Student receives scholarship

Nicholas De Leon, a junior majoring in metallurgical engineering, was awarded the J. Keith Brimacombe Presidential Scholarship by The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society.

Ramana Reddy, professor and department head of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering said the scholarship is important because it is an international competition.

"This is a scholarship given once a year by The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, given to one exceptional student," he said. "It is an international competition and one student in the whole world receives this."

The scholarship award was $5,000 cash and $1,000 to spend on traveling to the conference to accept the scholarship money. It is the largest scholarship the society awards to an undergraduate, and it is handed out to one student each year.

De Leon said he participated in a poster contest for the society last year in Orlando, Fla. When he won, it served as motivation for him to apply for the presidential scholarship.

"I really got interested while I was there at the conference, and by winning that competition I thought to myself 'Why not try to win this scholarship?'" he said. "A lot of my professors are involved with this society and helped me out greatly by writing recommendations."

To apply for this scholarship, certain requirements had to be met, Ramana said.

"A student has to submit the form based on a specific criteria that needs to be met, and things such as outside leadership positions, GPA and why they want to receive the scholarship are some aspects of it," Ramana said.

De Leon said that this scholarship money was a reward and an incentive to go on with his research and do research at their other conferences.

This year De Leon will travel to New Orleans to accept his scholarship money and attend a conference with other students across the nation involved with the society.

This is not the first big scholarship De Leon has been awarded. He is a National Hispanic Scholar and Presidential Scholar at the University. Despite this, De Leon said winning this scholarship came as a surprise to him.

"It turns out that most of my professors knew before I did and they were pretty excited for me," he said. "I received an email to all winners of different things they offered and I saw my name on the top of the list and was so excited."