Dr. Russell and Melissa Bessette Award for Doctoral Student Excellence

The Dr. Russell and Mrs. Melissa Bessette Award for Doctoral Student Excellence is awarded annually to two first-year doctoral students with the purpose of providing supplemental financial support to the awarded doctoral student. For each recipient, the cash award can be distributed to the student in their first year of study. The award is to be used at the student’s discretion.

 

2023-2024 Award Recipients

tess colins Tess Collins

in the Mathematical Modeling PhD program at RIT. I recently completed my master’s degree here at RIT, during which my research focused more on biomedical mathematics, and my final thesis was on predicting the flow of the tear film in the eye during a blink. I had intended to continue that research once I was accepted into the PhD program, but the discrete math classes I’ve taken have opened up such new and fascinating worlds of math that I found myself leaning more toward pure mathematics instead.
Buh Kum

Buh Kum Tatchen

Buh is a first-year Microsystems Engineering Ph.D. student at RIT. He is part of the Interface and Structure in Printable Inorganic Electronics (INSPIRON) Lab at RIT led by Dr. Ahmad Kirmani, which is focused on printable electronics for terrestrial and space applications. Kum’s research interests are in advancing high-performance, lightweight, low-cost semiconductor materials for energy-efficient electronics and sustainable energy applications. Kum received his BEng in electrical and electronic from AIT in 2019, after which he worked as an electronics engineer at Select Art, Ghana. He later pursued a master’s degree in materials science and engineering at the African University of Science and Technology, Nigeria, where he worked on semiconductor inks for photovoltaics and OLED applications. 

 

For additional information about this award contact:

Christine Heusner
Christine Heusner
Project Manager Graduate Programming
585-475-6891