Nearly thirty current students, incoming graduate students, and recent alumni from The Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering (COE) at UC Santa Barbara have been awarded prestigious graduate research fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF), recognizing their exceptional promise in science and engineering. The NSF awarded more than 2,500 fellowships for the 2026-27 academic year from a pool of nearly 14,000 applicants. Recipients are selected based on intellectual merit and broader impacts, including their potential to advance scientific discovery and contribute to society.

 

“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.”

 

The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), one of the nation’s most competitive honors for graduate students in STEM fields, provides three years of financial support over a five-year period. Each fellowship includes a $37,000 annual stipend and a $16,000 cost-of-education allowance, totaling $159,000. 

 

This year’s recipients from COE include fourteen current students, at least eight incoming PhD students, and six alumni who are now pursuing graduate degrees at other institutions. The 2026-27 cohort represents a wide range of disciplines and research areas across the college, spanning six departments from COE: bioengineering, chemical engineering, computer science, electrical and computer engineering, materials, and mechanical engineering. 

 

 

First-year PhD student, Ethan Chen studies the complex supercurrent behavior of hybrid Josephson junctions based on thin-film cadmium arsenide, a two-dimensional topological insulator. His research is aimed at advancing fault-tolerant qubits, a key step toward more efficient quantum computing systems.
 

Advised by materials professor Susanne Stemmer, Chen says the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship provides both validation and opportunity. “The fellowship affirms the confidence I have in my scientific proficiency and highlights the impact of my research support system,” he said, adding that it enables him to pursue more curiosity-driven research into quantum materials.

 

Advised by Distinguished Professor Steven DenBaars, Keyes Eames is a first-year PhD student broadly focused on gallium nitride (GaN) optoelectronics, with potential applications ranging from energy-efficient data communication to ultraviolet sterilization technologies.

 

For Eames, the fellowship’s greatest impact is the flexibility it provides. “The most important professional impact of the award will be academic freedom,” he said. “The flexibility enables me to choose the most impactful research and career path. On the personal side, the incredible research opportunity and implied career trajectory provided by this fellowship feel like an incredibly exciting and weighty responsibility.”

 

Trevor Hagan, Materials PhD student 

First-year PhD student Trevor Hagan, who is co-advised by Rachel Segalman and Craig Hawker, is developing electrostatically crosslinked polymer networks with applications in plastic waste recycling. His research focuses on enabling more efficient reuse and repurposing of polymers, advancing sustainable materials solutions.

 

Raised in rural southern Indiana, Hagan credits his parents for nurturing his early interest in science, often traveling long distances to support his curiosity. Receiving the fellowship marks both a personal and academic milestone.

 

“I am the first in my family ever to attain an academic degree, and thus also the first to pursue a Ph.D.,” he said. “Having received an NSF Fellowship is both personally and academically affirming that multiple blind reviewers found my background, training, and research ideas compelling enough to invest in.”

 

Anika Mahajan Jena, a chemical engineering undergraduate senior, will pursue her PhD at Stanford University, where she will develop and probe advanced functional polymeric materials for health, sustainability, and human advancement. As an undergraduate researcher at UCSB, Jena studied phase separating membrane-actin network composites and tuned their mechanical properties with then-chemical engineering assistant professor Sho Takatori. Later, she engineered supramolecular architectures by coupling DNA nanotubes to condensates with physics professor Deborah Fygenson.
 

Jena, a 2024 Congressional Goldwater Scholar, explains that the NSF Fellowship will support her research beyond traditional funding constraints. “This fellowship will enable me to freely conduct independent, cross-disciplinary work on self-driven research projects,” she said. She indicates possible future research in self-healing, stimuli-responsive, conductive, and biocompatible soft materials.

 

A first-year PhD student, Christopher Koh is exploring the intersection of control theory and machine learning to advance safer, more reliable intelligent systems. Advised by Francesco Bullo, his work focuses on integrating the mathematical rigor of control theory with the flexibility of machine learning, an approach aimed at improving performance in safety-critical applications such as robotics, aerospace systems, and power grids.

 

While machine learning offers powerful new capabilities, its lack of reliability in high-stakes environments remains a key limitation. Koh’s research seeks to address that challenge, developing methods that can meet the demands of real-world deployment where precision and dependability are essential.

 

Receiving the prestigious NSF Fellowship provides both validation and stability early in his graduate career. “Securing funding in the current environment at the federal level provides a large sense of relief,” Koh said. “This allows me to focus more fully on my research and degree requirements, and to pursue work that aims to make these systems more flexible, safe, and reliable.”

 

Ben 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,” he said.

 

Karlee Macaw, a first-year master’s student advised by Ryan Stowers, studies how cells respond to the mechanical properties of their environment, with implications for diseases such as cancer and fibrosis.

Macaw describes the fellowship as a pivotal milestone in her academic journey. “It validates the work I’ve committed to and makes pursuing a PhD focused on mechanobiology research a real possibility,” she said, noting that it provides the freedom to focus on impactful research. 

 

A first-year PhD student advised by Tim Sherwood and Jonathan Balkind, Naomi Rehman works at the intersection of computer architecture and artificial intelligence, aiming to improve AI efficiency and enable privacy-preserving systems on edge devices.

