Four Texas ECE Students Receive NSF Graduate Research Fellowships

Monday, April 13, 2020

Four Texas ECE students have been awarded Graduate Research Fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines.

Thomas Leonard, a PhD student in Texas ECE, graduated from North Carolina State University in 2018 with a Materials Science and Engineering degree. He is supervised by Prof. Jean Anne Incorvia and joined the Integrated Nano Computing (INC) Lab at Texas ECE in 2019. His current research focuses on three-terminal magnetic tunnel junctions for memory-in-logic computing.

Ian Parker Roberts, a PhD student in Texas ECE, earned his B.S. E.E. at Missouri University of Science and Technology in 2018. He is supervised by Prof. Jeff Andrews and Prof. Sriram Vishwanath, and he is part of the Wireless Networking and Communications Group (WNCG). His technical interests are in wireless communication and interference cancellation. Specifically, his research focuses on the design of beamforming strategies and system architectures that enable full-duplex communication at millimeter-wave.

Cassandra Huff, a senior in Texas ECE, is supervised by Prof. Edward Yu, and she will be pursuing her PhD from Stanford University beginning in the fall. Her research work has consisted of designing and integrating a tunable laser diode into a scanning probe microscopy tool in order to measure carrier trap states and to optically induce an electromechanical response.

Jay Shenoy, a senior double major in ECE and Math, will attend The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign beginning in fall 2020. He is supervised by Prof. Christine Julien and his undergraduate research focused on wireless networking using light.

Additionally, Trent Garrett also received an NSF GRFP. Currently a senior at Boise State University, Trent will be joining the Texas ECE graduate program in Fall 2020 and will be supervised by Prof. Dan Wasserman.

The NSF GRFP is the country’s oldest fellowship program that directly supports graduate students in various STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields. Since 1952, NSF has funded over 50,000 Graduate Research Fellowships out of more than 500,000 applicants. Currently, 42 Fellows have gone on to become Nobel laureates, and more than 450 have become members of the National Academy of Sciences.