PROVO — The future's so bright, they gotta wear shades.

Or, in this case, lab safety goggles.

Two Brigham Young University graduates are headed for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to further their higher education endeavors. The private university in Cambridge emphasizes scientific and technological research.

Christopher Palmer, 24, of Belmont, Mass., and Colin Landon, 25, of Grass Valley, Calif., both will be using fellowships worth up to $121,500 each, thanks to the National Science Foundation. The three-year award includes an annual $30,000 stipend, plus tuition, for master's and doctoral work.

The two are part of the spring 2008 graduating class. Some 4,583 degrees were given out at commencement ceremony Thursday.

Landon, who is graduating in mechanical engineering at BYU, said MIT has been his first choice for a long time. The Boston area has an "intellectual atmosphere" with many schools and an abundance of smart people, he said.

Palmer, graduating in economics at BYU, can't wait to get started at MIT. He says he likes "everything under the sun" that involves research.

Palmer and Landon say they benefited a great deal from BYU's tradition of preparing students for graduate work.

Despite coming from drastically different academic disciplines, both noted that their unusual access to research faculty as undergraduates was one of the strongest points in their applications for the NSF grants and top-tier graduate schools.

Palmer said the individual attention the faculty gave him, as well as the camaraderie between fellow students, made a world of difference.

"There is a real collegiate spirit present in academics," he said.

Landon says he is so well-prepared for graduate school he feels as if BYU gave him "a head start" as far as doing research and publishing papers.

A project Palmer worked on at BYU involved doing economics research in Armenia, where he had previously served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The project involved gathering data on education and employment.

Landon said that some forms of academic funding come with strings attached, such as being assigned a specific research project, with required hours and guidelines, or having to work under a certain adviser. But with this fellowship "there is a lot of academic freedom," he said.

Landon said when he receives his doctorate he wants to work in a research environment such as a national or university laboratory.

With his doctorate, Palmer wants to be a professor and teach economics while continuing conducting research.

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E-mail: astewart@desnews.com