Tuesday, March 23, 2021
Ten graduate students in UC Santa Barbara’s College of Engineering have received graduate research fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Fellows in the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) will receive three years of financial support, totaling $138,000, in the form of an annual $34,000 stipend and an annual cost-of-education allowance of $12,000 paid to the graduate degree-granting institution for tuition and fees. Fellows also receive opportunities for international research and professional development.
The GRFP is the nation’s oldest fellowship program that recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students 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.
This year, 2,074 students nationwide were offered fellowships, and 1,829 students received honorable mention. The NSF issues honorable mention as an academic recognition to meritorious applicants who did not receive fellowship awards. Of the ten UCSB engineering graduate students who were offered fellowships, five are from the Materials Department and three are from the Chemical Engineering Department. The Mechanical Engineering Department and Media Arts and Technology Program each had one student offered a fellowship. Three additional engineering graduate students received honorable mention this year.
Of the more than 50,000 fellows who have received GRFP funding since 1952, more than forty have gone on to become Nobel laurates and nearly five hundred have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
UCSB CoE graduate students who received 2021 fellowships by NSF’s GRFP
- Daniel Arnold, Chemical Engineering
- Alexander Davydov, Mechanical Engineering
- Stejara Dinulescu, Media Arts and Technology
- Patrick Getty, Materials
- Binghao Guo, Materials
- Lillian Hughes, Materials
- Kevin Modica, Chemical Engineering
- Emily Morgan, Materials
- Kaitlyn Mullin, Materials
- Phong Nguyen, Chemical Engineering
UCSB CoE graduate students who received honorable mention
- Aurland Hay, Materials
- Justin Marlowe, Chemical Engineering
- Harrison Szeto, Mechanical Engineering
Fellowship recipients who earned bachelor’s degrees at UCSB
- Julian Maravilla, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, now at UC Berkeley
- Nicholas Zakaria, Chemical Engineering, now at UC Berkeley
