Mechanical engineering Ph.D. candidate Justus Nwoke was awarded a competitive fellowship from the National GEM Consortium, giving him the opportunity to intern at Lam Research Corporation this summer.
Nwoke, who was born in Nigeria, has spent most of his adult life in Wichita Falls, Texas. He earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Midwestern State University, Texas.
His graduate research in the Mechatronics, Embedded Systems and Automation (MESA) lab with Professor YangQuan Chen focuses on using smart power electronics control for plasma processing. Jairo Viola, who graduated with a Ph.D. from UC Merced in 2022 and is a senior control system engineer at Lam, is Nwoke’s industrial advisor.
Lam, based in Fremont, supplies wafer-fabrication equipment and related services to the semiconductor industry.
“This fellowship opens up the opportunity to transition to industry,” Nwoke said. “I intend to establish my own industry following the experience garnered from my research, so the GEM fellowship is an opportunity toward fulfilling my career goals.”
According to its website, the GEM Fellowship “offers M.S. and Ph.D. students an outstanding opportunity and access to dozens of the top engineering and science firms and universities in the nation. The GEM Fellowship was designed to focus on promoting opportunities for individuals to enter industry at the graduate level in areas such as research and development, product development and other high-level technical careers."
Previous graduate student recipients from UC Merced include Maria Mendoza (Quantitative and Systems Biology) in 2022 and Jordan Galloway (Chemistry and Chemical Biology) in 2018.
