Matthew Yates, a graduate student in environmental engineering, has been selected to receive a 2010 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
Yates will receive $30,000 over three years to fund his education.
His area of research is microbial fuel cells, which are systems that use bacteria to break down substrates and produce electricity from them. More specifically, he focuses on optimizing the system by looking at the bacterial community to figure out which bacteria give the highest power production and to discover new bacteria that are able to produce power.
His adviser is Bruce Logan, Kappe professor of environmental engineering.