Will Lassman selected for STEM Chateaubriand Fellowship

Ph.D. candidate Will Lassman, co-advised by Jeff Pierce and Jeff Collett, has been chosen for a STEM Chateaubriand Fellowship. The fellowship is a grant offered by the Embassy of France in the United States to outstanding Ph.D. students from U.S. universities who wish to conduct research in France. Chateaubriand fellows are selected through a merit-based competition, through a collaborative process involving evaluators in both countries.

The fellowship will fund Lassman’s nine-month stay at the Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA) in Paris, where he will learn how to use some of the state-of-the-art modeling tools the lab has developed.

“The lab I will be visiting in France has some of the world’s leading experts at measuring and modeling atmospheric ammonia interactions with the Earth’s surface,” Lassman said.

Lassman will apply the lab’s tools to his work with ammonia processes on the Colorado Front Range, and the results will contribute to his dissertation.

Lassman’s upcoming visit and work in France were made possible by French President Emmanuel Macron’s Make our Planet Great Again Initiative, which increased the funding available for projects related to Earth science, climate and sustainability. Lassman’s research on pollution and agriculture sustainability fit the initiative’s goals. He will receive a monthly stipend for nine months, support for his travel to France and health insurance coverage abroad.

Lassman is excited about the opportunity and expects to gain more than data from the trip.

“I want to work internationally after I finish my Ph.D., and this seems like a good way to network with many scientists who do research that is related to what I do.”