Mississippi State University will host a parade through downtown Starkville on Friday, July 2, at 5:30 p.m. to celebrate its 2021 Baseball National Championship, culminating with an event inside Dudy Noble Field at Polk-Dement Stadium. The event is free and open to the public.

The parade route begins at The Little Dooey on University Drive and ends outside the home plate gate at Dudy Noble Field. The parade will include Diamond Dawg student-athletes and coaches, athletics and campus administrators and other invited guests and honorees, a release from MSU says.

MSU will hold a ceremony at Dudy Noble Field at 6:15 p.m. to honor head coach Chris Lemonis and his 2021 National Champion Diamond Dawgs for their victory over Vanderbilt University in the recent three-game championship series at TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Neb. Lemonis, MSU President Mark Keenum, Director of Athletics John Cohen and City of Starkville Mayor Lynn Spruill, will speak at the ceremony.

Gates at Dudy Noble Field will open at 2:30 p.m. Seating will be general admission on a first come first served basis. Fans can bring personal coolers, snacks and beverages inside the stadium. Overflow seating will be available at Humphrey Coliseum, which will open at 4 p.m. Free parking will be available on campus.

For more information, including a map of the parade route, road closures and open parking locations, visit https://hailstate.com/news/2021/6/30/baseball-msu-to-hold-parade-and-celebration-for-national-championship-team.aspx.

MSU Professors Receive Nuclear Energy Research Grants

Zhenhua Tian, an aerospace engineering assistant professor at Mississippi State University, is serving as principal investigator for an $800,000 grant to develop and validate wireless, ultrasonic sensor arrays for real-time monitoring of welded dry canisters that store spent nuclear fuels.

The grant is part of $1.6 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy for two separate projects. Rinat Gabitov, an associate professor in the Department of Geosciences, received the other $800,000 for a project to advance the functionality of engineered barrier systems through the addition of phosphate minerals in backfill mixtures.

Both grants are part of 99 advanced nuclear energy projects that the DOE announced as part of its efforts to bolster the resiliency and use of nuclear energy, a release from MSU says.

Collaborators on Tian’s project include Junbo Zhao, an MSU assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Intelligent Automation, Inc. and Orano Federal Services, LLC. Gabitov’s project is part of a collaboration with researchers at the University of Alabama and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

For more information, visit ae.msstate.edu or geosciences.msstate.edu.

JSU Mississippi Space Grant Consortium Project

Kejun Wen, an assistant professor at Jackson State University in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, recently received a $28,741 grant from the Mississippi Space Grant Consortium to explore the use of bio-inspired construction materials in space.

The focus of the grant is to study the effects of atmospheric pressure and other curing conditions with a new technology called microbial induced calcite precipitation, a release from JSU says. The aim of the research is to produce an environmentally friendly and cost-effective method to bind soil particles to strengthen and improve the ground.

Wen's project will also explore the potential applications of bio-inspired construction materials on other planets, the release says. The technical objective of the proposed research project is to examine the effects of different reaction environments on mechanical behaviors of such bio-inspired materials.

Affiliates of the Mississippi Space Grant Consortium sponsor information programs, conferences, summer instruction for teachers and opportunities for fellowships and scholarships for graduate and undergraduate students in NASA-related STEM fields. For more information, visit http://msspacegrant.org/.