Honors roll in for Baylor’s first mechanical engineering Ph.D. student

Baylor alumna and doctoral candidate Sarah Stair’s interest in science, math and engineering began innocently enough, as she built Lego towers and entered egg drop contests as a child. These days, her work is a little more advanced — and it’s bringing quite a bit of attention to both her and Baylor.

Stair, BS ’12, MS ’14, was the first student ever accepted into Baylor’s new Ph.D. program in Mechanical Engineering. This summer, she spent two months at Sandia National Laboratories — a major U.S. Department of Energy research and development center — as part of a highly sought-after internship. And if all that weren’t enough, last month she was awarded an incredibly competitive NSF Graduate Fellowship grant, given to outstanding graduate students in science, technology, engineering and math. Previous NSF fellowship recipients include a number of Nobel Prize winners, not to mention the U.S. Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, and Google founder Sergey Brin.

Stair’s current focus, both at Sandia and at Baylor, is the development of non-destructive testing techniques for carbon fiber carbon materials, specifically focused on ultrasound research for the aerospace and transportation industries.

Watch Stair describe her work:

Much of Stair’s research takes place just north of campus, in the Baylor Research and Innovation Collaborative (BRIC). Her NSF fellowship award will support her for three years, with a $32,000 annual stipend, $12,000 education allowance and access to the XSEDE Supercomputer to extend the capabilities of her research.

Sic ’em, Sarah!