Over the years, NC State has established itself as a premier research institution. And each year, more and more students are receiving national recognition and financial support for their research as they pursue graduate degrees.
This spring, 22 of NC State’s undergraduate seniors and current graduate students earned awards from the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program. The program provides three years of support for the graduate education of individuals who have demonstrated their potential for significant research achievements in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) or STEM education. NSF especially encourages women, members of underrepresented minority groups, persons with disabilities, veterans, and undergraduate seniors to apply.
Continue reading to learn more about the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program’s 2021 awardees, their research and their involvements at NC State.
About the University Fellowships Office
The University Fellowships Office (UFO) helps hundreds of students apply for fellowships, scholarships and other awards like this each year. The team in the UFO helps students understand and decode the call for proposal, assists with the drafting and editing process, and guides students through the acquisition of letters of recommendation. Most importantly, the UFO staff are there to support and encourage students and mentors throughout the application cycle.
Jennifer Fang
Jennifer earned an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering with a minor in mathematics in summer 2021. She worked as a teaching assistant for six semesters and was a chemistry undergraduate tutor. She was a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AICHE) and participated in the People, Prosperity, and the Planet (P3) Student Design Competition in spring 2020.
Jennifer’s research involves a self-powered, hydrogel-driven, paper-based, wearable prototype that collects biomarkers such as lactate and glucose. She worked on in-vitro experiments to understand the prototype's working principles and to optimize the hydrogel concentration for use in human trials. She then used the device during human trials to determine the skin's sweat lactate concentration. Additionally, she worked to discover the correlation of lactate between both sweat and blood and modes of exercise and rest. She is now developing a continuous platform to test lactate by embedding an electrochemical sensor onto the patch and is learning finite element analysis using COMSOL to simulate the fluid flow within the patch and to validate different bench-top experiments.
“One of the greatest challenges the world faces is maintaining and monitoring health,” Fang said. “In the current state of diagnosing and monitoring diseases, most people rely on going to the doctors to receive a proper diagnosis. However, In the United States, residents visit the doctor only four times a year. As a result, people are having greater difficulty in retaining their health.
“In an effort to find solutions to issues with people struggling to maintain their health, engineers and scientists have developed devices that are accessible and relevant to all users,” Fang continued. “While there have been important strides to offer cost effective and user-friendly devices, many on the market such as analyte detectors that use blood are invasive. Even in the current development of wearable devices, most are incapable of operating under low sweat rates and need external stimuli such as active sweating to operate. Therefore, my research goal is to develop a user-friendly, cost-effective platform that can function with minimal exertion while having the ability to monitor a variety of biomarkers.”
Jennifer plans to pursue a doctoral degree in chemical engineering at MIT to learn how to enhance the design of health monitoring platforms. After graduate school, she hopes to become a college professor while creating different devices to detect and diagnose various chronic diseases.
Sydney Floryanzia
Sydney earned an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering with a minor in tissue engineering and biotechnology in summer 2021. She had many involvements at NC State, including roles with the Office of Undergraduate Research, as an engineering ambassador, as the social co-chair of the campus chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, as a Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Village mentor, and as a Grand Challenge Scholar. She was also a teaching assistant and a member of NC State’s Minority Engineering Programs and the National Society of Black Engineers. Many of her studies took place off campus and abroad as well, including an Alternative Service Break trip to Rwanda, the SensUs International Research Competition in the Netherlands, and an internship with Merck & Co. for two summers and a semester.
Sydney’s research centered around the fabrication of a 3D scaffold for the co-culture of fibroblasts and endothelial cells within a microfluidic device to be used as a model of the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Co-culture is achieved in this model by taking advantage of laminar flow within the channel of the microfluidic device. This BBB model provides a closer representation of the brain microenvironment facilitating the discovery of possible links between vascular conditions and disease progression by allowing cellular proliferation as well as simulation of in-vivo shear stress flow conditions. Her main contribution to this research was to validate and optimize the Y-channel device BBB model initially invented by Dr. Ashlyn Young. Additionally, she was tasked with determining and defining appropriate applications and research questions the model could be used to answer, in addition to maintaining her own lines of fibroblasts and endothelial cells, preparing and fabricating each stage of the full microfluidic device, troubleshooting, and obtaining final results using fluorescence microscopy.
