Contact: Sammy McDavid
STARKVILLE, Miss.--A Mississippi State doctoral student from Gulfport is among this year's group of National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellows.
Ratessiea L. Lett entered the mechanical engineering doctoral program in the 2008 fall semester after receiving a bachelor's degree, cum laude, from the university's Bagley College of Engineering.
Created by Congress in 1950, the NSF is an independent agency supporting fundamental research and education in all non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its highly competitive and prestigious research Fellows program provides each student a stipend and cost-of-education allowance totaling $40,500 annually for a maximum of three years.
Lett, the daughter of Rosia Lett, is a 2003 Harrison Central High School graduate.
She said the many positive academic experiences with MSU faculty members over her undergraduate years convinced her to pursue the higher degree.
"I was fortunate enough to work with professors Sergio Felicelli and John Berry," she said recently of two senior department members.
"They made me feel like a special student, which is especially important for a female in engineering," she said. "They introduced me to new things, while providing support and encouragement to explore and develop my own interests."
NSF's Graduate Research Fellowship program is the oldest of its kind and has a long history of selecting individuals who ultimately have achieved high levels of success in their academic and professional careers. Past Fellows include Google founder Sergey Brin and numerous Nobel Prize winners, among others.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.