ME/FPE Ph.D. Student Raquel Hakes Receives Dual Fellowships

Raquel Hakes, a Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering with a focus in Fire Protection Engineering, is a recipient of one of the Clark School Doctoral Fellowships, established through the generosity of the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation, and a Graduate Research Fellowship awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The one-year Clark School Doctoral fellowship, newly established for the 2017/2018 academic year, provides full graduate research assistantship funding for tuition remission and salary. Hakes’ advisor, FPE associate professor Michael Gollner, nominated Hakes for this fellowship.

Soon after being selected for a Clark School Doctoral Fellow, Hakes was notified by the NSF that she was selected as a 2017 Graduate Research Fellow, which provides a three-year annual stipend and a cost of education allowance.

Both fellowships, totaling four years of funding, are already in effect.

Hakes’ research will focus on the behavior and spread of wildland fires. In her FPE M.S. research, she worked on a NIST-funded project understanding how firebrands – small burning embers discharged from wildfires – ignite homes. Hakes plans to continue in this area, expanding her study to understand the fundamental ways in which wildfire flames move, causing fires to spread. One of these areas may include investigating fluid instabilities that affect the attachment of flames on slopes, increasing the spread of fires uphill. For some of this research, she and Dr. Gollner plan to collaborate with Professors Forman Williams and Antonio Sanchez in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, San Diego.

FPE Student Receives NSF Graduate Research Fellowship – UMD FPE, May 2017

Published October 2, 2017