In a record-tying performance, 11 Stony Brook students – including nine women – have been awarded prestigious Graduate Research Fellowships (NSF GRFP) by the National Science Foundation. Another six SBU students earned Honorable Mentions.
Students honored with fellowships include, in alphabetical order, Hindy Drillick (Mathematics), Stephanie Johnson (Anthropology and Africana Studies), Savannah LaBua (Marine Vertebrate Biology), Ann Lin (Biochemistry and Economics) and Katherine Lo (Biochemistry & Cell Biology).
Also named Fellows were Diana Lutz (Chemistry), Jessica Maghakian (Applied Mathematics and Statistics), Gabrielle Paniccia (Biochemistry), T.J. Sullivan (Clinical Psychology), Christopher Tang (Materials Science and Chemical Engineering) and Daneele Thorpe (Clinical Psychology).
“This award is crucial to promoting social mobility for our most promising STEM students and to providing them with the freedom to develop their own research agendas,” said Jen Green, External Scholarships and Fellowships Advisor. “I was humbled by the talent and hustle displayed by this cohort and am thrilled by the university community’s celebration of their accomplishments in this year’s NSF GRFP competition.”
The advising program behind SBU’s remarkable success is co-sponsored by the Graduate School and the Office of the Vice President for Research. Green also praised the efforts of colleagues at the Center for Inclusive Education, sponsors of the Turner Fellowship program that helped to nurture three of the 11 fellows, Hannah Morales Hernandez, T.J. Sullivan and Daneele Thorpe.
The NSF GRFP was established in 1952 to help develop and boost diversity of the country’s science and engineering research workforce by supporting graduate students who pursue research-based master’s and doctoral degrees in NSF-support STEM disciplines.
Green leads the NSF GRFP advising program together with David A. Rubenstein, associate professor and graduate program director in the Department of Biomedical Engineering.
“Our team helps students tell their story and pitch their research in a compelling way,” Rubenstein said. “Our goal is for them to gain recognition as the next generation of outstanding researchers and learn best practices of proposal writing.”
Rubenstein led a team of proposal experts who supplemented the efforts of the students’ departmental advisors. They included Dr. Benjamin Martin, Biochemistry; Dr. Sheri Clark, Office of the Vice President of Research, Dr. Anne McElroy, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) and Dr. Kathlyn Parker, Chemistry.
Rubenstein also thanked Interim Dean of the Graduate School Richard Gerrig for his “incredibly supportive” role in creating a highly successful collaborative advising model.
Stony Brook students winning Honorable Mentions were Jacob Crosser, Kenneth Davidson, James Glazar, Elizabeth Inman, Evan Lammertse and Hannah Morales Hernandez.
Click below to view a gallery with more about the Fellowship winners:
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