NSF Fellowships Underscore Strength of Research in UCSB Bioengineering Department
Five students with ties to the department receive one of the nation’s most prestigious fellowships.
Two current students, two incoming PhD students, and one recent alumnus, all with ties to UC Santa Barbara’s Bioengineering Department, are among the nearly thirty students affiliated with The Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering (COE) to receive the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship, one of the most competitive honors in STEM.
The NSF awarded more than 2,500 fellowships for the 2026-27 academic year from nearly 14,000 applicants. The program provides three years of financial support over a five-year period, including a $37,000 annual stipend and a $16,000 cost-of-education annual allowance, totaling $159,000.
“The NSF GRFP is one of the clearest indicators of future leadership in science and engineering,” said Umesh Mishra, dean of The Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering. “Seeing so many of our students recognized at this level speaks to the culture of innovation, rigor, and collaboration that drives discovery at UC Santa Barbara, both at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and impacts the global economy.”
This year’s recipients from COE include fourteen current students, including two with ties to Bioengineering, Ben Kunimoto and Ava Salami.
Kunimoto, a first-year bioengineering PhD student advised by Siddharth Dey, is developing a new technology to map the subcellular localization of the transcriptome, enabling researchers to determine where mRNA from all genes is situated within individual cells. His work addresses a longstanding challenge in biology: while nonuniform mRNA localization is known to play a critical role in processes ranging from embryogenesis and tissue development to immunology and neuroscience, it has been difficult to study at a genome-wide scale due to technological limitations. Kunimoto aims to overcome this barrier and apply the method to investigate how polarized mRNA localization influences cell differentiation during early mammalian embryogenesis.
“I feel very honored to have received this fellowship, and I’m thankful that it will help me and my lab pursue interesting and valuable research,” said Kunimoto, who is a data-driven biology trainee.
A fourth-year chemistry and biochemistry major, Salami has worked as an undergraduate researcher in the lab of bioengineering assistant professor Marley Dewey, investigating the use of cell type-specific extracellular vesicles within biomaterials toward tissue-specific repair in the musculoskeletal system.
Other COE-affiliated students who received NSF Fellowships include at least eight incoming PhD students, including two who will join the Department of Bioengineering in the fall, and six alumni who are now pursuing graduate degrees at other institutions, including August Dolmatch. He worked as a research assistant in the lab of bioengineering assistant professor Carolyn Mills before completing his bachelor’s degree in chemistry. Dolmatch will next pursue a PhD at the University of Washington.
