Five Knights have earned the most prestigious STEM research fellowship in the United States. Another six have earned honorable mentions for the award.
Five UCF alums have received U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships (GRF), which supports outstanding graduate students in STEM disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited U.S. institutions. The five-year fellowship includes three years of financial support with an annual stipend of $37,000 and a cost of education allowance of $16,000 to the institution. Each award is valued up to $159,000.
“This is a campuswide achievement that could not be possible without the support of faculty like [Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric] Laurie Pinkert, and other academic support offices such as Honors Research and Academic Advancement Programs,” says Morgan Bauer, director of the Office of Prestigious Awards in UCF’s Burnett Honors College.
The Knights who are named fellows are:
Laurie Agosto ’19
Applied sciences alum with a biology minor
College of Undergraduate Studies
College of Sciences
Saoulkie Bertin ’23
Interdisciplinary studies alum with a medical anthropology minor and anthropology of global health certificate
Burnett Honors College
College of Undergraduate Studies
College of Sciences
Stephen Staklinski ’20
Biomedical sciences alum
Burnett Honors College
College of Medicine
Andres Torres-Figueroa ’24
Aerospace engineering alum
College of Engineering and Computer Science
Stephanie Washburn ’24
Psychology alum with a statistics minor
Burnett Honors College
College of Sciences
Those who received honorable mentions are:
Rachel Cooper
Psychology doctoral student
College of Sciences
Michael Kwara ’22
Mechanical engineering alum; mechanical engineering master’s student
Burnett Honors College
College of Engineering and Computer Science
Andrea Mullin
Psychology student
Burnett Honors College
College of Sciences
Fahad Nabid ’23
Aerospace engineering alum
Burnett Honors College
College of Engineering and Computer Science
Sachin Shah ’22
Computer science alum
Burnett Honors College
College of Engineering and Computer Science
Nyle Siddiqui
Computer science doctoral student
College of Engineering and Computer Science
For some graduates, such as Bertin and Washburn, the journey to the fellowship was assisted through their involvement with the Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program, a U.S. Department of Education program that aims to increase the attainment of doctoral degrees by students from underrepresented segments of society.
Through the McNair Scholars Program, Bertin conducted summer research at John Hopkins University and participated in a global health internship in Puerto Rico while she earned a degree in interdisciplinary studies at UCF.
In 2021, Bertin led a point-of-sale task force in promoting a healthier and tobacco-free county through a collaboration between UCF and the Florida Department of Health (FDOH) in Orange County. For her work, she received the FDOH Health Equity Hero Award, which recognizes public health individuals in the community. The work also led to a thesis in 2023 examining the culture of local activist groups in Central Florida and their influence nicotine-related policy change, using data collected through participant observation and semi-structured interviews with activist group members, key actors, and nicotine users in Volusia County and Orange counties.
As an incoming global and sociocultural sciences doctoral student at with Florida International University, she will further her research interests at the intersection of climate change and the intricate interplay of government and industry policies concerning food, tobacco/nicotine, and their health implications.
“I like community-engaged research, so [I] definitely [have done] a lot of volunteering in the community [and] I know that can help inform my research in the long term,” Bertin says.
While at UCF, Washburn, a psychology major with a specialization in neuroscience, mainly investigated identity research, which examines how one’s characteristics can ultimately shape resiliency and adaptation in the face of trauma. In particular, her work explored identity’s impact on executive functions, which are dominated by the prefrontal cortex and consist of planning and time organization.
Her research led her to studying at MIT, as well as a TEDx talk, titled The Kaleideoscope of You. As part of the GRF, she has been accepted to the University of Florida, where she’ll be a doctoral candidate in psychology and will focus on furthering her research on Alzheimer’s disease.
“As populations get older, we’re striving for keeping them independent and we don’t really know how. That drove me more toward the aging side of things,” Washburn says. “My grandmother also passed away with Alzheimer’s disease, so there’s a personal motivation as well, in addition to the fascination with neuroscience.”
The McNair Scholars Program not only provided students like Bertin and Washburn with research opportunities, but also support and guidance to apply for the NSF fellowship, ultimately taking their studies even further.
“For me, I needed something outside to push me and empower me to apply, and that was my mentor, [Associate Professor of Anthropology] Shana Harris,” Bertin says. “She and the director of the McNair program, [Michael Aldarondo-Jeffries], told me ‘I think you’d be a good fit.’ Now, if there’s an opportunity and I don’t think I fit, I shrug it off and apply because the worst thing they can say is ‘no.’ Not applying is an automatic no.”
Those interested in the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship program and other opportunities, please reach out to the Office of Prestigious Awards at OPA@ucf.edu.
