Anda di halaman 1dari 2

November 24, 2009

To: DOE Office of Science Graduate Fellowship Program Selection Committee

I am writing this letter to recommend Anthony Marin for a DOE Office of Science
Graduate Fellowship. I have known Anthony since 1992 when his father and I started
working together at the DuPont Company. Since then, I have helped to guide his career
into engineering, including recommending that he attend Virginia Tech and major in
Mechanical Engineering. While pursuing his undergraduate degree, Anthony served five
CO-OP terms at DuPont in the Kevlar® and Nomex® research groups and he did an
absolutely outstanding job. In fact, in the last few assignments he performed, he was
thought of as a degreed engineer. Anthony has a passion to work in research as his career
objective, and I therefore highly recommend him for this Fellowship.

When I retired from full time work at DuPont last year, I was a DuPont Fellow and thus
qualified to express an opinion on Anthony’s potential as a future researcher in the
sciences and engineering. I founded DuPont’s CO-OP program at the Richmond,
Virginia facility and supervised more than fifty CO-OP students while at DuPont. I
mention this because I have learned that practical experience is a great foundation for
research personnel. I think that Anthony can leverage his undergraduate research
experience at DuPont into doing superior original research in graduate school. Very few
of the DOE Office of Science Graduate Fellowship applicants can possibly have this
background, and thus they do not have Anthony’s high potential for success.

Anthony is focused on achieving success in his graduate experience. He understands that


making an original contribution in research is required and I am sure that he will succeed.
I have advised many other students on their graduate programs and have followed their
subsequent careers and I think Anthony has the potential to be among the best I have
advised. I believe this because Anthony has the intensity to follow his goal of working in
research - he could have taken a job after the BS degree, but rather chose to seek an
advanced degree

Anthony has worked well on teams with colleagues from all sorts of diverse and multi-
discipline backgrounds. Very few people get this opportunity and have this experience at
Anthony’s age. His has communicated his work and opinions in meetings and research
reports. He has made presentations to professional engineering management and
business personnel. I think as a result of these experiences he is far ahead of other
students at this stage of their careers.

But doing an advanced degree is ultimately about the quality of one’s research. Can
Anthony make an original and unique contribution to the sciences and engineering
worthy of being granted a DOE Graduate Fellow? All the candidates that you will
consider have the basic credentials, but the differentiating factors are past work and
future potential. Past work is based on experience, which Anthony has – how many
graduate students have worked for a major corporation with an outstanding record of
success over a long period of time? Future potential is based on talent and desire, which
Anthony has – he has demonstrated research capability at DuPont, even for an
undergraduate; and he has that indefinable factor for always being successful at what he
does. I would expect that his research would be noteworthy of new discovery and
broadly recognized for its importance.

Again, I recommend Anthony Marin for the DOE Office of Science Graduate Fellowship.

Larry R. Marshall, Ph.D.


DuPont Fellow, Retired
Chairman and Co-Owner
Complete Circle Solutions, Inc.
11318 Laurel Cove Lane
Chesterfield, VA 23838

Anda mungkin juga menyukai