Seeding US Africa Cooperation in STEM: A Summer Workshop at Gondar University in Ethiopia

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The summer workshop on the US Africa Cooperation in STEM is organized by US based academicians and graduate students in partnership with the Ethiopian Physical Society in North America, The University of Akron, Stanford University, and University of Gondar and will take place at the University of Gondar in Ethiopia from June 24?July 1, 2019. It seeks to bring together talented undergraduate and graduate students from major universities across Ethiopia to identify the unique challenges they face as students with limited resources and to help them prepare for highly competitive graduate schools in the US where their potential will be fully developed and have the opportunity to be leading scientists and engineers. The summer workshop will consist of lectures, career panels, and student presentations. The lectures will include current trends in a variety of STEM fields and will mainly focus on soft condensed matter physics. Other STEM fields, such as chemistry, chemical engineering, high energy physics, and cosmology will be also covered in the lectures. This initiative targets the unique need of inspiring African students and also offers US academicians and graduate students a platform to advance their global perspective and expose them to the needs they can address with their research. Informal discussions between the US professors and local professors and researchers will open the opportunity for collaboration going as far as co-advising graduate students. The partial travel support from NSF will mainly be used for supporting US graduate students helping with the organization and execution of the workshop.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.