Brown University Engineering seniors Alicia Chandler, Joseph DePinho, Gannon Lemaster, Julia Patterson, Tosten Pearson and Kailee Tanaka, graduate students Morgan Congdon and Isaac Díaz Becdach, and recent alumni Filip Aubrecht ’24, Mayayi Izzo ’24, Alex Green ’25, Seo-Ho Lee ’25 and Serena Vu ’25 have each been been awarded a three-year fellowship in the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP). Additionally, Emilia Mann ’22 and Keller Morrison ’25 were named as honorable mention recipients.
The GRFP is one of the nation's most prestigious fellowship programs, providing three years of financial support, over five years, to graduate students who have demonstrated potential for significant achievements in research. Offer recipients were selected from a highly competitive pool of nearly 14,000 applicants nationwide, representing all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, based on their intellectual merit and broader impacts, including the potential to contribute to scientific innovation.
For more than 75 years, GRFP has played a critical role in developing the talent pipeline required for sustaining U.S. leadership in science. The NSF GRFP helps ensure the vitality of the human resource base of science and engineering in the United States and reinforces its diversity. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported STEM disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited United States institutions. NSF Fellows are anticipated to become knowledge experts who can contribute significantly to research, teaching, and innovations in science and engineering. These individuals are crucial to maintaining and advancing the nation’s technological infrastructure and national security as well as contributing to the economic well-being of society at large.
Filip Aubrecht ’24 is currently a material scientist at Formlabs, developing new materials for stereolithography additive manufacturing. At Brown, he worked with Professor Benjamin McDonald researching the synthesis and stimuli responsiveness of bio-inspired, polyelectrolyte hydrogel materials, while earning degrees in mechanical engineering, and biochemistry and molecular biology. He also spent much of his time in the Brown Design Workshop, both as a captain of the Brown Formula Racing Team and as a workshop monitor. He plans to pursue his graduate studies at Stanford University in the Department of Chemistry.
Allie Chandler ’26 is a senior studying materials science and engineering. She interned at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory, where she used computational modeling and advanced diffraction techniques to study the structural response of materials to laser stimuli. Her senior honors thesis in Assistant Professor Lucas Caretta’s lab is based on synchrotron experiments using ultrafast laser pulses to control the structure of layered complex oxide materials. At Brown, Chandler has also performed thin-film deposition and characterization in Professor Nitin Padture’s lab and investigated magnetic nanomaterials for bacteria separation applications in Professor Vicki Colvin’s lab. In addition to her research, she has been a teaching assistant for ENGN0410 Materials Science, co-led a service club hosting environmental science and justice workshops for high school students, and interned with the Office of Sustainability and Resiliency. After graduation, Chandler will start her Ph.D. in materials science at the California Institute of Technology.
Morgan Congdon is a first-year Ph.D. student in Assistant Professor Lucas Caretta’s group studying materials science and engineering. She also is a Brown Graduate School Mae Williamson Simmons Fellow, and serves on Brown’s Graduate Engineering Council. Her research focuses on structure- and symmetry-guided synthesis of non-trivial magnetic topologies in complex oxides for beyond-CMOS microelectronics applications. Prior to Brown, Congdon graduated with her bachelors of science in materials science and engineering and with a certificate in semiconductor materials from the University of Florida in 2025. During this time, she was a member of the Society of Women Engineers and President of the UF Material Advantage chapter. Congdon built her skill and passion for novel electronic materials research with Dr. Riley Need in the Quantum Materials Design Group at UF, with Dr. Darrell G. Schlom and Maya Ramesh at the NSF PARADIM REU at Cornell University, and with Dr. Jennifer Hite in the Advanced Laboratory for Bandgap Engineering, Research, and Technology at UF.
Joseph DePinho ’26 is a senior concentrating in Engineering Physics and a researcher in Professor Yusong Bai’s research group in chemistry, where he studies the optical and electronic properties of 2D materials. Last summer, he participated in the University of Michigan's summer REU program called M-SHORE (Michigan – Semiconductor Hands On Research Experience), working in Professor Zheshen Zhang’s research group to develop silicon nitride photonic integrated circuits which harness quantum states of light to lower the noise floor of optical sensors. More recently, he has worked under the joint advisorship of Professor Bai and engineering Professor Jimmy Xu to build a computational model that simulates how circularly polarized emitters in 2D materials can couple light unidirectionally into a photonic waveguide. DePinho has served as a teaching assistant for ENGN0510 Electricity and Magnetism and ENGN0720 Thermodynamics and is a member of the Tau Beta Pi Honors Society. He will attend UC Santa Barbara in the fall to begin his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, with a focus on electronics and photonics.
