11/11/2025 Andrew Helregel
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications awarded Fiddler Innovation Fellowships to 38 Illinois students and researchers, honoring their outstanding achievements and interdisciplinary contributions to NCSA programs. The twelve from computer science are Heather Broome, Aashvi Busa, Fiona Campbell, Nhi Dinh, Kyle Keliuotis, Kai Karadi, Adarsh Krishnan, Pari Kulkarni, Emma Maxwell, Ritsika Medury, Mingqian Wang and Rui Zhou.
Written by Andrew Helregel
On October 31, 2025, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications awarded Fiddler Innovation Fellowships to 38 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign students and researchers, honoring their outstanding achievements and interdisciplinary contributions to NCSA programs, including Students Pushing Innovation, NCSA’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates programs: REU FoDoMMaT and Design for America, as well as those who worked with NCSA-affiliated faculty.
12 Computer Science Fiddler Innovation Fellowship Awardees
- Heather Broome Computer Science
- Aashvi Busa Computer Science
- Fiona Campbell Information Sciences + Data Science
- Nhi Dinh Mathematics, Statistics & Computer Science
- Kyle Keliuotis Brain & Cognitive Science, Computer Science Minor
- Kai Karadi Computer Science
- Adarsh Krishnan Computer Science + Philosophy
- Pari Kulkarni Computer Science + Economics
- Emma Maxwell Computer Science + Linguistics
- Ritsika Medury Statistics & Computer Science
- Mingqian Wang Mathematics & Computer Science
- Rui Zhou Computer Science
The awards are part of a $2 million endowment from Jerry Fiddler and Melissa Alden to the University of Illinois in support of student and faculty interdisciplinary research initiatives through the Illinois Emerging Digital Research and Education in Arts Media (eDream) Institute at NCSA. The 38 awardees represent students whose outstanding interdisciplinary contributions to their projects showcased a wide range of research interests and domains, including environmental sustainability, music, personalized nutrition, agriculture and astronomy.
NCSA is very grateful to have the generous support of Jerry Fiddler and Melissa Alden in providing this opportunity for our brightest student innovators. These students never cease to amaze me with their creativity and resourcefulness while utilizing NCSA’s research computing tools in imaginative and thoughtful ways. —Bill Gropp, NCSA Director
SPIN participant Emma Maxwell (Computer Science + Linguistics) relied heavily on her experience in the internship program for her project titled “Quantifying the Impact of Scientific Documentaries Using Natural Language Processing,” which led to her receiving a Fiddler Innovation Fellowship Award. “Working on my SPIN project has allowed me to creatively approach my research,” Maxwell said. “The SPIN program’s poster presentation and lightning talk sessions have encouraged me to think about articulating my findings for a variety of audiences and to adapt my data presentation to different mediums. Additionally, my project has pushed me to think creatively in order to solve problems of modeling and quantifying highly qualitative text information, such as viewer enjoyment and learning.”
Through NCSA’s Center for Artificial Intelligence Innovation (CAII), three awardees collaborated on the mobile application Visual Nutrition, which utilizes AI photo recognition to track an individual’s meal data. The different academic backgrounds of Fiona Campbell (Information Sciences + Data Science) in the School of Information Sciences, Kai Karadi (Computer Science) in the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science and Torrie Blasko in Food Science & Human Nutrition all came together to create the final outcome in this interdisciplinary project.
“Working across disciplines challenged me to think beyond my individual skill sets,” Campbell said. “I learned how nutritional facts and psychology informed our data, how specific design choices could make insights more human, and how to navigate the trial-and-error experience of computer engineering. Combining these various backgrounds allowed Visual Nutrition to become an application that is personal, intuitive, and created for everyone.”
“I come from the computer science and electrical and computer engineering side for the Visual Nutrition project, and for me, how that slotted into the wider picture was pretty clear from the get-go. The goal was AI for nutrition,” Karadi said. “What I found to be so interesting was when the two fields did not align well. For us, it happened when our chatbot believed user meal histories were 100% factual, while a dietitian would press if the user had only submitted one meal in 24 hours. That disconnect made it abundantly clear to me how much further AI has to go, but also ignited the creativity required to work around the shortcomings. I think it’s something you can only get when working across disciplines.”
“Our team was able to provide a variety of different types of experience to the application of Visual Nutrition, and each aspect was critical to its development,” Blasko said. “The nutrition side, which I was a part of, was able to implement reliable sources into the application of the project and ensure that the feedback was in alignment with current guidelines. This was a big priority of ours as we wanted the users to be able to obtain accurate and reliable information. The technical part of the team was able to make the application come to life and make it appealing and practical to the user. Their different perspectives allowed us to recognize what was possible in the application of the app.”
These are just a few examples of the student research experience at NCSA during the 2024-25 academic year and summer of 2025. The 38 Fiddler Innovation Fellowship awardees represent an outstanding cohort that worked on a wide variety of impactful projects, ranging from “Exploring Quantum Sound and Music” to developing SALIDtranslit for Indian language transliteration, and even launching startup companies like Tandemn.
Congratulations to all of the 2025 Fiddler Innovation Fellows!