Cecilia Fasano was recently selected as the recipient of a Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) award.
The FINESST award is a competitively selected NASA grant funding graduate students doing research relevant to the interests of the NASA Science Mission Directorate. Cecilia's work, the fabrication and performance assessment of UV gratings, is of interest to the Astrophysics Division. The award supports her stipend, travel, and tuition during the three-year period of performance (2021 - 2024). The resulting work will form the basis of her Ph. D. thesis.
The photo above is an early result of her work, showing a 1 micron pitch diffraction grating made using the electron-beam lithography tool on-campus, the Raith Voyager.
Congratulations, Cecilia!
Additional media coverage:
University of Iowa -- CLAS News