Newswise — Anoklase Ayitou, a graduate student in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at North Dakota State University, Fargo, has been awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. In awarding the fellowship, the National Science Foundation noted that Anoklase’s selection “was based on your outstanding abilities and accomplishments, as well as your potential to contribute to strengthening the vitality of the U.S. science and engineering enterprise.”
The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, which is awarded over a three-year period from 2010 to 2013, carries a total award of $90,000 and $31,500 for total research related expenses over three years. Anoklase completed his second year as a graduate student at NDSU under the guidance of Professor Sivaguru Jayaraman, who is a National Science Foundation CAREER Award recipient, as well as a recipient of the 2010 Swiss Chemical Society’s Grammaticakis-Neumann Prize.
Anoklase also received a UNCF-Merck Science initiative grant earlier this year, and is a Global Center of Excellence fellow at Osaka University, Osaka, Japan. “It is really a privilege to have a student of Anoklase’s caliber in my group,” commented Professor Sivaguru Jayaraman. Anoklase’s doctoral work involves the use of light to synthesize chiral molecules (molecules that are not superimposable on its mirror image). As a graduate student, Anoklase has published scientific papers in four peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Anoklase is the third graduate student at NDSU to receive a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees in the U.S. and abroad.
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