Two Grad Students Win NSF Fellowship Awards

March 27, 2017 - Two Samueli School graduate students are among 27 UC Irvine students and 2,000 nationwide to earn prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship Awards from the National Science Foundation.

Maryam Asghari and Anthony Lopez earned the three-year fellowship awards based on their outstanding work as graduate students. Each will receive a stipend of $34,000 per year, along with an education allowance for tuition and fees.

Asghari, a mechanical and aerospace engineering doctoral candidate, is affiliated with UCI’s Advanced Power & Energy Program. She is working on integrating and improving dynamic operation and control of solid oxide fuel cells.

Her adviser, Jack Brouwer, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, said Asghari is a worthy choice. “Maryam is one of our brightest and hardest-working students who always creatively solves challenging problems,” he says. “She is also a joy to work with. She very well deserves this prestigious award.”

Lopez, a computer engineering doctoral candidate, works at UCI’s Center for Embedded and Cyber-Physical Systems, where he focuses on autonomous vehicle-related security issues. “Anthony is a determined individual who demonstrates wonderful leadership qualities and the ambition to do good for others,” says his adviser, Mohammad Al Faruque, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science. “I can easily say that Anthony has the intellectual merit and potential for broader impact required to take on … challenges in upcoming cyber-physical system technologies.”

More than 13,000 applications were received for this year’s Graduate Research Fellowship Awards. Past winners include former U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Google founder Sergey Brin, 42 Nobel laureates and more than 450 members of the National Academy of Sciences.

- Anna Lynn Spitzer