This year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has selected 31 current Caltech students and 12 alumni to receive its Graduate Research Fellowships. The awards support three years of graduate study within a five-year fellowship period in research-based master's or doctoral programs in science or engineering.
The NSF notes that the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) "is a critical program in NSF's overall strategy to develop the globally-engaged workforce necessary to ensure the nation's leadership in advancing science and engineering research and innovation."
Caltech's awardees for 2015 are seniors Bridget Connor, Boyu Fan, Mark Greenfield, Bryan He, Adam Jermyn, Robert F. Johnson, Ellen Price, Charles Tschirhart, Max Wang, Benjamin Wang, Caroline Werlang, Patrick Yiu, and Andy J. Zhou; and graduate students Louisa Avellar, Dawna Bagherian, Kevin Cherry, Rebecca Glaudell, Elizabeth Goldstein, Denise Grunenfelder, Nina Gu, Elizabeth Holman, Erik Jue, Kyle Metcalfe, Kelsey Poremba, Denise Schmitz, Rebekah Silva, Chanel Valiente, Grigor Varuzhanyan, Ryan Witkosky (also an alumnus), Emily Wyatt, and Nicole Xu. Caltech alumni in the 2015 class of Graduate Fellows are Karen Dowling, Melissa Hubisz, Pawel Latawiec, Laura Lindzey, Katja Luxem, Rocio Mercado, Bertrand Ottino-Loffler, David Sell, Benjamin Suslick, Jordan Theriot, Ryan Thorngren, and Matthew Voss.
In total this year, the NSF selected 2,000 GRFP recipients from a pool of 16,500 applicants. Caltech's Fellowships Advising & Study Abroad Office works with current students and recent Caltech graduates interested in applying for an NSF fellowship, sponsoring a panel discussion of previous winners each fall and offering one-on-one advising.
Written by Kimm Fesenmaier