Hitachi High Technologies committed $125,000 to support graduate students
December 7, 2018
Hitachi High Technologies originally established the Electron Microscopy Fellowship in 2014 and has recently committed to the continuation of the fellowship for five years. The purpose of this gift is to provide an annual fellowship for one graduate student enrolled in the College of Science or the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences. The 2018-2019 recipient, Kathryn Peruski focuses her studies on environmental, nuclear-site remediation research. Using microscopes available at Clemson’s Electron Microscopy Facility, Peruski has captured the miniscule fragmenting of neptunium, a radioactive byproduct of nuclear power generation that is stored underground. Through her research, Peruski hopes to better understand what causes neptunium to break so engineers can design effective storage methods for nuclear waste.
The Electron Microscope Facility has several state-of-the-art high resolution transmission electron microscopes (TEM), scanning electron microscopes (SEM) and a combined Focused Ion Beam (FIB)/SEM microscope. Housed at the Advanced Materials Research Laboratory in Anderson, the facility has steadily grown with Hitachi’s support. The multi-user facility attracts clients from the aerospace, automotive, pharmaceutical, textile, electronics, environmental and medical industries.
The ongoing partnership between Hitachi and Clemson University provides funding as well as innovative technology to the Microscopy Lab where Hitachi houses multiple cutting-edge microscopes used to promote research.