Saint Michael's student Thomas Dickerson of Bristol, Vt., lands fellowship at Princeton Plasma Lab

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Thomas Dickerson of Bristol, Vt., lands prestigious grant a Princeton Plasma Physics Lab

COLCHESTER, VT (03/27/2012)(readMedia)-- Saint Michael's College student Thomas Dickerson, a junior computer science major from Bristol, Vt., has landed a prestigious grant to do summer research as a 2012 National Undergraduate Fellow at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

Dickerson, the son of Deborah and Matthew Dickerson of Bristol, graduated from Mount Abraham Union High School before coming to Saint Michael's.

"I'm very much looking forward to spending the summer at Princeton, and getting an opportunity to pursue two of my favorite disciplines for the same project, as it looks as if the project I will be working on is a computational model of physical processes," Dickerson said.

Dickerson is a student of Saint Michael's physics professors Dr. Alain Brizard and Dr. John O'Meara, both widely published researchers, Brizard in the field of plasma physics and O'Meara in the field of astrophysics.

The National Undergraduate Fellowship (funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Fusion Energy Sciences) is a prestigious 10-week research internship available for students interested in fusion science and engineering. The Fellowship comes with a stipend of $4800.

Center for Gyrokinetic Particle Simulation

Mr. Dickerson will be involved in computational work with physicists at the Center for Gyrokinetic Particle Simulation of Turbulent Transport in Burning Plasmas, which is funded by the U.S. DoE United States Department of Energy SciDAC (Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing) program.

Learn What Matters at Saint Michael's College, The Edmundite Catholic liberal arts college, www.smcvt.edu . Saint Michael's provides education with a social conscience, producing graduates with the intellectual tools to lead successful, purposeful lives that will contribute to peace and justice in our world. Founded in 1904 by the Society of St. Edmund and headed by President John J. Neuhauser, Saint Michael's College is located three miles from Burlington, Vermont, one of America's top college towns. Identified by the Princeton Review as one of the nations Best 376 Colleges, and included in the 2012 Fiske Guide to Colleges, Saint Michael's has 1,900 undergraduate students and 500 graduate students. Saint Michael's students and professors have received Rhodes, Woodrow Wilson, Pickering, Guggenheim, Fulbright, and other grants. The college is one of the nation's top-100, Best Liberal Arts Colleges as listed in the 2012 U.S. News & World Report rankings.

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