Alumni

Engineering Student Wins National Defense Fellowship

Valparaiso University engineering student Josh Wood of Reynolds, Ill., has won a graduate fellowship from the Department of Defense to pursue research on national defense.

Wood is one of 200 undergraduate students in the country selected from more than 3,400 to receive a 2008 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship.

The fellowship will cover Wood’s tuition and required fees, along with a yearly stipend starting at $30,500, for the next three years as he pursues an advanced degree.

The computer engineering major plans to continue his research in nanotechnology.

“Certainly my work could be used in national defense applications, though my interest up to now has predominantly focused on the numerous private sector applications involving nanotechnology,” Wood said.

Earlier this year, Wood became the third Valpo engineering student in four years to be named to the All-USA College Academic Team, selected by USA Today to recognize the nation’s most outstanding undergraduate students.

This past winter, Wood was one of only a handful of undergraduate students invited to two professional conferences—the International Semiconductor Device Research Symposium and the Applied Power Electronics Conference—to present research that could lead to improvements in the performance of microprocessors, which provide the brainpower for computers and an increasing array of consumer electronic devices such as iPods.

Wood also studies in Valpo’s interdisciplinary honors college (Christ College) and has presented his research at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research, the largest and most prestigious undergraduate research conference in the United States.