At least six students associated with the UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering (COE) have received prestigious 2025 Graduate Research Fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The five-year NSF Fellowship provides three years of financial support, including an annual stipend of $37,000, as well as opportunities for international research and professional development. This year, 1,000 students nationwide were offered 2025 NSF Fellowships, less than half as many as last year. This year’s recipients include three current UCSB students, Anya Mulligan, a second-year materials PhD student; Kyle Lee, a first-year electrical & computer engineering (ECE) PhD student; and Jordan Prescott, a senior electrical engineering student at UCSB, who will enter the ECE PhD Program in fall 2025. 

“This fellowship means a great deal to me as it reflects and validates the research that I have committed to over the last few years, said Prescott, who has conducted undergraduate research for the past three years. “It is really a tremendous honor, and I am excited to continue my research with this new support.”

Working this year in the lab of Shiv Chandrasekaran, an ECE professor, Prescott investigates how multi-view geometry and deep learning can be used by a camera to more accurately interpret a scene. The work has real-world applications in various fields, such as transportation, self-driving cars, and manufacturing. His project aims to help the visually impaired safely navigate their surroundings.

A second-year materials PhD student, Mulligan says that the NSF Fellowship validates that hard work pays off. 

“I came into graduate school knowing I would apply for the Graduate Research Fellowship Program in my second year, which pushed me to prove I could do high-level research while managing coursework, lab responsibilities, and mentoring,” said Mulligan. “I’ve also discovered that academia is the right path for me, largely because of the intellectual freedom it provides. This fellowship gives me the chance to pursue research on my own terms, and I hope it is the start of a long and meaningful career.”

Advised by materials professor Ram Seshadri, Mulligan studies lone pair phenomena in inorganic materials, which can significantly influence optoelectronic properties, such as light absorption, charge transport, and dielectric behavior. Her work to better understand the conditions that lead to stereochemically active lone pairs in crystalline materials could help predict and tune material functionality. 

“By disentangling the structural and electronic factors that govern lone pair behavior, I hope to enable more rational design of functional materials,” explained Mulligan, adding that her work supports the development of next-generation optoelectronics and contributes to advancements in energy-efficient and sustainable materials.

Lee thanked his graduate advisor, ECE associate professor Kerem Çamsarı for his unwavering support. A first-year PhD student, Lee works in the field of probabilistic computing, a field that uses probabilities and uncertainty as computational resources for modeling and solving problems. He works to develop specialized circuits for solving hard combinatorial optimization problems, with potential applications in areas such as logistics and semiconductor design. 

“Receiving the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship is an incredible milestone in my journey as a scientist,” said Lee. “This fellowship affirms my passion for novel and unconventional computing schemes, particularly in the area of probabilistic computing. With the NSF’s support, I look forward to pursuing high-impact research in solving some of the world’s most pressing computational challenges.”

Three students, who earned bachelor’s degrees from UCSB’s COE and are now pursuing graduate degrees elsewhere, also received NSF Fellowships, including Abhiram Devata (chemical engineering), Camille Wardlaw (electrical engineering), and Steven Man (mechanical engineering). 

The NSF also issued honorable mention as an academic recognition to meritorious applicants who did not receive fellowship awards. Among the 3,018 students who received honorable mention this year, at least ten of them, who are listed below, have connections to the COE, including seven who are current PhD students at UCSB. 

The GRFP is the nation’s oldest fellowship program that recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students who are pursuing research-based graduate degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. The program is intended to ensure the vitality and diversity of the nation’s scientific and engineering workforce, inspiring future contributions to research, teaching, and scientific innovation. Students can apply to the program before beginning or early in their graduate studies. On average, about 13,000 students submit applications each year. Of the more than 60,000 graduate research fellows who have received GRFP funding since 1952, nearly 50 have gone on to become Nobel laureates, and more than 450 have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. 

Honorable Mention
Current UCSB PhD Students
Payton Croskey, Media Arts and Technology Program
Matthew Delmont, Mechanical Engineering
Aaron Huang, Materials
Trent Llewellyn, Bioengineering
Megan Murphy, Materials Chemistry
Raghav Thirumaligal, Mechanical Engineering
Logan Winston, Materials

UCSB Graduates, Pursuing PhDs Elsewhere
Sacha Escudier
Mohammad Farzam
Jeffrey Pham