Montana State engineering student wins prestigious NSF fellowship

BOZEMAN — A Montana State University undergraduate has won a prestigious fellowship from the National Science Foundation that will support her ongoing research at MSU focused on harnessing optical technology for monitoring water quality and other environmental applications.

Shannon Hamp, a senior who has worked for four years in the lab of Joseph Shaw, was awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship earlier this month. The sought-after fellowship provides funding for three years with a $34,000 annual living stipend plus $12,000 per year to cover tuition and fees. Hamp will use the funding to continue to her research with Shaw while pursuing a graduate degree in optics and photonics.

"I'm really excited to be able to stay at MSU and continue to work with Joe," said Hamp, an electrical engineering major from Broomfield, Colorado, and one of two MSU undergraduates awarded Goldwater scholarships last year.

Shaw, distinguished professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in MSU’s Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering, said he was delighted to learn Hamp had received the fellowship. “Nothing makes me happier than to work with students who are as excited and capable and willing to go out and learn new things as she is.”

Hamp’s parents, Charlie and Heidi, met while students at MSU, and Hamp said she has always wanted to study electrical engineering at MSU like her father did. But research wasn’t on her radar until she learned about Shaw’s work focused on lasers and other optics technology. “I was really lucky to be introduced to him as a freshman,” she said. “As soon as heard of what he was doing, I thought, ‘I want to do that.’”

Initially, Hamp worked on a project to measure how light passes through common 3D printing materials, which is valuable information for researchers wanting to 3D-print parts for optics experiments, she explained. That led to her being the lead author on a scientific paper she published with Shaw.

“It’s very unusual for an undergrad to be the lead author on a paper,” said Shaw, who directs MSU’s Optical Technology Center, or OpTeC. “She was definitely the youngest person to have done that in my lab.”

That experience helped launch Hamp into contributing to Shaw’s work with the Consortium for Research on Environmental Water Systems, or CREWS, a $20 million research and education project on water quality in Montana. Hamp has spent the past couple years in Shaw’s lab using specialized cameras that are mounted to drones and can fly over rivers. The cameras, called hyperspectral imagers, measure light in wavelengths beyond what’s visible to the human eye, and certain optical signatures can be used to detect algae associated with excess nitrogen and phosphorus in the water. Besides using her growing optics knowledge, the work pushed Hamp to learn a lot about ecology, she said.

“Shannon has flourished in that cross-disciplinary environment,” said Shaw, noting that she recently won an award for an oral presentation she gave at a water science conference where “it’s not usually electrical engineers who are the star speakers.”

In addition to working in Shaw’s lab, Hamp has also been active with MSU’s Bridger Solar Team, a student organization working to design and build a solar-powered car to compete in a national three-day track race. She is currently president of the student organization.

Going forward, Hamp’s research will take another turn as she partners with Shaw on a new project aimed at helping NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey fine-tune satellite measurements of snowpack that could play an important role in modeling water runoff and the Earth’s changing climate. The project is led by Eric Sproles, assistant professor in MSU's Department of Earth Sciences, and funded by a recently awarded $750,000 NASA Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, or EPSCoR, grant. Hamp and others on Shaw’s team will use the drone-mounted hyperspectral imagers to gather data that could help calibrate how satellites measure light reflecting on snow, which is affected by a variety of variables such as surrounding vegetation, slope angle and dirt on the snow surface.

“It’s a little bit of a new direction for us but it’s really exciting,” said Shaw, whose recent research has included studying the optical phenomena of solar eclipses and using lasers to detect pods of invasive lake trout in Yellowstone Lake to aid removal efforts.

Hamp said part of what motivates her for the upcoming project is that, like the water quality research, it connects with larger goals of understanding the environment. She would love to continue to find ways to align her interest and experience in optics with environmental protection, she said. She’s excited that staying at MSU puts her in close contact with Bozeman’s flourishing optics and photonics industry where many MSU graduates find jobs, she added. Her immediate goal is to complete her master’s degree and then possibly continue with a doctorate in electrical engineering at MSU with a focus on optics.

“Shannon has had a lot of success as an undergrad, and I see that continuing into grad school,” Shaw said.