20 NSF fellowships awarded to Rice students for graduate study

FROM RICE NEWS STAFF REPORTS

Twenty Rice students are among the 2,000 students chosen from 12,000 applicants for the 2012 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP).

The program recognizes and financially supports students early in their careers who have the potential to be high-achieving scientists and engineers. A high priority for NSF and the GRFP is to increase the diversity of the science and engineering workforce, including geographic distribution and the participation of women, minorities, persons with disabilities and veterans.

The six Rice seniors and 14 Rice graduate students chosen as NSF graduate research fellows will receive support for three years of graduate study leading to research-based master’s or doctoral degrees in the fields of science and engineering relevant to the NSF’s mission. In addition to an annual stipend of $30,000 for the students, NSF will provide an annual cost-of-education allowance of $12,000 to their graduate school.

“The NSF GRFP is one of the nation’s most prestigious awards for students in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics),” said Paula Sanders, dean of graduate and postdoctoral studies at Rice. “In addition to these new recipients, Rice has 33 current graduates who are NSF GRFP awardees.”

Since its inception in 1952, the NSF GRFP has funded 46,500 fellows; 30 of them became Nobel laureates and 440 became members of the National Academy of Sciences.

Recipients of the 2012 fellowships and their fields of study and graduate schools are:

Graduate students

* Christopher Alex Arevalos, bioengineering, Rice University.

* Camille Rene Barnett, cultural anthropology, Rice University.

* Mario Javier Bencomo, applied mathematics, Rice University.

* Chad Paul Byers, solid-state physics, Rice University.

* Frederick Campbell, statistics, Rice University.

* Zachary Crannell, bioengineering, Rice University.

* Evan Jackson Everett, communication and information theory, Rice University.

* Paul Haugen, electrical and electronic engineering, Rice University.

* Lydia Kisley, chemical measurement and imaging, Rice University.

* Joao Paulo Mattos Almeida, bioengineering, Rice University.

* Erin Lee O’Brien, biochemistry, Rice University.

* Jana Marie Olson, macromolecular, supramolecular and nanochemistry, Rice University.

* Stacy Lee Prukop, polymer engineering, Rice University.

* Anthony Clyde Simms, algebra, number theory and combinatorics, Rice University.

Seniors

* Michael Eastwood, astronomy and astrophysics, University of Chicago.

* Peter Howard Fobel, civil engineering, University of California, Berkeley.

* Georgia Kerasia Lagoudas, bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley.

* David Aaron Moses, bioengineering, University of California, San Digeo.

* Elizabeth Scott Van Itallie, molecular biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

* David Aaron Younger, bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley.

Seven Rice students were given an honorable mention by the NSF GRFP: Graduate students Jason Reed Holloway, Amanda Mallorie Jones, Robert Patrick LiKamWa, Andrea Erin Schlather, Michelle Elizabeth Sneck and seniors Tal Einav and Jean Kim.