BIOENGINEERING PHD STUDENTS RECEIVE PRESTIGIOUS NSF FELLOWSHIPS

Three graduate students affiliated with UC Santa Barbara’s Bioengineering Department were recognized by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Two of them were selected for the NSF’s 2024 Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), while a third received honorable mention. Fellows will receive three years of financial support, totaling $159,000 in the form of an annual $37,000 stipend and an annual cost-of-education allowance of $16,000 paid to the graduate degree-granting institution for tuition and fees. Fellows also receive opportunities for international research and professional development.

A second-year PhD bioengineering student, Zsofia Szegletes said that she was honored to receive a fellowship and grateful to all of the mentors who helped her along her academic journey. Szegletes, who is advised by chemical engineering and bioengineering associate professor Siddharth Dey, studies the mechanisms that drive epigenome changes during differentiation of stem-cell into primordial germ cells.

“In my research, I seek to advance the understanding of epigenetic mechanisms in human development and cell-fate decisions, which has potential implications in understanding other highly dynamic epigenetic systems, such as cancer,” explains Szegletes, who earned a bachelor’s degree in biological engineering at Cornell University, “I am extremely motivated by the NSF’s support to continue my research and push the limits of scientific knowledge.”

Another NSF Fellow, Emily Gemmill, is a PhD student in UCSB’s Biomolecular Science and Engineering Program, studying border clusters from Drosophila ovaries to investigate the mechanics behind collective cell migration. Gemmill is as a T32 Quantitative Mechanobiology Fellow, which is an interdisciplinary predoctoral training program run by the Bioengineering Department and supported by a training grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

This year, 2,037 students nationwide were offered fellowships, including eight current UCSB PhD students with ties to the COE, and two recent UCSB graduates.

The NSF also issued honorable mention as an academic recognition to meritorious applicants who did not receive fellowship awards. Among the recipients was Gianna Gathman, a second-year bioengineering PhD student and T32 Quantitative Mechanobiology Fellow, who is advised by Ryan Stowers, an assistant professor of bioengineering. The Stowers lab explores how cells interact with and are influenced by the mechanical properties of their environment, developing tunable or stimuli-responsive hydrogels to achieve spatial and temporal control of microenvironmental properties.

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. Of the more than 60,000 graduate research fellows who have received GRFP funding since 1952, nearly 50 have gone on to become Nobel laureates, and more than 450 have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences.