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 2026 would be eligible to submit to this competition.
Only one nomination will be accepted per institution.
For more details on all GOMD awards you may qualify for, see the attached GOMD Awards Table.
Contact
Submit your nomination to:
Steve Martin and copy Vicki Evans
Award Winners
Rafael Baságlia Rosante
Rafael Baságlia Rosante is a final-year undergraduate in Materials Engineering at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), in São Carlos, São Paulo, Brazil, the city where he was born.
For more than three years he has carried out research at the Vitreous Materials Laboratory (LaMaV), working with Prof. Edgar Dutra Zanotto and Ricardo Felipe Lancelotti. During his degree he also completed a research internship at LMU Munich and Beihang University, alongside Prof. Luiz Pereira, Prof. Donald B. Dingwell, and Prof. Kai-Uwe Hess. Working closely with all of them has been, and continues to be, of great value to Rafael and has shaped him as a researcher.
He has three first-author papers and one as co-author, with a further first-author paper under review and expected to appear soon. His work has been supported by FAPESP, including an international BEPE fellowship.
What excites him most is looking closely at established theories, finding where they break down, understanding why, and working toward new solutions. He plans to start his master’s next year, with a PhD to follow, and hopes one day to become a professor in Brazil.
Beyond research, Rafael loves teaching. His classmates and his brother, also a materials engineering student, tell him he explains ideas clearly, and his girlfriend says she loves the way he talks about his work because he clearly loves what he does. He volunteers in local projects to show others, especially children, that studying can be fun. After time at his university’s junior enterprise, he realized industry is not for him; his real drive is curiosity about the world and the chance to ask and answer hard questions.
Kai Penner
Kai Penner is a Masters student currently studying at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada.
He recently earned his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from the University of Manitoba. As an undergraduate, he held a research position in Dr. Scott Kroeker’s research group, where he focused on glass corrosion and solid-state NMR to understand surface alteration as it applies to storage of vitrified nuclear waste. He recently published his first scientific paper, in multiphase phosphate borosilicate glass.
His current research is in phosphorus’s effects on the formation and durability of the surface alteration layer with respect to nuclear waste storage.
Azriel Carr
Azriel “Azzy” Carr is a nuclear engineering student at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. She recently obtained her Bachelor of Science at Iowa State University in May of 2026 in Materials Engineering. She obtained a minor in Non-Destructive Evaluation and has a degree emphasis in ceramic materials.
Her journey into materials and ceramic science started in June of 2022, where she worked as a high school research assistant within the GNOMES research group at Creighton University under Dr. Joel Destino. There she worked to develop and optimize methods to dope first-row transition metal ions into 3D printable silica glasses. After graduating high school, she then transitioned to Iowa State University in August of 2023 for her bachelors, where she worked under Dr. Steve W. Martin in the GEMS research group on further exploring the thermal, structural, and compositional effects of nitridation in lithium based glassy solid electrolytes as well as exploring more compositions within the space. During the summers of her ungraduate career, Azzy interned at Lockheed Martin Space Systems as a materials engineering intern working on chemical compatibility of spray coat adhesives for conformal coating machines and circuit boards as well as Milwaukee Tool as a materials engineering intern working on development of enhanced battery packs via material exploration.
Throughout her research, she has won several awards, notably placing 2nd and 1st in the ACerS Glass & Optical Materials Division undergraduate research poster competition for her work in GSE’s as well as awards from ACS and ONR for her research in 3D printable glasses. She is currently submitting two first-author papers between both of her research groups and is hoping to have them reviewed and published in the future.
Azzy is now pursuing her doctorate in nuclear engineering from University of Tennessee-Knoxville under Dr. Khalid Hattar, where she will be working on developing methods to enhance the lifespan of steels used in reactor applications. Her long-term goals include becoming a research scientist at a national lab and working on nuclear materials innovations for reactor development and waste containment.
Isaac Schrooten
Isaac Schrooten is a materials engineer whose research focuses on energy storage systems. He is currently a Graduate Research Assistant pursuing a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at Boise State University in Boise, Idaho. He graduated from Iowa State University with a Bachelor of Science in Materials Engineering in May of 2026. During his undergraduate studies, he spent two years in Dr. Steve Martin’s Glass and Energy Materials group, where he developed and characterized mixed oxy-sulfide glassy electrolytes for solid-state lithium batteries.
Isaac’s research contributed to developing glasses that can achieve high ionic conductivities, greater than 1 mS/cm, while remaining processable into thin films with thicknesses below 100 μm. His research demonstrated how precursor chemistry can influence the reaction pathways and resulting structure and properties of glasses. He found that in the Li2.35SiS2.8O0.38 system, using the Li2SiO3 oxide precursor exhibited the highest glass transition temperature and ionic conductivity. This research led to one manuscript currently in preparation and a poster presentation at the Glass and Optical Materials Division Meeting in April of 2026.
Currently, Isaac is developing and characterizing layered transition metal oxide cathodes for sodium-ion batteries at Boise State University. He is motivated by the need for safer, large-scale, and more affordable energy storage technologies and looks forward to continuing to build his expertise as he works toward making meaningful contributions to the field.