“While I possess a strong focus on neuro-engineering today, I initially aspired to be a musician,” she said. “But at an NC State engineering camp, Dr. Laura Bottomley gave a presentation on the National Academy of Engineering’s 14 Grand Challenges of Engineering, one of which was reverse-engineering the brain. She explained how studying the effects of music on the brain could lead to a greater understanding of how the brain itself works.
“I had seen Alzheimer’s disease devastate my aunt who died from the disease, and also impact other members of my family who served as her caretakers,” she continued. “Once I learned how engineering could be used to combat diseases like this, I wanted to begin working in this field as quickly as possible. For degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, the characteristic biomarkers and decline in abilities are often associated with problems in tissue, problems with blood flow conditions, and signs of a “leaky” blood-brain barrier. The extent of a relationship between vascular dysfunction and markers of these hallmark degenerative diseases, however, has not been defined. I have since moved on from the music-brain connection, but I still carry the mindset of wanting to explore connections and relationships in science. By creating an ex-vivo model of the BBB, a source of vascular defects, this potential relationship between the neurovascular system and degenerative diseases can be better investigated.”
Sydney is now interning with Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in the Neuroscience Group as a GEM Fellow, where she is focusing on increasing her computational neuroscience experience before enrolling at the University of Washington in fall 2021 to pursue a Ph.D. in chemical engineering. Her long term goals are to work at the intersection of neuroscientific research and chemical engineering to design processes for the large-scale manufacturing of novel drugs designed for the brain. As a Ph.D. student, she plans to refine her knowledge of principles like Fick’s law, rheology and thermodynamics to investigate the fluid highways of the brain and understand the misfolding of proteins common in neurodegenerative diseases. She plans to use these principles as she develops new drugs and drug delivery systems so that she can later re-enter the pharmaceutical industry and commercialize the lab-scale products for patient use.
Temitope Ibitoye
Temitope is a Ph.D. student in environmental engineering. She is the communication coordinator for Science Policy Pack, a graduate student ambassador for the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, and a mentor for the Clean Water Science Network.
Temitope’s research focuses on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the environment — specifically, methods of detection and analyzing the genome of AMR bacteria.
“Antibiotic resistance has been identified as a key threat to human health worldwide,” she said. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that each year in the United States, 2.8 million people contract an antibiotic resistant infection and more than 35,000 die. Consequently, addressing this challenge is a public health priority. The environment has been identified as a pathway of transmission for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) to humans, yet the extent to which this happens is unknown. The World Health Organization has underscored environmental surveillance as a crucial step in understanding and combating the rise of antibiotic resistance.”
Temitope plans to continue her research and graduate in the next three years, then begin a career in science policy.
Angelina Joy
Angelina is a Ph.D. student in psychology and is involved in the Social Development Lab.
Her research focuses on children's and adolescents' beliefs in stereotypes and STEM engagement, and she is examining how their endorsement of racial or gender stereotypes influence their motivation and engagement in STEM classes.
“Girls and ethnically minoritized students have historically been underrepresented in STEM,” she said. “Through my research, I hope to have a better understanding of the obstacles these groups of people may face and also be able to create more opportunities for them to pursue STEM.”
Angelina plans to apply for a postdoctoral position to gain more experience and be able to continue researching the different factors that influence students' persistence in STEM.
Ishita Kamboj
Ishita is a Ph.D. student in materials science and engineering. She is the treasurer of Science Policy Pack and a volunteer for the potentiostat team for the SciBridge Project.
Ishita’s research focuses on understanding how to make electrodes for electrochemical energy storage devices, like lithium-ion batteries, using unique 3D architectures. Incorporating the energy storing material (commonly a metal oxide) with a 3D scaffold requires some creativity, since current industry-standard processing techniques involve high temperatures that prove to be damaging to many scaffolds. In her current undertaking, she is working on using electrochemical techniques such as electrodeposition and cyclic voltammetry to integrate high-capacity transition metal oxides with a highly conductive carbon nanotube foam scaffold to create a free-standing, 3D battery electrode. Through collaborations both at NC State and externally, she seeks to also understand how these electrodes can be designed prescriptively to achieve desired performance outcomes with the help of machine learning and regression techniques, and how the mechanical properties of these electrodes can be optimized potentially for structural material applications.
