Achievement

The last year has seen an increased emphasis on having IGERT graduate students participate in proposal preparation and submission. A recent example serves to illustrate the approach. IGERT Fellow Justin Gregory took the lead in preparing a NSF proposal describing a new technique to extract the the two-photon absorption coefficient in semiconductors. The approach was significant. Gregory and other grad students within the Tolk group were asked for suggestions. The best were massaged and reformulated, but the basic idea emerged from the student suggestion. Using frequent meetings, reference to other proposals, literature searches and state of the art computer simulations the feasibility of the approach was demonstrated. The final proposal demanded writing skills, communication skills involving the three faculty members, and the art of representing exciting forefront science. Such experiences will be of considerable value in searches for positions after PhD training.