Nelson E. Lourenco has been honored with the 2015 IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society (NPSS) Graduate Scholarship Award. The IEEE NPSS is the premier professional association for the advancement of the nuclear and plasma sciences, sponsoring seven technical conferences and three peer-reviewed journals.

Lourenco is a Ph.D. student in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where he is advised by John D. Cressler, Schlumberger Chair Professor in Electronics.

Lourenco received this award for his research contributions on radiation effects in silicon-based heterojunction integrated circuit platforms. His Ph.D. thesis research is focused on investigating the transient phenomena within silicon-germanium (SiGe) technologies using advanced laser techniques, aiding this understanding by using 3-D modeling techniques, and leveraging this research for the development of radiation-hardened systems intended for orbital and space environments.

This research is supported by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Naval Research Laboratory, CFD Research Corporation, and NASA.