University of Arkansas student earns Prestigious NASA Fellowship

The Prestigious NASA Fellowship grant will take him to the end of his PhD and will allow him to focus only on his research part. Troy Williams who is a Planetary Sciences Graduate Student at the University of Arkansas said he enjoys teaching but it takes up a lot of time.

Study in US: University of Arkansas student has bagged Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science Technology, or FINESST, fellowship. The duration of the fellowship is two years, it is worth $100,000 and it will provide a faculty mentor serving as principal investigator and also research grants.

Vincent Chevrier, Williams' faculty adviser and an associate professor at the Center for Space and Planetary Sciences said "This project will open the door to a new type of cryogenic chemistry and help us understand better the environment and habitability of the surface of Titan."

"I'm really interested in the prebiotic chemistry that can occur on Titan and other outer solar system worlds, as well as the prebiotic chemistry that might have been occurring before life arose on Earth because the way Titan is right now might have been similar to how Earth was at one point, with a very high nitrogen content in the atmosphere, with a little bit of methane and some other hydrocarbons. So, it's almost like looking back to what our own planet might have looked like at some point, too, which is really interesting," said Williams.

About Troy Williams

He is a PhD student with the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences and is in his fourth year. The research he is working on is focused on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. There are stable liquids found on Titan's surface which form seas and lakes and are made of ethane and methane rather than water. Williams in his research will study the surface chemistry of Titan and will find out how two or more compounds form co-crystals - the new crystal structures.

This grant will provide many opportunities to Williams, he will get to attend national and international conferences and provide for the purchase of lab supplies. He aims to join a NASA institute or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute for Technology or a national lab like the Goddard Space Flight Center and expects to produce papers resulting from the grant which will be chapters in his dissertation.

Williams added, "They do a lot of experimental research that I'm interested in continuing. I think Titan is a really interesting place to explore, and I want to keep doing that, especially with the Dragonfly mission that's going to Titan - it's a little rotorcraft that's going to hop around different sites on Titan and investigate that moon. With that launch approaching, it's a good time to really get involved in this sort of work."

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