“Currently the most prevalent industry-standard electrode design is a metal oxide slurry cast onto a flat metal foil current collector,” Ishita said. “This electrode design is well-known to not withstand high mass loadings of electrochemically active materials, which limits how much energy the electrodes can store. In contrast, 3D electrode architectures have been studied for their potential to accommodate high mass loadings. By developing manufacturing techniques for these 3D electrodes, and investigating a computationally-guided technique to prescribe processing conditions to create a desired electrode architecture, we could figure out how to increase the energy density of an electrode simply by preferentially arranging the mass inside the electrode.”
Ishita hopes to finish up the rest of her Ph.D. through the NSF Fellowship, then move on to either a position as research scientist in the lithium-ion battery industry or a post-doctorate at a Department of Energy national lab.
Cade Karrenberg
Cade earned an undergraduate degree in civil engineering this summer. They served as outreach coordinator for the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, a team member for the Seismic Design Competition, and an undergraduate researcher in the Department of Civil Construction and Environmental Engineering.
For their research, Cade utilized computational modeling tools to assess how different urban water management policies affect water users and water infrastructure.
“I worked in small, community-owned businesses for years before deciding to go to college,” Cade said. “I chose to study civil engineering because I've always been fascinated and curious about how things work, and thought I could continue to serve my communities through civil engineering. Through undergraduate research opportunities at NC State I was introduced to the Sociotechnical System Analysis research group, which focuses on how civil infrastructure and people affect each other. Through this research I'm able to study the technical, infrastructural parts of civil engineering and the people and communities that need that infrastructure.”
They will enter a Ph.D. program in civil engineering at NC State in the fall.
Jessica Levey
Jessica is a Ph.D. student in civil and environmental engineering and is part of the Climate, Hydrology and Water Resources Modeling and Synthesis Group.
Jessica’s doctoral research will focus on incorporating vegetation dynamics into seasonal streamflow forecasts to improve water resource management across the United States as well as evaluate differences in resilience for natural versus human-altered watersheds. Reliable streamflow forecasts are a critical part of quantifying reservoir releases, particularly during extreme precipitation events. Many seasonal streamflow forecasts do not account for vegetation as a dynamic part of a coupled land surface-atmosphere system, thereby not altering its response on hydrologic, biogeochemical or energy fluxes. Jessica plans to update land surface models, used for seasonal-to-sub seasonal streamflow forecasting, to account for the effects of dynamic vegetation, which is particularly important during droughts.
“Climate change and anthropogenic disturbances are driving shifts in the hydrologic cycle and impacting water resource quality and supply,” she said. “As water scarcity and allocation challenges become increasingly pressing, developing more accurate forecasts to manage reservoir storage, specifically during periods of prolonged droughts or floods, is crucial at a national scale. I am interested in focusing on the intersection between water resources and climate change — two major threats we will face in the near future. Water resource management is critical for human and environmental health, food supply and local economies. I am interested in focusing on this area because of the widespread impacts across several fields.”
Jessica started her Ph.D. this year at NC State, and ultimately wants to continue her research for a national laboratory, focusing on water resource adaptation to climate change.
Cristina Lorenzo-Velázquez
Cristina is a Ph.D. student in civil engineering. She is a member and 2019 Fellow of Tau Beta Pi, treasurer of the Geo Institute, and a graduate ambassador for the Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering. She is also a member of the NC State chapters for the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and Latin American Student Association, and she was an honorable mention for the Ford Fellowship in 2019.
Cristina’s proposed project seeks to advance the state-of-the-art for probabilistic seismic hazard assessments (PSHA) of pipelines by incorporating a regionalization of the effects of local soil conditions into an optimized probabilistic framework. The goal is to contribute to the improvement of the performance of pipelines spread through long distances and regions with variable site conditions during seismic events to enhance community resilience to seismic hazards. This will be accomplished by implementing Bayesian Networks, which is a probabilistic graphical model capable of representing random variables in a complex system and their dependencies. An optimized system-level PSHA that considers the effects of local site conditions on spatially variable GMs will improve the performance of distributed infrastructure (such as water supply distribution systems, WSDS) during earthquakes, while reducing uncertainties in design, operation and repair protocols. Improved site terms and novel insights into spatial correlations resulting from the proposed work will also allow the development of the next generation regional assessment of geohazards targeting enhanced community resilience to seismic hazards.