Isaac Díaz Becdach is currently pursuing a biomedical engineering Ph.D. at Brown in Professor Theresa Raimondo’s research group. He is interested in harnessing epitranscriptomics to develop more potent and stable RNA therapeutics while optimizing lipid nanoparticle delivery vehicles using machine learning. This research has applications in targeted cancer immunotherapy for primary and metastatic lesions, and in increasing RNA shelf-life stability. Having witnessed how a lack of therapeutic access can accelerate cancer progression in his own family, Díaz Becdach aims to reduce cold chain reliance, which currently prevents novel RNA cancer therapeutics from reaching the world’s most vulnerable populations. While at Brown, Díaz Becdach has been immersed in the entrepreneurship ecosystem through NSF-iCorps & Brown Technology Innovations, and culturally through the Latinx Graduate Collective. Additionally, he served as a teaching assistant for ENGN 1110 Transport and Biotransport Processes and ENGN 1490 Biomaterials. Before Brown, Díaz Becdach worked as a technical associate at MIT and the Broad Institute in Dr. Robert Langer and Dr. Giovanni Traverso’s research groups, developing mRNA drug delivery devices, which led to Nature and Nature Nanotechnology publications. He graduated with a bachelor’s of science in chemical engineering from the University of South Florida.
Alex Green ’25 is a Ph.D. in Princeton's RandLab, a group that studies the optical and electrical properties of thin film materials and devices. While at Brown, he concentrated in engineering physics and was a member of Assistant Professor Lucas Caretta’s lab, investigating the incorporation of superconducting materials into spintronics through the fabrication of superconducting/magnetic multilayers. Green also conducted research at Columbia and Université Paris-Saclay through summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs with a similar focus on materials/device fabrication. He served as the vice president of the Brown Bears National Society of Black Physicists chapter, of which he was a founding member, and was awarded a GEM Fellowship, sponsored by 3M Company, working as a graduate summer intern in 2025.
Seo-Ho Lee ’25 is a first-year Ph.D. student in biomedical engineering at Cornell, working under Professor Shuibing Chen to develop organoid disease models. As an undergraduate at Brown, Lee was a member of Professor Patrycja Dubielecka-Szczerba’s hematology/oncology laboratory, where she investigated how the bone marrow stromal microenvironment can provide a protective niche for acute myeloid leukemia cells. These characteristics could provide predictive biomarkers for patient-specific responses to acute myeloid leukemia chemotherapy. Outside of the lab, Lee was a teaching assistant for ENGN 1490 Biomaterials and ENGN 1110 Transport and Biotransport Processes. She also served as the Volunteer Co-Director and Event Supervisor for Brown University Science Olympiad. Lee also created a research internship through the Dubielecka Lab, where she mentored a Providence high school student pursuing firsthand research experience. Outside of Brown, she was an intern for BioBus, an organization that provides hands-on science education for K-12 students throughout New England.
Gannon Lemaster ’26 is a senior studying electrical engineering with interests in photonics, computing, and machine learning. At Brown, he is currently a member of Professor Kimani Toussaint’s PROBE lab and the ARC Lab led by Professor Peipei Zhou. He has also conducted research at the Cornell NanoScale Facility and the National Institute for Materials Science on the fabrication of millimeter-wave interposers and wavelength-selective thermal absorbers/emitters. Previously, he received an SPIE Optics and Photonics Scholarship for his work on a collaboration between Professors Toussaint and Daniel Mittleman on terahertz optical coherence. In the fall, he will join the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Ph.D. student.
Mayayi Izzo ’24 is currently a technician in the Teplensky Lab at Boston University, working on modulating immune responses using nanomaterials. This fall, she will begin pursuing a Ph.D. in chemical engineering at Vanderbilt University, joining the Chapman Lab to conduct research focused on B cell therapeutics. As an undergraduate at Brown, Izzo concentrated in biomedical engineering and completed her honor’s thesis in Professor Anita Shukla’s lab on developing targeted nanoparticles to combat bacterial infections. Outside of research, she was involved in the student organizations China Care Brown and Brown Alzheimer’s Activists.
