Alumni Career Paths

Once a perennial student, now a teacher, Julianne Chung has found her niche as an assistant professor in the mathematics department at Virginia Tech.

“I’m constantly searching for new and different ways to motivate students and capture their curiosity,” says Chung, a DOE CSGF recipient from 2006 to 2009. “The biggest joy of my job is working with students, whether in the classroom or on a research project, and helping them realize the importance and impact of computational science."

Chung’s lessons often draw on her computational science training and experience programming on Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory supercomputers on her practicum. The fellowship’s interdisciplinary nature also has helped her work with engineers and medical technicians in her research, and she’ll soon team-teach courses with faculty from other departments for Virginia Tech’s new Computational Modeling and Data Analytics initiative.

Chung keeps the latest DOE CSGF recruitment poster on her office door and always is available to answer questions about the program.

“I warn them that it’s very competitive, but I strongly encourage them to apply,” she says. Even if they don’t succeed, “they should still pursue research in computational science, try to get a research experience at a national lab, and most importantly, obtain an interdisciplinary education.”