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Congratulations to Ryan Dudek, Mike Petrecca and Thomas Rudibaugh!

Towards the end of the spring semester, alum Dr. Ryan Dudek (Ph.D. ’20) and graduate students Mike Petrecca and Thomas Rudibaugh received good news about their recent career accomplishments…

Dr. Ryan Dudek
Dr. Ryan Dudek

Ryan was selected as a member of the 2021-2022 cohort of AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowship recipients. The Fellowships are designed to be transformative career experiences that “provide opportunities to outstanding scientists and engineers to learn first-hand about policymaking while contributing their knowledge and analytical skills to the federal policymaking process.”

Beginning in the fall, Ryan will join the U.S. Department of State as a Science and Energy Policy Adviser in the Office of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency, working on multilateral policies to decarbonize the global industrial sector.

During his years as a graduate student in Prof. Fanxing Li’s research group, Ryan pursued his policy interests in parallel with his Ph.D. studies. He is a Co-Founder of Science Policy Pack at NC State and Southern Hub Co-Chair of the National Science Policy Network.

Ryan explained his passion for working on policy-related aspects of science and technology this way, “Every scientific or technical topic you can think of, from sustainable energy to gene editing, has a policy dimension to it. I didn’t realize at first that you can make a career in this field of science policy, I only learned through talking to people. If anyone is intrigued by the idea of a policy fellowship or about science policy more broadly, I am always happy to chat with them!” (Ryan can be contacted through his Linkedin account)

Mike Petrecca
Mike Petrecca

Mike was one of three winners selected in the student poster competition at the 13th Beyond Lithium-Ion Conference (BLI-XIII), which was hosted virtually by Argonne National Laboratory. The Conference was organized by the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC), which is a consortium of U.S. National Laboratories established to bring together scientists and engineers focused on transformational advances in scalable energy storage beyond the current state-of-the-art lithium-ion batteries.

Mike’s poster was “Applications of Multifunctional Dendritic Polymers in Li-ion Batteries.” His thesis advisors are Profs. Peter Fedkiw and Orlin Velev. An image of the poster is available here.

Thomas Rudibaugh
Thomas Rudibaugh

Thomas won an NIH Ruth Kirschstein F31 Fellowship, sponsored by the National Institute of Drug Abuse. The purpose of the Fellowship is “to enable promising predoctoral students to obtain individualized, mentored research training from outstanding faculty sponsors while conducting dissertation research in scientific health-related fields relevant to the missions of the participating NIH Institutes and Centers.” The training is expected to enhance the individual’s potential to develop into a productive, independent research scientist.

Thomas is a 4th year Ph.D. student working in Dr. Albert Keung’s lab. His research is focused on developing an ex vivo model of the mesolimbic pathway using stem cells to study the effects of dopamine and addictive alkaloid exposure. The Fellowship will provide Thomas with $41,326 per year of financial support for 3 years.

Congratulations to Ryan, Mike and Thomas!