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
Patrick Lynch
My name is Patrick Lynch, and I am currently an undergraduate researcher at Alfred University in professor Myungkoo Kang’s Advanced Optical Ceramics group. We are based out of Alfred, NY in the United States of America. I have an A.S. degree in engineering science from Suffolk County Community College in Selden, NY. I graduated from SCCC in May of 2023 and I’m set to graduate from Alfred University in May of 2025 with my B.S. degree in glass engineering science. I have co-authored 2 peer-reviewed publications titled “Solution-Derived Ge-Sb-Se-Te Phase-Change Chalcogenide Films, ” Scientific Reports, (2024) and “Self-Healing Mechanisms for Ge-Sb-S Chalcogenide Glasses Upon Gamma Irradiation, ” MRS Bulletin. (2024). I have a third paper under review currently, “Demonstration of Photothermally-Induced GRIN Profiles in Bulk Chalcogenide GAP-Se Glasses” Advanced Optical Materials. I am also a recipient of the Kyocera AVX Scholarship at Alfred University. My primary field of research is in infrared optical systems. As for my ACerS history I have attended GOMD 2024 in Las Vegas, NV this year where I gave a presentation titled “Accelerated Structural Relaxation of Chalcogenide Glasses via Thermo-Ultrasonication ”. My current interests are in metasurface fabrication, nonlinear optics, and phase change materials. Specifically, I am interested in how chalcogenides can be used in these areas to create cutting edge infrared technologies for the defense and security industries. After graduation, I would love to work for a defense contractor such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, or BAE Systems. I believe that my knowledge of infrared glass could provide valuable innovations for sensors, surveillance equipment, guiding systems, or other precision devices.
Daniel Wiedeman
Daniel is a recent graduate of the University of Central Florida (UCF) with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry. He is continuing his education at the UCF in working towards a Master of Science in Material Science and Engineering. For the past 2 years he has worked as an undergraduate research assistant at the Optics Materials Lab (OML), where he is continuing his work as a graduate research assistant as of the Summer of 2024.
He is co-authored two papers, “Solution-based Sb2Se3 thin films for microphotonis” and “Progress on Solution-Derived Ge-Sb-Se-Te Chalcogenide Films as a Candidate for High Figure-of-Merit Optical Phase Change Materials” (In Press). He joined ACerS in 2024 and his interests in research pertain to improving the methodology of solution processing thin film phase change materials, of which he has presented some of his work at the ACerS Optical Materials Division annual meeting this last May.
Julianne Chen
Julianne Chen is a Schreyer Honors College senior studying materials science and engineering. She originally hailed from Los Angeles, California but is now at The Pennsylvania State University working under Dr. John Mauro in the PSU Glass Group.
Additionally, she is an undergraduate researcher at the Applied Research Laboratory working under Dr. Hunter Rauche on the additive manufacturing of certain metals for the US Navy. She has previously worked with Dr. Darryl Schlom from Cornell University and coauthored a pending technical paper on the growing and doping of alpha gallium oxide through MBE. She mainly focuses on glass and thin-film research, and has presented posters at conferences such as MS&T and the American Chemical Society MARM Conference. She has written for the ACerS May Bulletin and has been consistently featured on Penn State News for her research on LionGlass. In her undergraduate career, she has also been president of many clubs, including the Artificial Intelligence Club and the Student Library Advocacy Club. She is a large advocate of undergraduate research and is currently an Penn State undergraduate research ambassador, encouraging underclassmen to get involved with research.
Currently, she is hoping to graduate and finish her honors thesis on LionGlass. She is applying for graduate schools to work on sustainable and efficient solid-state batteries. Chen hopes to create feasible solid-state electrolytes with metal organic frameworks and different growth techniques such as MBE or MOF-CVD. In the future, she hopes to become a tenured professor and researcher.
Kyungmin Yu
Kyungmin Yu is an undergraduate student in Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea. He is double majoring in materials science and engineering and physics. He is appointed to graduate in February 2026 and will join the army as a Research Officer for National Defense (ROND). ROND is a researcher of the Agency for Defense Development (ADD) in South Korea, with a rank of lieutenant. After the military service, he is planning to continue his studies in a graduate school abroad. Also, he is receiving full tuition and an additional grant from the Korean government as a presidential scholarship.
He started his internship in the High-Temperature Thermochemistry laboratory (HTTC lab.) in January 2023. (Principal Investigator: Prof. In-Ho Jung) In the internship, he studied the theoretical background of thermodynamics. Then, he conducted the quenching experiment for In2O3 – SnO2 – ZnO ternary system. Each component of this ternary system is widely applied in Transparent Conducting Oxides (TCOs), however, their phase assemblage in high temperatures (above 1300 ℃) has not been investigated. Yu’s research found that a new ternary phase exists above 1310 ℃, which can be a new candidate for TCOs.
He is interested in computational and theoretical approaches to predict the properties of materials. In the internship in HTTC, he studied not only experimental techniques but also thermodynamic modeling, which computationally predicts the thermodynamic properties of materials based on the Gibbs free energy. Now he is in the Computational Quantum Many-body Theory laboratory (CQM lab.) to study the more theoretical approach in computational materials science. His main aim is to be a foremost physicist on the subject which he is interested in.
William Fettkether
Will Fettkether is a recent graduate student at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. He received in Bachelor of Science in Materials Engineering from Iowa State University in the spring of 2024. During his time at Iowa State University, Will performed research in Dr. Steve W. Martin’s Glass and Energy Materials Group developing new glassy solid-state electrolytes for lithium-ion batteries. Will’s interests in research include compositional development and characterization of novel solid electrolytes in battery systems.