Graduate Student Receives Awards at National Laboratory

by Jordan Orris

Graduate student Nick Scott obtained a prestigious summer internship at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) this past summer.  He performed exceptionally well at LLNL as a summer intern. In the Poster session competition for all summer interns at LLNL, Nick received an Outstanding Achievement Award and a Silver Award of Achievement. His poster was titled “An Impact Analysis of Uranium and Tantalum Under High Strain Rates to Validate Flow Strength Models.”

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is located in Livermore, California. It is an official Federally Funded Research and Development Center primarily funded by the Department of Energy. Its principal responsibility is ensuring the safety, security and reliability of the nation’s nuclear weapons through the application of advanced science, engineering and technology.

Nick shared that he credits a UM connection for helping him obtain his internship. “A current post-doc there, Matt Nelms, worked closely with me here at UM while he was getting his PhD.” Nick’s research area is quite unique, and encompasses a breadth of technologies: the specific area is computational modeling of high strain rate impact using Taylor cylinder experiments for heavy metals.

The chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Nick’s professor, Dr. A.M. Rajendran shared, “Nick is an ideal candidate for performing exceptional research. He is a Master of Science (MS) student in Mechanical Engineering, but with a perfect inquisitive mind usually found in an advanced PhD level student. I am not surprised to see him winning the LLNL’s prestigious summer intern awards. Before he left UM to LLNL in May 2019 to perform his summer internship, I told him that all his fellow interns would be from the Ivy League schools! In my opinion, Nick proved that he is from an R1 research intense University of Mississippi! Nick has made us all proud through these prestigious National Laboratory Summer Intern Awards.”

Nick’s research colleagues have similar praises to share about him. Susan Wang, a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering said, “Nick is such a diligent worker, and it is no surprise that his research into the numerical simulation of shock and impact has won these prestigious awards. His enthusiasm is contagious, and I have no doubt that he will continue to succeed in his future endeavors.”

When asked how it felt to be recognized for his poster through his awards, Nick responded that it felt “exceptional, especially given the fact that my competition was from top engineering schools, and despite that fact, I still won first place in the division and second in the entire engineering directorate.”

We recognize and congratulate Nick Scott for his stellar achievements at a top research facility.