 

Rehman says that the fellowship affirms her academic path and opens new possibilities. “When I switched from robotics to computer engineering with the hope of becoming a computer architect, I was nervous about whether it was a wise decision. Receiving this fellowship feels like a confirmation that it was,” she said. “I’m especially proud to represent women in computer architecture, and I hope receiving this encourages other women to pursue careers in the field. Academically, I’m extremely grateful for the freedom that this fellowship gives me to pursue the work that I find most promising and impactful.”

 

A fourth-year chemistry and biochemistry major, Ava Salami works as an undergraduate researcher in the lab of bioengineering assistant professor Marley Dewey. She investigates the use of cell type-specific extracellular vesicles within biomaterials toward tissue-specific repair in the musculoskeletal system. 

 

A fourth-year undergraduate in the College of Creative Studies, Rohil Shah studies computing with a focus on search systems and artificial intelligence. His research centers on designing efficient, time-aware search engines that can rapidly adapt to new or evolving information, with applications ranging from real-time information retrieval to combating misinformation during breaking events. After graduating, Shah will pursue a master’s degree in computer science at Stanford University.

 

Shah credits his mentors—especially computer science professor Tao Yang, with whom he works most closely—and the broader UCSB community for shaping his academic path and research direction.

 

“Receiving the fellowship feels like the product of their mentorship and guidance,” he said. “It motivates me to take full advantage of this opportunity and to explore the intersection of search systems and artificial intelligence in order to develop technologies that can meaningfully improve people’s lives.”

 

Roenigk Straub, a first-year PhD student advised by Daniel Oropeza, studies parameter-induced porosity in additively manufactured metals, with specific applications in aerospace, electronics cooling, and catalysis.

 

The fellowship has increased Straub’s confidence as he transitions into academic research. “Prior to coming to UCSB, I had been focused on working in industry, so receiving this fellowship has increased my belief in myself as a researcher,” Straub said. “Learning that others see potential in my work further motivates me to make the scientific breakthroughs I outlined in my proposal a reality.”

 

Straub says the fellowship will allow him to broaden the number of alloys and functional properties that he can examine, expanding the potential impact of his work to a wider range of next-generation technologies.

 

A first-year PhD student advised by Elliot Hawkes and Tobia Marcucci, Andres Torres is developing autonomous capabilities for soft robots designed to safely interact with humans, similar, Torres says, to “Baymax from the movie, Big Hero 6.” 

 

Torres describes the award as both a personal milestone and a reflection of strong mentorship at UCSB. “Receiving the NSF Fellowship means so much to me,” said Torres. “I definitely would not have won this without the amazing resources and faculty here at UCSB, especially my advisors. This fellowship will enable me to pursue my dream of working on robotics research!”

 

Christopher Xu, a first-year PhD student advised by Elliot Hawkes, develops highly agile robotic systems capable of navigating complex environments, with applications in exploration and environmental monitoring. For example, he is working on a robot that jumps into trees like a squirrel.

 

Xu says the fellowship allows him to fully immerse himself in research. “I can focus entirely on research, which is what I came here to do,” he said, adding that the support gives him the freedom to explore ambitious ideas that might otherwise be difficult to pursue. “I love the work that I do in the lab like a hobby, and I am grateful to be able to do it with so much flexibility.”

 

Roland Yin, a senior undergraduate in electrical engineering, conducts research on quantum and inorganic materials under the guidance of professors Stephen Wilson and Ram Seshadri. His work explores structure-property relationships, beginning with energy-efficient synthesis of sodium battery cathodes and evolving to superconducting materials for quantum applications.

 

Currently, Yin investigates electronic correlations in kagome superconductors, a quasi-two-dimensional class of materials that exhibit an interplay between unconventional superconductivity and charge-density waves. By selectively alloying and doping these systems, he aims to understand how electron–electron interactions emerge and to leverage intrinsic Josephson effects for quantum sensing applications, including high-sensitivity radio-frequency detection in quantum computers and atomic clocks.

 

“Receiving the NSF GRFP is both exciting and deeply validating,” Yin said. “It recognizes the research I have pursued over the past few years as a meaningful contribution to quantum technologies, and it affirms that I have the potential to grow into an independent researcher who can frame interesting questions, discover innovative solutions, and communicate noteworthy results. As someone who envisions a future in academia, being selected by NSF gives me a strong sense of support heading into my PhD and academic career.”

 

In addition to the fourteen current engineering students, at least eight incoming PhD students who will begin their studies at UCSB this fall, and six recent alumni now pursuing graduate degrees at other universities, also received NSF Graduate Research Fellowships. 

 

• Stephanie Anujarerat (Chemical Engineering), now at Carnegie Mellon University

• Marcus Condarcure (Chemical Engineering), now at Purdue University

• August Dolmatch (Chemistry), research assistant in the lab of Carolyn Mills (Bioengineering)

• Aaron Huang (Physics), undergraduate researcher in the lab of Omar Saleh (Materials), now at the University of Chicago 

• Sofia Rivalta Popescu (Chemical Engineering), now at Stanford University

• Anton Semerdjiev (Chemical Engineering), now at the California Institute of Technology

 

• Three in the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department

• Two each in the departments of Bioengineering and Materials 

• One in the Chemical Engineering Department

 

Established in 1952, the GRFP has supported over 70,000 graduate research fellows, many of whom have gone on to become leaders in research and innovation. More than 40 former fellows have received Nobel Prizes, underscoring the program’s long-standing role in advancing scientific innovation and leadership.