Caltech Students and Alumni Receive 2017 NSF Graduate Research Fellowships

This year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has selected 20 current Caltech students and eight 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." The selection criteria used to identify NSF fellows reflect the potential of the applicant to advance knowledge and benefit society.

Caltech's awardees for 2017 are seniors Alexander Anferov, Daniil Lukin, Stephanie Moon, Anjali Premkumar, Gerri Roberts, and Sasha Zemsky; and graduate students Mary Arrastia, Stephanie Breunig, Ivanna Escala, Riley Galton, Phillip Helms, Kari Hernandez, Celeste Labedz, Ethan Pickering, William Poole, Alexander Sorum, Alvita Tran, Krystal Vasquez, Zachary Wu, and Lealia Xiong. The graduate student awardees join 135 current NSF fellows enrolled at Caltech.

Caltech alumni in the 2017 class of Graduate Fellows are: Oliver Chen, Linda Chio, Anne Davis, Connie Hsueh, Anna Liu, Aleena Patel, Madeleine Youngs, and Leonardo Zornberg.

In total this year, the NSF selected 2,000 GRFP recipients from a pool of more than 13,000 applicants. Caltech's Fellowships Advising and 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.