Fellowships provide the student with a three-year annual stipend of $37,000 along with a $16,000 cost of education allowance for tuition and fees (paid to the institution), as well as access to opportunities for professional development available to NSF-supported graduate students. NSF Fellows are anticipated to become knowledge experts who can contribute significantly to research, teaching, and innovations in science and engineering.

Abaigeal Aydt

Abaigeal Aydt is a Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. Working with Steve Son, she is studying nitro-organic cathodes for high specific capacity batteries; including modeling for down-selection of material candidates, and electrochemical analysis for evaluation of battery performance. Abaigeal got her BS in chemical engineering from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.

Andrew Dahm

Andrew graduated with his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering with a specialization in thermal fluids from Rice University in 2025. Now, he is a Ph.D. student at the Cooling Technologies Research Center under the advisement of Justin Weibel. His research focuses on leveraging novel machine learning techniques including physics informed neural networks to assist in modeling complex two phase flow heat transfer for electronics cooling applications.

Grant Dierking

Grant Dierking is a Master’s Student at Herrick Labs, advised by Davide Ziviani and Kevin Kircher. His research involves the development of methodologies for coordinated control of various building energy loads to support occupant comfort, cost efficiency, grid resiliency, and sustainability at scale.

Katie Hart

Katie Hart is an incoming Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering student at Purdue University. She graduated from Rice University in May 2024 with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, Certificate in Engineering Leadership, and Certificate in Spanish Language and Intercultural Communication. Her current research is in additive manufacturing of energetic material with Monique McClain.

Emilio Manuel Pereira

Emilio Pereira graduated with his BS in Aerospace Engineering from University of Central Florida. He will be working at Zucrow Labs with Terry Meyer on Rotating Detonation Engine (RDE) testing and modeling. He is proposing a Hollow Rotating Detonation Engine - a version of the RDE that lacks the traditional inner body reducing weight and thermal load. This data will allow assumptions in existing reduced-order models to be relaxed, vastly improving predictive efficacy and enabling the commercialization of Rotating Detonation Combustors for both power generation and propulsion.

Benjamin Wassgren

Benjamin Wassgren graduated this Spring with his MSME from Purdue, studying under Ilias Bilionis. His NSF fellowship will begin this coming fall at Northwestern University, where his Ph.D. studies will include the use of data-driven methods for the design in material systems and structures.