James Obute, who recently graduated with a chemical engineering degree from the University of Kentucky, is the 2020 recipient of the $10,000 Tau Beta Pi Graduate Fellowship. The fellowship will support Obute’s graduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin during the 2020-2021 academic year.
This past year, Obute served as president of the Kentucky Alpha Chapter of Tau Beta Pi at UK. He was also a past president of the UK Energy Club, which he helped resurrect.
Among Obute’s academic honors, he received the Chemical Engineering Outstanding Junior award and the Joseph P. Kennedy Award, which is annually given to four University of Kentucky students who have demonstrated outstanding philanthropy and academic scholarship.
Obute won third place at the AICHE National Student Conference poster competition for his work on redox flow battery compression study. He also was a recipient of the Eon Scholarship awarded to UK juniors and seniors who are in the Power and Energy Institute of Kentucky (PEIK) program.
The Tau Beta Pi Fellowship Program was created for the advancement of engineering education and the profession. It is one of the oldest graduate fellowships still in existence dating back to 1928. It is awarded to a small select group of students and can be used to help cover a year of graduate study at the institutions of the fellow’s choice. Tau Beta Pi fellows are free to do graduate work in any field which will enable them to contribute to the engineering profession.