Brittany Smith ’20 (EE) awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

Brittany Smith ’20 (EE) has been awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship for 2020. The fellowship provides three years of financial support within a five-year fellowship period, which amounts to a $34,000 annual stipend for graduate study in a STEM field. As an electrical engineering student at UConn, Brittany has been involved in a number of research activities including interning through NREIP, doing nanotechnology research with Prof. Ali Gokirmak, and researching wearable biosensors with Prof. Ki Chon. She worked on an independent project with two other undergraduate students, during which they developed a robot that shoots candy Whoppers into a person’s mouth using facial recognition and tracking. This work was published in a paper at the 2019 IEEE MIT Undergraduate Conference.  Brittany has been a member of the Women in Math, Science, and Engineering (WiMSE) learning community for three years, holding mentoring positions during her sophomore and junior years. Over the past two years, she has been a teaching assistant for ECE 2001 and ENGR 1166 and the vice president of the Navy STEM program at UConn.  She has also been treasurer for HKN (the ECE honor society) and WiMSE Club.  Finally, she has been involved with a number of outreach activities including serving as a UConn tour guide and a member of UConn’s Engineering Ambassadors.  This fall, she will be pursuing her PhD at Duke University with research focused on the development and application of biosensors.  

See UConn Today for more news about other UConn students receiving the NSF GRF.

Categories: News

Published: April 23, 2020

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