NSF GRFP recognizes thirteen CS students for 2025

Photo Credit: N. Sitharaman

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced the recipients of the 2025 Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). 

This prestigious Fellowship was awarded to nine University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Grainger College of Engineering Siebel School of Computing and Data Science students, who were named fellows, and four received honorable mention.

Illinois Siebel School winners were Dai Hung Che, Daniel Feng, Alexi Gladstone, Ayush Khot, Benjamin Kim, Jasper Lee (an incoming PhD student), Jeffrey Liu, John Wu, and Andy Zhou.

Honorable mentions went to Dean E. Alvarez, Maria Lusardi, Javier Nieto and Alan L. Wang. Honorable mentions do not provide funding, but it does significantly boost a young scientist's CV.

The NSF website describes the purpose of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) as helping to ensure the quality, vitality, and strength of the United States ' scientific and engineering workforce. NSF actively encourages the submission of applications from the full spectrum of talent that the US has to offer. The five-year Fellowship provides three years of financial support, including an annual stipend of $37,000.

The 2025 cohort of 1,000 promising young researchers is half the size of its historic cohort. More than 13,000 individuals applied for the award.