“I am from an island (Puerto Rico) susceptible to multiple natural hazards such as earthquakes and hurricanes that are impossible to prevent and predict,” she said. “The impact of Hurricane Maria in 2017 and the 2020 earthquake sequence in Puerto Rico demonstrated how vulnerable an entire island was and still is. Such seismic activity induces widespread damage to lifelines, like water distribution systems, that can lead to cascading effects such as fires due to gas leakage and broken water pipelines, inhibiting emergency services like firefighting. The lack of research in this area in Puerto Rico is one of the main reasons I am pursuing a Ph.D. in this field.”
Cristina plans to continue advancing her research and eventually return to Puerto Rico as a professor.
“As a Puerto Rican woman in a U.S. university, I have gained perspective on the implications of being a minority in STEM,” she said. “That is why I will continue empowering and motivating students to pursue advanced degrees as a Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering graduate ambassador. Also, as a mentor in a peer-mentoring network created by alumni of the University of Puerto Rico Mayagūez, I have been and will continue organizing workshops and seminars to educate undergraduate students from Puerto Rico and Hispanic communities. In Particular, I plan to mentor them on preparing strong applications for summer research and graduate school programs to diversify the scientific community at leading universities such as NC State.”
Siena Mantooth
Siena is a Ph.D. student in biomedical engineering and has been involved in the Biomedical Engineering Mentorship Program (BME) and as a summer camp co-director for the program.
Siena works in the Zaharoff lab, which studies the delivery of immunotherapies for cancer and vaccine applications. A particular focus of the lab is the delivery of the protein therapeutic interleukin-12 (IL-12) co-formulated with the polysaccharide chitosan to stimulate an anti-cancer immune response. Another avenue of the lab in which she focuses is tailoring an immune response with different formulations of chitosan.
“The immune system impacts every part of human health,” Siena said. “Knowing that my research has the potential to help my family members, close friends — especially a family for whom I used to babysit — and all those who are suffering gets me out of bed each morning.”
Siena has a passion for research and mentoring future scientists, and hopes to enter a profession that unites those two interests.
Keith Markham
Keith is a Ph.D. student in electrical engineering and has been doing scientific research on campus since 2015.
With professor Fred Kish as his advisor, Keith is developing innovative design, fabrication and integration techniques for wide-bandgap semiconductors to realize the first widely-tunable-wavelength blue-green laser diodes. These lasers will enable System-on-Chip (SOC) Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) architectures that are not possible today in the visible spectrum; a wide variety of environmental sensing applications, medical devices, and quantum information systems need powerful, deployable, and tunable lasers in the blue-green spectral region. Keith’s approach involves electrical and optical modeling of candidate device structures complemented by targeted experiments to tackle key fabrication challenges in order to bring models and unit processes together into an integrated, on-chip laser.
“I first heard of the group III nitride (III-N) materials in high school, particularly the gallium nitrides (GaN), and I was tantalized by the way people were still making useful products in spite of the challenges posed by the material itself,” he said. “The novel lighting, medical, power and communication products built on the unique properties of GaN have changed the world for the better. I studied materials science at NC State based on this interest, and worked at Cree Inc., an NC State spin-off with industry-leading GaN-on-SiC technology. I returned to NC State to study electrical engineering because I found myself enamored with the device design process and the opportunity to explore and contribute to the burgeoning area of visible integrated photonics. I feel most connected to the positive potential impact of my work when it is at an early stage, still seeking input on what people, communities and society at large need. Value is created by thoughtfully addressing deeply felt needs, and creating value is a lifelong passion of mine.”
Keith just began his second year of graduate study and is excited to head into the summer with the support of the NSF fellowship to continue his research. After earning his Ph.D., he hopes to become an entrepreneur and commercialize his work.
Nikhil Milind
Nikhil earned an undergraduate degree in genetics and computer science with a minor in mathematics this summer. As an undergraduate, he was co-chair of Service Raleigh, a member of the Student Conduct Board, a Musical Empowerment mentor, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.
Along with professor David Aylor in the Department of Biological Sciences, Nikhil has researched bioinformatic approaches to research in epigenetics and quantitative genetics. In recent years, scientists have developed mouse populations that are genetically diverse and replicable across labs. These Genetic Reference Populations (GRPs) promise replicability of scientific results. Furthermore, consistent genetic panels should theoretically allow them to answer higher-order biological questions by combining data across multiple studies.
