PhD student Lance Parson has been selected to receive the 2023 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship Award. This highly prestigious award, which provides full tuition and fees coverage plus additional stipends for up to three years, was established in 1989 by direction of congress as an approach to increasing the number U.S. citizens receiving doctoral degrees in science and engineering disciplines of military importance.

Lance received his BSCE in 2019 at Oregon State University after serving in the U.S. Army. He returned to Oregon State in the fall of 2020 to begin his master’s program in civil engineering, researching the effects of soil-structure interaction on the seismic performance of square reinforced concrete columns retrofitted with titanium alloy bars. Upon completing his MSCE in the spring of 2022, Lance applied for the PhD program at the Lyles School of Civil Engineering, where he now works on the design of connections for steel-plate composite (SC) structure for blast loading.