Anthony Lucio and Courtney Stanford, graduate students in the University of Iowa Department of Chemistry, were recently awarded fellowships by the National Science Foundation East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes for U.S. Graduate Students (EAPSI). The EAPSI competition provides opportunities for doctoral candidates to spend a summer working with host researchers in East Asia and the Pacific.

Stanford will work as a guest researcher with professor Hsin-Kai Wu at National Taiwan Normal University-Graduate Institute of Science Education. The title of Stafford's proposal is “Investigating Cultural and Instructor Influences on Student Argumentation and Conceptual Understanding in Chemistry Classrooms."

Lucio will work as a guest researcher in the laboratory of professor Alan Bond at Monash University, Australia. The title of Lucio’s proposal is “Large Amplitude Fourier Transform Alternating Current Voltammetry to Study Electrical Double Layer Transition from Aqueous to Ionic Liquid Phases”.

Lucio has also been awarded a T. Anne Cleary International Dissertation Research Fellowship, named in honor of Professor T. Anne Cleary, former UI associate vice president for academic affairs and professor in the College of Education. These two awards will support Lucio's proposed research for 12 weeks.

EAPSI fellowship recipients are distinguished by their prior achievements in research and academics, as well as the quality of their research proposals. The awards reflect their potential to make significant contributions to their research fields and to spearhead new directions in research via international collaboration.