“First and foremost, I have to thank my research mentors for giving me the opportunity to conduct research and inspiring me to pursue a career in the sciences,” he said. “Dr. Janardhan at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences provided me with my very first experience with research. Dr. Iweala at the UNC Allergy and Immunology Clinic inspired me to conduct research that was clinical and patient oriented to better the lives of others. Dr. Carter at the Jackson Laboratory has been instrumental in my choice of future research in the field of human genetics, specifically within the realm of complex diseases. Dr. Aylor at NC State has given me an appreciation for studying the genetic architecture of complex traits and mentored me throughout my four years at NC State. These mentors have provided me with much needed guidance, inspiration, motivation, and vision. My ultimate inspiration to pursue science is the service I can provide to my community. I hope to identify therapeutic targets for complex diseases that have proven to be intractable, such as Alzheimer’s disease, asthma or diabetes. I hope that I will be able to better the lives of others!”
This fall, Nikhil will begin a Ph.D. program in genetics at Stanford University.
Danielle Moloney
Danielle is a Ph.D. student in elementary math education and works as a research assistant.
Her research centers around equitable teaching practices in mathematics education and how teachers learn to incorporate them in instruction. Her research proposal outlines a professional development program that uses classroom videos to help teachers grow in their understanding and implementation of one specific practice. Her goal is to understand how professional development changes teachers' understanding of equitable mathematics practices and whether those changes are sustained over time.
“My personal teaching experiences have motivated me to understand how teachers can leverage equitable teaching practices to support student learning and growth, especially in the field of mathematics,” she said. “As a fifth grade math teacher, I witnessed daily the inequity that plagues our educational system, but I also experienced firsthand the impact teachers have on students’ mathematical opportunities.”
Danielle plans to continue her research and examine how teachers can implement more inclusive practices in the classroom.
Kyle Nguyen
Kyle is a Ph.D. student in biomathematics and is a mentor for Undergrads Union Grads.
Through his research, he strives to develop methods for model selection in the context of inter-patient variability. Most of the current cancer treatments have been carried as "one-size-fits-all" treatments, meaning that the same treatment protocol is applied to a cohort of seemingly similar patients. However, every patient responds differently to the same treatment, and because of this treatment may work for some patients but not others. Precision medicine, on the other hand, assumes every patient is unique to generate the optimal treatment decision strategies for each patient. In precision oncology, the applied mathematics approach to optimal treatment design is to use mathematical models to help fully understand the mechanisms of cancer and how cancer cells interact within the tumors and their microenvironments. However, mathematical models have not been used in clinical settings yet because one model often does not fit all patients. His research seeks to bridge the gap by using both machine learning and mathematical modeling.
“Nowadays, millions of families are impacted by cancer every year, both emotionally and financially,” he said. “Although there are available cancer treatments, they are often too expensive for financially disadvantaged families. Even worse, the treatments have the potential to not be effective for every patient. I believe mathematics can be an essential tool to help revolutionize cancer treatment. I truly wish to utilize my background in mathematics and programming to aid clinical doctors with a different perspective using mathematical models while treating cancer patients so that they and their families are less burdened by the possibility of expensive treatments failing.”
Kyle plans to gain more research experience this summer through internships, and after earning his doctorate degree wants to work as a research scientist at a national laboratory or government agency.
Uchenna Osia
Uchenna is a Ph.D. student in geospatial analytics.
Her research is about building a framework for data mindfulness that adequately incorporates the social identities, experiences and education of researchers and validates approaches intended to improve algorithmic fairness. Uchenna argues that algorithms are becoming crucial in our decision making infrastructure, from education to criminal justice and that it is critical to understand the role of data in an algorithm’s potential to both help and harm. Broader mindfulness of the education-to-algorithm connection is a pivotal first step towards improving awareness and implementing action to combat biases, gaps, and big data blind spots produced by the lack of context in data.
“All people deserve to be visible through the data that is used in the production of technology,” she said. “The extractive nature of big data we use today makes it easy to lose sight of the people the data represents. As a Black data scientist, I have experienced firsthand how much representation matters, so I want to ensure that all communities are considered in the production and analysis of digital data.”
Uchenna plans to travel to teach English in Malaysia in 2021 as part of the Fulbright student program. She also plans to continue her work at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory until earning her Ph.D. from NC State.
