Ph.D. student wins Department of Energy fellowship

David Ozog, a Ph.D. student in the University of Oregon’s computer and information science department, has won a Computational Science Graduate Fellowship from the Department of Energy.

“This is a highly competitive fellowship that recognizes David’s academic accomplishments and future potential in computational science research,” said Allen Davis Malony, Ozog’s advisor.

Ozog is the only Oregon recipient in the new class of 10 fellows, all with backgrounds in scientific or engineering disciplines, computer science or applied mathematics.

The award provides up to four years of support to students pursuing doctoral degrees on the use of high-performance computing technology to solve complex problems in science and engineering. This year’s recipients include students from Stanford, Harvard, MIT and UC-Berkeley.

Ozog will receive a yearly stipend of $36,000, payment of all tuition and fees and an annual academic allowance to support professional development, purchasing of books/supplies and travel to conferences.

He will also participate in the fellowship's annual program review in Washington, D.C., and will be afforded the opportunity to complete a three-month practicum at one of 20 department laboratory sites, allowing him to use some of the nation's largest and most sophisticated computational and experimental facilities for his research.

Ozog received a master’s degree in chemistry from the UO in 2009 and is currently working toward a Ph.D. in computer science. He studies high-performance computing and scientific applications for computational chemistry.

“Many of the world’s most pertinent energy problems are related to developing our fundamental understanding of how chemical systems work, which can require a huge number of concurrent calculations,” Ozog said. “One primary reason I think I received this fellowship is because of the interdisciplinary training I’ve received at UO in both the computer science and physical chemistry graduate programs.”

Launched in 1991 to address the shortage of computational scientists in the United States, the Department of Energy’s Computational Science Graduate Fellowship is jointly funded by the Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Defense Programs.

- from the UO Office of Research, Innovation and Graduate Education