralized waste forms, lunar dust mitigation, and developing glass compositions for students. John plans to continue exploring applications for glass and ceramic materials to improve environmental sustainability.
Stuart Leland
Stuart Leland is a new graduate student at Iowa State University. He previously completed his undergraduate degree in Materials Engineering spring 2023 while working in Dr. Steve W. Martin’s Glass and Energy Materials research group. He has continued to expand upon his work as he transitions to graduate school. In the research group, Stuart’s primary interests fall under the development of new glass chemistries and their thermal properties for processing into thin films.
Yi Wei
Yi Wei is an undergraduate scientific researcher pursuing bachelor’s degrees in physics and computer science at Coe College along with a minor in mathematics. Since 2001 he has been involved in publishable research in glass science including the extension of the glass-forming range and determining physical properties of alkali tellurites and vanadates. Several presentations at PhysCon, the Iowa Glass Conference, and the UK Society of Glass Technology Annual Meeting have or will be made, and a paper on this work. In addition, a paper has been submitted to Physics and Chemistry of Glasses. Also, in a second research project, he participated in probing the local atomic structure of a very wide range, even up to 85 molar percent PbO, of lead borate glasses with X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy. This work took place in the summer of 2023 in a new collaboration between Prof. Feller’s group at Coe College and Prof. Alamgir’s group at Georgia Institute of Technology.
Vaibhav Bihani
I am Vaibhav Bihani, an Advanced Standing B. tech. and M.tech student of Civil and Structural Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD). I have been working at Multiphysics & Multiscale Mechanics Research Group (M3RG) at IITD under Prof. N.M. Anoop Krishnan since my sophomore year. We work primarily on disordered materials such as glasses, cement, and nanomaterials using various computational methods varying from molecular dynamics, finite element methods and deep learning. I wish to continue my research on molecular simulations, machine learning, and the mechanics of materials to improve the simulations, optimize materials, and develop new materials with targeted behavior for the benefit of society. I enjoy reading, running, cycling and spending time with my family in my free time.