Fargo, N.D. – Four NDSU students are recipients of the Doctoral Dissertation Award program through North Dakota Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research. The recipients will receive stipend support ranging from 10 to 24 months and totaling $104,155. Seventeen students competed for the awards.  North Dakota EPSCoR’s Doctoral Dissertation Award program is designed to increase the completion rate of doctoral students enrolled in the science, engineering and mathematics disciplines at North Dakota’s two research-intensive universities; and to increase the number of competitive proposals submitted to the National Science Foundation.

Student recipients, their departments and advisers are: 
• Kumarasamy Elango, chemistry and biochemistry, Sivaguru Jayaraman
• Buddhadev Layek, pharmaceutical science, Jagdish Singh
• Zhongjing Li, chemistry and biochemistry, Wenfang Sun
• Neha Singh, pharmaceutical science, Chengwen Sun

North Dakota EPSCoR is a federally and state funded program designed to help university researchers compete more effectively for federal, regional and private research grants in the sciences, engineering and mathematics.