Empowering Tomorrow's Energy Leaders: 4 Indian-Origin Awardees of Chevron Fellowship
The University of Houston (UH) has announced the Chevron Energy Graduate Fellows Award for outstanding candidates engaged in graduate education and research in energy topics from across campus. Eight students are among the winners of prestigious one-year, $12,000 fellowships, which include mentoring by faculty experts and the opportunity to connect with subject matter experts at Chevron. Four of them are of Indian origin and are named as Aparajita Dutta, Chirag Goyal, Swapnil Sharma and Meghna Idmakanti, a university release said.
Chevron is an American multinational energy corporation primarily engaged in the oil and gas sector. The UH-Chevron Energy Graduate Fellows are awarded for their research in energy-related fields at the University of Houston (UH).
About the winners of the inaugural fellowship, the university said their work focuses on scalable innovations for transformative impact on the energy industry. Ms. Dutta is a political science PhD candidate whose research focuses on the intersection of energy, climate, and redistributive policies in the US.“The motivation for my research focus came from my past work evaluating the impact of state climate policies on household energy burden across socioeconomic groups,” she said after winning the fellowship.
Another fellow, Chirag Goyal's research proposal stems from his passion for the nuclear fusion reactions that power the Sun and stars and is inspired to replicate the same process on Earth."High-temperature superconductors (HTS) present an opportunity to achieve a carbon-free economy by 2050," Goyal said.By focusing on reducing carbon dioxide emissions, Meghna Idmakanti, a third-year PhD student, hopes to contribute to sustainable energy initiatives.
Swapnil Sharma, a PhD student and graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, co-founded CovRelief to monitor the availability of hospital beds during the COVID-19 pandemic in India.
"We love that Chevron is sponsoring this group of fellows because it's a wonderful way to engage with students working on some of the biggest problems we face in society," quoted Jim Gable, president of Chevron Technology Ventures. says the release. Selected fellows will engage with Chevron subject matter experts on a quarterly basis and participate in academic and research activities organized by UH Energy throughout the year.