Zachary Parks
Zachary is a Ph.D. student in computer science and quantum computing.
To advance research into quantum-enabled applications, Zachary proposes using state-of-the-art quantum computing resources to develop robust pulse-model programming software toolkits that will provide domain researchers with hardware and application-aware calibration frameworks and quantum primitives. His research will consist of investigating and implementing the latest methods of quantum processor characterization and gate-level noise and error mitigation (NEM), working closely with application domain QIS researchers to design custom pulse-level operations, and eventually the development of reliable, user-friendly software toolkits that enable the deployment of pulse-level calibration frameworks and NEM methods across quantum-enabled application domains.
“The increasing availability of cloud-accessible, noisy intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) computers has generated a fast-growing interest in applying quantum information science towards solving complex problems across many application domains,” he said. “However, one of the more pressing challenges facing QIS researchers in these application domains is obtaining reliable results from the current generation of quantum processors. My research aims to assist in overcoming this challenge.”
This summer, Zachary plans to continue his research involving the simulation of high-energy physics applications on quantum computers and to publish a paper on his findings.
Andy Rivas
Andy is a Ph.D. student in nuclear engineering and is a member of the American Nuclear Society.
His research aims to make the nuclear generation cycle more efficient and cost effective as possible so that nuclear power can be used to produce clean energy long into the future and sustain the environment for future generations.
“For the summer I will be an intern for Idaho National Laboratory performing uncertainty quantification of a reactor system,” he said. “My long-term career goal is to conduct fission technology research to further the nuclear industry throughout the 21st century. I will apply my skills in simulating reactors, quantifying uncertainty, and utilizing machine learning techniques to increase efficiency in the nuclear generation cycle. I plan to remain in academia and acquire a professorship at a research institution. This role will allow me to continue my research in fission technology and advocate for nuclear power while inspiring the next generation of engineers.”
April Sharp
April earned an undergraduate degree in environmental sciences this summer. She was an undergraduate researcher in the Tarpy Lab, a member of the University Scholars Program, a University Honors and Scholars forum assistant, an ambassador for the College of Natural Resources, and previously served as a mentor in the Women in Science and Engineering Program.
During her undergraduate career, April studied the pollination ecology and the foraging behaviors of bees in agricultural ecosystems, with a specific focus on the trends of flower visitation and pollen collection. As a graduate student, she plans to continue researching the role that pollen plays in the mutualistic relationships between plants and their pollinators. She is specifically interested in the role that pollen plays in the mediation of bee pathogens and if those mutualistic relationships can be used to develop effective conservation strategies for native bees.
“Native bees are currently experiencing population declines and the spread of pathogens is a threat to these important species,” she said. “Previous research has shown that the nectar and pollen of some plants have certain characteristics that help mitigate the pathogen loads of bees. These fascinating relationships between plants, pollinators, and pollinator-pathogens is the inspiration for my research and I hope to investigate what specific factors contribute to this mutualistic effect.”
April will begin graduate studies at NC State this fall in the biology program and work at Irwin Lab.
James Skripchuk
James is a Ph.D. student in computer science education.
He is interested in how educators can use data-driven methods to make learning computer science more accessible and authentic, and the goal of his research is to practically verify data-driven results and systems in classrooms, allowing instructors to gain more insight into the troubles their students face. This spring, he was investigating how students learn and conceptualize machine learning models by analyzing log data from data-science programming environments.
“During my undergraduate studies at the University of Delaware, I had the opportunity to be on a project to implement computational thinking skills into general education courses,” he said. “I used this time to co-design a course, Computational Thinking in Music, in which non-STEM majors used statistical methods and computer science skills as well as their own subjective tastes to compose a song in the style of their favorite artist.
“Creating and running this course made me realize how much I love teaching computer science, which led me down the path of realizing that I want to pursue computer science education research,” he continued. “I chose data-driven research because my background as a computer scientist gives me a unique set of tools to analyze and interpret data.”
After earning his Ph.D., James plans to become a professor at a research university, with a focus on studying how computer science instructors can make use of data-driven curricula to provide experiences that increase learners’ conceptual mastery and motivate them to pursue an interest in computer science. He also wants to become an effective communicator to create informed citizens who are aware of the diverse uses of computer science, and how it can be used to impact their daily lives.
