IACS Doctoral Candidate Sebastian Dick Awarded MolSSI Fellowship

 

Congratulations to IACS graduate student Sebastian Dick who was awarded a Molecular Sciences Software Institute (MolSSI) “Seed” Fellowship. With this Fellowship comes a stipend of up to $20,000 plus tuition, required fees, and travel allowances to cover his visits to MolSSI headquarters and workshops, as well as access to MolSSI computational resources.

Sebastian expressed his gratitude for being able to receive this award. “I want to use this opportunity to thank Lynn Allopenna and Robert Harrison as they were of incredible help when I was applying for this fellowship.”

MolSSI serves as a research and networking community for computational molecular scientists from a number of diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to work with a team of molecular scientists, computer scientists, and applied mathematicians with advanced software engineering expertise. MolSSI provides the funding for the fellowships in order to recognize the efforts of advanced graduate students and postdocs working on the development of software infrastructure, middleware, and frameworks in order to progress the field of computational molecular science. Sebastian’s research proposal centers on improving electronic structure calculations with the help of machine learning. When asked about being awarded this fellowship, Sebastian responded, “It was exciting to imagine that I'd be working together with these talented people and that they would support me with my project.”

 MolSSI Software Fellows receive specialized training in state-of-the-art software design principles and tools, and they engage in outreach and educational efforts organized by MolSSI. Each Fellow is assigned a mentor from the institute who oversees the student’s software development efforts and training. Sebastian explained this is one of the best parts of the experience as “it is great to have someone at MolSSI who solely focuses on the software component and makes sure that I deliver a stable and well documented product. My mentor also encourages me to adopt an ‘agile’ mindset and to set weekly goals for myself, which has greatly increased my productivity.

 “I would definitely encourage anyone who is working on their own software project to give it a shot and apply to this fellowship,” recommends Sebastian. “Anyone who applies should make sure to put a strong emphasis on the software development part of their project and try to elaborate on how they would profit from MolSSI’s support.”

 The MolSSI receives funding from the National Science Foundation, an independent U.S. government agency that supports research and education in science and engineering. See here for more information regarding the fellowship, or you can email info@molssi.org.