UMR graduate student Steven Jung is spending Independence Day with a group of Nobel Prize winners. Jung was selected to participate in the 2007 Meeting of Nobel Laureates and Students in Lindau, Germany.

About 500 students from around the world have been invited to the meeting, which will be held July 1-6. Each year, Nobel Laureates in chemistry, physics, physiology and medicine convene in Lindau to give lectures and meet informally with students and young researchers.

The Laureates lecture on topics of their choice in the mornings and have informal discussions with small groups of students during the afternoons and evenings.

Jung, a graduate student in ceramic engineering, was nominated by the Savannah River National Lab in Aiken, S.C. He worked at the lab last summer as an intern. This summer he’s beginning work on his Ph.D. at UMR.

At UMR, Jung is conducting research with Delbert Day, Curators’ Professor emeritus of ceramic engineering.

Day is internationally known for finding new applications for glass. Among other inventions, he developed tiny radioactive glass beads called Theraspheres that can be injected directly into cancerous areas of the body.
Jung is working with glass materials to build medical scaffolding for use in the regeneration of bone tissue. He is also interested in using glass materials as a method to help contain nuclear waste.

The U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation are among the organizations that help pay for students to attend the annual event.