Ana Sofia Uzsoy
Ana earned an undergraduate degree in physics and computer science with a minor in math and oboe performance this summer. During her undergraduate studies, she was president of the Women in Physics club and a member of the College of Sciences Ambassadors.
Ana’s research revolves around ultra-short period (USP) planets, which are exoplanets that have an orbital period, or “year,” less than one Earth day. She has worked to update the catalog of USP planets discovered with the Kepler mission and present their radius distribution and occurrence rates. The results of her research allows scientists to constrain the potential formation mechanisms of USP planets and will help characterize a broad diversity of exoplanets.
“Exoplanets are a particularly exciting area of research because many of them have Earth-like properties, and it's possible that some of them could be habitable,” she said. “I love studying exoplanets because it's like a puzzle — we can't directly observe or measure them, so we have to figure out everything we can from the things we are able to measure, like host star luminosities and spectra.”
In addition to being awarded by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program, Ana has accepted a Churchill Scholarship for a M.Phil. in machine learning and machine intelligence at Cambridge. She later plans to pursue a Ph.D. in astrophysics.
Mariely Vega Gómez
Mariely is a Ph.D. student in biology with a focus on freshwater ecology. She is a member of the Department of Applied Ecology's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee and the Biology Graduate Program Peer Mentoring Network.
Mariely’s research is focused on assessing how tropical montane stream ecosystems respond to natural disturbances, specifically droughts and hurricanes. To answer this question, she is conducting fieldwork in the streams of El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico, where the macroinvertebrate assemblages that inhabit those streams will serve as model organisms to test her hypotheses.
“The inspiration for my research stems from the appreciation I have towards [Puerto Rico] and its natural resources, as well as concern for the current data gaps and lack of preparedness to protect our freshwater systems from current and future disturbance patterns.”
She plans to continue fieldwork in the streams of El Yunque and to take advantage of every resource that the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program can provide towards professional development. She also wants to conduct long-term, meaningful and impactful research in the field of freshwater ecology.
Alyssa Taylor
Alyssa is a Ph.D. student in biomathematics and cardiovascular modeling. As an undergraduate at Virginia Wesleyan University, she was a member of the women’s volleyball team. At NC State, she is the secretary of the Association of Women in Mathematics.
Alyssa is currently working on the Fontan Project, which focuses on investigating the effects of a Fontan circulation using a patient-specific model. A Fontan circulation is a univentricular circulation that is a result of a series of reconstructive surgeries. The type of patients she studies who undergo these surgeries are Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS) patients. This project uses computational modeling to study if patients with aortic reconstruction experience excessive aortic remodeling impacting perfusion of the brain and vital organs. Using 4D MRI images and MRI angiograms, she is able to set up a systemic arterial network and generate patient-specific predictions of ventricular afterload, wave-propagation, wave-intensity and energy loss.
“My interest in research on biological problems first began because many of my family members were born with genetic diseases such as Chiari malformations,” she explained. “I also experienced relatively young family members suffering from strokes, which led to early onset Alzheimer's disease. Following two Research Experiences for Undergraduates and a desire to understand how malfunctions, in particular biological systems, affect our health long term, I knew that I wanted to pursue biomathematics. I had already been working with Dr. Olufsen when this research opportunity came along, and I could not turn it down. I feel that I am directly helping to improve the lives of those affected by HLHS as well as the scientific community through this research.”
Alyssa plans to publish a paper with preliminary results and continue building on her current research. In the future, she hopes to continue her research in cardiovascular modeling and mentor others through her work.
Sreeram Venkat
Sreeram earned an undergraduate degree in applied mathematics and physics this summer. He is a Goodnight Scholar, an NC Science Olympiad Ambassador and a member of Phi Beta Kappa honor society. He is also a member of the Service Raleigh Web Committee and outreach coordinator for the Undergraduate Research Club.
His research aims to develop methods that determine a nonlinear manifold to fit the data, determine which conservation laws may apply to the data, and create an ROM that preserves these conservation laws.
“I was inspired by the work of Dr. Kevin Carlberg at the University of Washington and Facebook Reality Labs, who developed a scheme for creating conservative reduced order models based on manifold learning. I hope to pursue a Ph.D. in applied mathematics and continue to research mathematical modeling of physical and biological phenomena.”