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Justin Tran
Photo by Sonia Fernandez |
When Justin Tran leaves the University of California Santa Barbara in June, he’ll have a bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and a job waiting for him in South Mississippi. He’ll take a position at the Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO) at NASA’s Stennis Space Center, thanks to the U.S. Department of Defense’s Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship for Service program. Aimed at both undergraduate and graduate students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, SMART provides a full scholarship: tuition and education-related expenses, an annual stipend, internship support payments and allowances for health insurance and supplies. In return, students commit to work for one of the DoD’s sponsoring facilities for the same amount of time they received the scholarship - in Tran's case, three years. He interned for two summers at NAVOCEANO, where he completed operational oceanographic intelligence projects. When he begins his full-time job at NAVOCEANO, he'll build on previous projects and learn to work on the oceanographic sensors used for littoral battlespace sensing autonomous underwater vehicles. (Source:
UCSB, 11/02/17)
