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Two LSU engineering students received the Donald W. Clayton Graduate Assistantship Award, substantial scholarships allowing them to pursue their advanced degrees with fewer financial stresses.
Doctoral students Hobbs McAllister and Gabriela Theis Marchan were awarded the scholarship. McAllister’s award gives him a stipend of $28,000 in the first year, with the total growing up to $31,500-$35,000 in the following years. Theis Marchan was awarded a stipend of $40,000 in the first year and up to $46,500-$50,000 for subsequent years.
“I’m excited for the research that I’m doing and research that I’m continuing from being an undergrad student, and getting that assistantship, competitive as it is, felt like a concrete example of people saying we believe in you,” McAllister said.
The assistantship is named after alumni Donald W. Clayton, who graduated from LSU with a petroleum engineering degree in 1979. Clayton and his wife, Gloria Pichon Clayton, gave a generous donation to LSU in 2004 to start the scholarship.
Theis Marchan was born in Caracas, Venezuela. She graduated from the Universidad Central de Venezuela in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in metallurgical engineering. A year later, Theis Marchan came to the U.S. as a refugee from constitutional crises and protests following the cancelled recall efforts of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
“Whenever I had the opportunity to apply to go back to school, I just applied for it,” Theis Marchan said. “And then I was able to get in. That was another accomplishment that I was able to get. It was huge for me because I always thought that I couldn’t get into a university in the United States.”
Theis Marchan went to Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, where she graduated in 2022 with a master’s degree in integrated science, technology and industrial chemistry. At first she saw LSU as an unobtainable ambition, but she has been working on her doctorate here since 2023.
Theis Marchan’s current project is applying machine learning AI to surfactants. A surfactant is a chemical compound that diminishes the surface tension between a liquid and another form of matter. These molecules are used daily in toiletries like soap and shampoo with the surfactant being the cleansing part of the product.
McAllister is from Austin, Texas. He graduated from LSU in May with a bachelor’s degree in biological systems. He is currently pursuing a doctorate in philosophy and is projected to graduate in 2030. McAllister said he was alarmed at how good the financial help was at LSU for out-of-state students.
“Relative to some of my friends that went to the University of Texas and went to Texas A&M, I was paying similar to what they were paying for college,” McAllister said.
The scholarship alleviates the financial burden on the College of Engineering to pay McAllister his graduate stipend for working in his laboratory.
“LSU has been extremely generous in terms of paying me to be a graduate student,“ McAllister said, “but [the assistantship] allows for them to pay less money and my advisor to pay less money for me to stick around and be a student.”
McAllister’s research is on two subjects: soybeans and bones. The soybean part of the lab measures the quality of soybeans, from the bean itself to the root system and the plant when it matures. The hope is that McAllister’s lab creates a stronger soybean standardization system to help farmers know the worth and quality of their beans.
“We’re trying to model and image a full root system, which is a project that we’re currently undertaking,” McAllister said. “We’re also just now finishing a machine that is a tabletop soybean imager.”
In the bone division, McAllister works on mechanical testing of cortical bones. Cortical bones, also known as compact bones, are the rigid outer layer of bones. A doctoral colleague of McAllister is currently finishing up a project on the wedge indentation of these bones.
McAllister thanks Alexander Lee and Nestor Alvarez-Rodriguez, two other graduate students he works with in the lab. He also credits Kevin Hoffseth, his academic advisor and principal investigator, for encouraging him to apply for the scholarship in the first place.
“He was the one who informed me of the assistantship, was the one who submitted the application for me, and helped me with my application materials,” McAllister said. “Couldn’t have done any of this without him.”
