Clarkson University Senior Kaitlin Dunn of Penfield, N.Y., Awarded NSF Research Fellowship

2017 Apr 18

Clarkson University student Kaitlin Dunn of Penfield, N.Y., a senior double majoring in electrical engineering and physics has been awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship for 2017.

NSF received more than 13,000 applications for the 2017 competition and made 2,000 award offers. NSF fellows are expected to contribute significantly to research, teaching, and innovations in science and engineering fields.

Benefits of the award include a three-year annual stipend of $34,000 along with a $12,000 cost of education allowance for tuition and fees (paid to the institution), opportunities for international research and professional development, and freedom to conduct their own research at any accredited U.S. graduate institution they choose.

A graduate of Penfield High School, Dunn is a member of the Honors Program and has conducted research at Clarkson under Prof. William Jemison since her freshman year. Her work on using modulated lasers underwater has included advancing the development of an underwater Lidar-based imaging system. In 2015, she conducted research in quantum optics at the Friedrich-Alexander Universitat in Erlangen, Germany, through a research internship granted by the DAAD RISE program. Last summer, Dunn conducted research for her honors thesis on using modulated lasers for communication in turbid underwater optical channels at the Naval Air Warfare Center in Patuxent River, Maryland through the NREIP program. She has been accepted to several Ph.D. programs and will pursue research in applied optics in one of these programs, beginning next fall.

Clarkson University educates the leaders of the global economy. One in five alumni already leads as an owner, CEO, VP or equivalent senior executive of a company. With its main campus located in Potsdam, New York, and additional graduate program and research facilities in the Capital Region and Beacon, N.Y., Clarkson is a nationally recognized research university with signature areas of academic excellence and research directed toward the world's pressing issues. Through more than 50 rigorous programs of study in engineering, business, arts, education, sciences and the health professions, the entire learning-living community spans boundaries across disciplines, nations and cultures to build powers of observation, challenge the status quo and connect discovery and innovation with enterprise.