The Ohio Rubber Group has selected two students at The University of Akron to receive the ORG Graduate Student Award for 2010.  PhD Candidates Amy Blake (Polymer Engineering) and Cheng Ching "Kurt" Chiang (Polymer Science) each received an award of $3000 at a luncheon held at the Goodyear Polymer Center on the campus of The University of Akron on January 15th, 2010.  Both recipients plan on graduating in the Spring of 2011, and will be presenting key aspects of their research at the Fall 2010 meeting of the Ohio Rubber Group on September 14.  They were also presented with gratis student memberships to the ORG.  (ORG membership is free to any interested student.)

The ORG Graduate Student Award was created to promote the academic efforts of graduate students in the College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering.  Each year with the assistance of the Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering Departments, candidate students submit applications along with transcripts and letters of recommendation to the ORG Scholarship Committee.  This information is then used to select a group of students for face-to-face interviews with the Committee.  The very high caliber of the candidates makes the final selection very difficult, but the democratic process of voting is used to make the determinations.