April 4, 2017
Six from college receive prestigious three-year NSF fellowship for advanced study
Fifteen from Michigan State University have been selected for the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program -- with six undergraduate students, graduate students, and alumni coming from the College of Engineering.
MSU also has 13 honorable mention awards, with four coming from the college.
The program is the country’s oldest graduate fellowship program that directly supports graduate students in various science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.
NSF Graduate Research Fellows (GRF) benefit from a three-year annual stipend of $34,000 along with a $12,000 cost of education allowance for tuition and fees, opportunities for international research and professional development, and the freedom to conduct their own research at any accredited U.S. institution of graduate education they choose.
The new NSF Graduate Research Fellows in the College of Engineering are:
Rebecca Carlson, an Honors College senior majoring in chemical engineering. She will use the fellowship at MIT, where she enroll in a medical engineering and medical physics (MEMP) PhD program, focusing on systems approaches to autoimmune diseases. She also was recently named a Hertz Fellow for advanced STEM studies.
Elissa Klopfer, an Honors College senior majoring in materials science and engineering.
Katerina Tsou, a senior majoring in environmental engineering. She will use the fellowship for the environmental engineering graduate program at the University of California, Berkeley. She is interested in applying natural systems to improve water quality.
Alexander Lalejini, a graduate student at MSU studying computer science in the College of Engineering and ecology, evolutionary biology and behavior in the College of Natural Science. He will use his fellowship at MSU to continue his studies in computer science and ecology, evolutionary biology and behavior. He works in the Digital Evolution Laboratory with his advisor, Charles Ofria, professor of computer science and engineering, using self-replicatingcomputer programs to study evolutionary processes.
Sheryl Suet Ying Chau, a graduate student at MSU studying mechanical engineering. She will use her fellowship at MSU on research on human-robot interaction. Her advisor is mechanical engineering professor Ranjan Mukherjee.
Sylmarie Dávila-Montero, a PhD student in electrical and computer engineering (ECE). She works under the supervision of ECE professor Andrew Mason in the development of hardware-efficient neural processing algorithms for the next generation of neural interfaces, including algorithms for the treatment of neural signals recorded using high-channel count microelectrode arrays and high-density electrocorticography (ECoG) arrays.
The four honorable mentions are:
Sanders Aspelund, senior in mechanical engineering,
Justin Scott, PhD student in mechanical engineering,
Shihan Liu, PhD student in mechanical engineering, and
Tuttle Tyler, PhD student in mechanical engineering.
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program
The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees at accredited U.S. institutions.
As the oldest graduate fellowship of its kind, the program has a long history of selecting recipients who achieve high levels of success in their future academic and professional careers. Past fellows include numerous Nobel Prize winners, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Google founder Sergey Brin, and Freakonomics co-author Steven Levitt.
