The DGRP Program Prepares Students for Success in School and Beyond
The Distinguished Graduate Research Program (DGRP) is an opportunity for Ph.D. students at Washington State University (WSU) to elevate their studies by collaborating between the classroom at WSU and the lab at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).
DGRP students are able to get the best of both worlds, working with faculty and WSU and scientists at the national laboratory. Students in the program receive financial support provided by their WSU and PNNL advisors, world-renowned collaborators and access to innovative research infrastructure.
Former DGRP student from the 2019 cohort, Monish Mukherjee began his education with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in India, then joined the PhD program at WSU.
“So I guess you know when I was doing my bachelors, I was sort of exploring around different areas in the electrical engineering grand and I stumbled upon power engineering through a couple of course work and it really sort of gathered a little bit of interest in me and sort of how those courses were taught from there,” Mukherjee said.
Mukherjee went on to do an internship with an institute in India, which further developed his interest in power engineering. One of his interests was how the electricity infrastructure works in order to get the bare minimum, which Mukherjee said is electricity in the household.
When starting his PhD program, Mukherjee was working an internship with Avista Utilities and PNNL. He enjoyed the work with PNNL, and his managers were finding ways to keep him working with the lab over the long term.
“So that is when DGRP sort of came into perspective that DGRP can be a pipeline through which I can work with PNNL in long time, not just an internship,” Mukherjee said.
Mukherjee enjoyed his time with DGRP and being able to continue his work with PNNL and national labs in general.
“So that angle of like doing highly scalable research and doing very technology deployment kind of research was something that was really cool working with national labs and then DGRP sort of helped me in a way that I could stay engaged with PNNL,” Mukherjee said.
Dr. Anjan Bose was Mukherjee’s advisor on the WSU side and Jason Fuller and Dr. Trevor Hardy on the PNNL side.
Mukherjee highlighted the capability of being able to use the research he did at WSU and test or implement it at PNNL as one of the interesting things that he did during his time with DGRP.
Charlotte Wertz is a member of the 2023 cohort of DGRP students, her main area of interest is increasing the resiliency of power systems.
“I’ve always liked math, so I knew that, and I’m also very passionate about climate change and renewable energy. I thought electrical engineering seemed like a good choice for those reasons,” Wertz said.
After completing her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, Wertz wasn’t sure if she wanted to go to industry or graduate school, but after mentioning this to Noel Schulz, Schulz suggested looking into DGRP. This would allow Wertz to experience the lab setting while also being in school.
“So I thought that was a great opportunity since I’m really into research and had been working on undergraduate research, so I decided to go for it,” Wertz said.
Wertz had not started with PNNL at the time of writing but has done research at WSU and has some internship experience with the national lab, which led her to get to know her DGRP advisor, Jason Fuller, better.
She has been able to continue the topic of her undergraduate research in her graduate program, which is how hurricanes impact the Texas power grid, and modeling those situations.
When she starts the PNNL portion of the DGRP program, Wertz hopes to have a similar experience to her PNNL internship.
“It would be cool to see more projects related to bulk power systems, climate change, equity, things like that,” Wertz said.
The DGRP program allows students with varied interests across the engineering disciplines to come together and get experience from the academic and real-world perspectives and matches students with advisors with extensive experience in those fields.
Monish Mukherjee, Former DGRP Student
Charlotte Wertz, DGRP Student