EMS faculty members earn National Academies US-African Frontiers Fellowships

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Two faculty members in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences have been awarded the prestigious U.S.-Africa Frontiers Fellowships by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) to build high-impact research collaboration and strengthen capacity building with African scientists. In addition, three African scientists will be visiting Penn State.

Nelson Dzade, assistant professor of energy and mineral engineering and chair of the undergraduate energy engineering program, and Nutifafa Doumon, assistant professor and Virginia S. & Philip L. Walker Jr. Faculty Fellow in Materials Science and Engineering, were selected from Penn State. Linda Nyamen at the University of Yaoundé I, Cameroon, will visit Dzade’s Materials and Mineral Theory Group in the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering at Penn State. Isoken Henrietta Igbinosa, from the University of Benin, Nigeria, will be visiting the Doumon Lab in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

Marian Dorcas Quain, the deputy director-general (DDG) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Ghana, will use a Frontiers Fellowship to become a visiting scholar in the Huck Catalysis program at Penn State’s Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences.

The goal of the fellowship is to increase and strengthen science and technology cooperation and capacity between researchers and institutions in the United States and the member countries of the African Union.

The program will allow participants to develop new research ideas, acquire specific technical skills and facilitate further scientific collaboration with their counterparts. It is also aimed at helping participants to enhance science capacity in their home countries by conducting research at a partner institution for up to four weeks, laying the foundation for potential long-term collaboration and knowledge transfer.

“It is an incredible honor for me to be awarded the fellowships to host Nyamen here at Penn State and to visit Lahoucine Atourki at Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco,” Dzade said. “The new partnerships were forged from our recent participation in the third U.S.-Africa Frontiers Symposium. The symposium brought together outstanding young scientists, engineers and medical professionals from the United States and African Union member countries to discuss exciting advances and opportunities in their fields.”

The fellowship will enable Dzade to visit Atourki to conduct a hands-on training workshop for graduate students and faculty. The focus will be atomic-scale materials modeling using both theoretical and machine learning approaches. During the visit, Dzade will also deliver a seminar on his current research and engage in discussion with researchers working on energy conversion and storage materials. Nyamen’s visit will facilitate engagement in a joint project titled “advancing novel energy materials through synergistic computational-experimental approach,” leveraging the expertise of both labs. 

Doumon is working with Igbinosa, a distinguished scholar in the Department of Environmental Management and Toxicology to research sustainable smart water monitoring systems.

“To be selected as a NASEM Fellow comes with a special feeling of humility and honor,” Doumon said. “This fellowship will allow Dr. Igbinosa and I to conduct research that’s mutually beneficial. We’ll investigate the integration of Internet of Things (IoT) devices with sensors for automated, real-time water quality assessment in different environmental conditions.”

Both Dzade and Doumon are members of the Alliance for Earth Sciences, Engineering, and Development in Africa, a multidisciplinary research hub focusing on fostering collaborations between African institutions and Penn State to provide bold innovative solutions in education and research and address development issues in Africa.

EMS sponsored a workshop at the symposium that was also attended by Lee Kump, the John Leone Dean in EMS and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. The workshop helped spark the fellowships.

“There is exciting, untapped potential in African-US scientific collaborations” Kump said. “The seeds being sown by this program will lead to scientific breakthroughs, expanded collaborations and new research capacity in both countries.”