Julia Patterson ’26 is a senior biomedical engineer whose research focuses on improving drug delivery systems through biomaterials to enhance disease treatment and patient outcomes. For the past three years, she has conducted research in Professor Anita Shukla’s Biomaterials Lab, where she developed nanoparticle-based therapies to treat Staphylococcus infections. In addition to her research, Julia has served as a teaching assistant for ENGN 0720 Thermodynamics and ENGN 0810 Fluid Mechanics, and has tutored MATH 0200 Multivariable Calculus for three years. She has also been actively involved in mentorship and outreach, serving as a peer advisor with the Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) program, leading events with the Biomedical Engineering Society and the Engineering Departmental Undergraduate Group, and volunteering as a physics tutor at Hope High School. Outside the classroom, Patterson is a captain of the Brown Women’s Club Lacrosse team. She is a recipient of a UTRA fellowship in Shukla’s lab and previously interned at Sanofi in the Global Clinical Immunology department. After graduating this May, Patterson will pursue her Ph.D. in bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania.
Tosten Pearson ’26 is concentrating in materials science and engineering, specializing in electrochemical energy storage systems. Under the guidance of Professor Brian Sheldon, Professor Seunghyun Kim, and Professor Angus Kingon, he is currently researching novel polymer electrolytes for safe and sustainable lithium-ion batteries. His passion for energy materials innovation has led him to pursue multiple internships in industry. He has completed internships at Caelux Corporation, a firm manufacturing perovskite solar cells; and Project K Energy, Inc., a startup developing potassium-ion batteries for fast-charging electric vehicles. Last summer, he held a position as a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow at the California Institute of Technology, where he investigated 3D-architected aqueous zinc-ion batteries under the direction of Professor Julia R. Greer. Outside of the laboratory, Pearson serves as a teaching assistant for ENGN0720 Thermodynamics and is a member of the engineering honor society, Tau Beta Pi. Following his graduation in May, he will begin a Ph.D. in materials science engineering at Princeton University, where he plans to research and develop materials for earth-abundant battery chemistries.
Kailee Tanaka ’26 is a senior at Brown studying biomedical engineering. In Professor Anita Shukla’s lab, her research focuses on developing a drug delivery system for bone regeneration in osteoporosis patients. Over the summers, she has done research on vascularizing kidney organoids through an NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates program and interned in Sanofi’s early drug discovery department. Outside of research, she is the treasurer for Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society, the Pharmaceutical Head for Brown Healthcare Investment Group, a communications intern, and has been a teaching assistant for ENGN1110 Transport and Biotransport Processes, ENGN1230 Instrumentation Design, BIOL0500 Cellular and Molecular Biology, and CHEM0100 Introductory Chemistry. After graduating this May, Tanaka will pursue her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering at Tufts University.
Serena Vu ’25 is a first-year Ph.D. student in mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University in Professor Michelle DiBenedetto’s group. Her research is in environmental fluid mechanics, with a focus on experimental studies of particle motion in turbulence. While at Brown, Vu completed concentrations in mechanical engineering and applied mathematics. She was a Voss Undergraduate Research Fellow in Professor Monica Martinez Wilhemus’ group, presenting the honors thesis “Retrieving Ocean Eddy Signatures from the Arctic Marginal Ice Zone Using Sequential Synthetic Aperture Radar Observations.” Vu spent three years at the Brown Design Workshop as a monitor and manager, taught engineering design courses at the Blackstone Academy Charter School in Pawtucket, R.I., and served as an Outreach Co-Director with the Society of Women Engineers.
Emilia Mann ’22, who received honorable mention honors, is currently a Ph.D. student in texlab, led by Professor Vanessa Sanchez in Rice University’s Mechanical Engineering department. Mann graduated from the Brown|RISD Dual Degree Program in 2022, concentrating in engineering at Brown and apparel design at RISD. While at Brown, she interned at NASA twice — working on Martian habitat development and soft good design — and was supported by the Brown Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award (UTRA), as well as the Rhode Island Space Grant. She was also a member of Better World by Design, a joint Brown-RISD venture that organizes an annual conference centered on design for social good. After graduating, she was a research fellow at the Harvard Biodesign Lab where she led the design and construction of textile-based soft pneumatic wearable robots for stroke patients. Currently, she is researching textile mechanics to create structurally programmable metamaterials that can be fully disassembled to promote a more sustainable manufacturing paradigm.
Honorable mention awardee Keller Morrison ’25 is a first year Ph.D. student in mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University. He is a member of Professor Marcus Hultmark’s FAST lab where he studies the fluid-structure interactions of bridges and wind turbines. Through experiments, he aims to better understand unsteady fluid forcing caused by turbulence. As an undergraduate, his interest in environmental fluid mechanics developed during internships at the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) and the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory. At Brown, he worked in Professor Kenny Breuer’s lab where he investigated the effects of pitching on wind turbine efficiency. Beyond research, Morrison was an active member of the Brown sailing team, where he served as club captain and the ICSA TIDE representative (Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Taskforce) for both his team and the New England district.