UC Santa Barbara Materials PhD student Anya Mulligan has received a prestigious 2025 Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The five-year Fellowship provides three years of financial support, including an annual stipend of $37,000, as well as opportunities for international research and professional development. This year, 1,000 students nationwide were offered NSF Fellowships, less than half as many as last year.
A second-year materials PhD student, Mulligan says that the NSF Fellowship validates that hard work pays off.
“I came into graduate school knowing I would apply for the Graduate Research Fellowship Program in my second year, which pushed me to prove I could do high-level research while managing coursework, lab responsibilities, and mentoring,” said Mulligan. “I’ve also discovered that academia is the right path for me, largely because of the intellectual freedom it provides. This fellowship gives me the chance to pursue research on my own terms, and I hope it is the start of a long and meaningful career.”
Advised by materials professor Ram Seshadri, Mulligan studies lone pair phenomena in inorganic materials, which can significantly influence optoelectronic properties, such as light absorption, charge transport, and dielectric behavior. Her work to better understand the conditions that lead to stereochemically active lone pairs in crystalline materials could help predict and tune material functionality.
“By disentangling the structural and electronic factors that govern lone pair behavior, I hope to enable more rational design of functional materials,” explained Mulligan, adding that her work supports the development of next-generation optoelectronics and contributes to advancements in energy-efficient and sustainable materials.
In addition to Mulligan, Kyle Lee, a first-year electrical and computer engineering (ECE) PhD student, and Jordan Prescott, a senior electrical engineering student at UCSB who will enter the ECE PhD Porgram in fall 2025, also received NSF Fellowships.
Three students, who earned bachelor’s degrees from UCSB’s COE and are now pursuing graduate degrees elsewhere, also received NSF Fellowships, including Abhiram Devata (chemical engineering), Camille Wardlaw (electrical engineering), and Steven Man (mechanical engineering).
The NSF also issued honorable mention as an academic recognition to meritorious applicants who did not receive fellowship awards. Among the 3,018 students who received honorable mention this year, at least ten of them, have connections to the COE, including three current materials PhD students, including Aaron Huang, Megan Murphy, and Logan Winston.
The GRFP is the nation’s oldest fellowship program that recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students who are pursuing research-based graduate degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. The program is intended to ensure the vitality and diversity of the nation’s scientific and engineering workforce, inspiring future contributions to research, teaching, and scientific innovation. Students can apply to the program before beginning or early in their graduate studies. On average, about 13,000 students submit applications each year. Of the more than 60,000 graduate research fellows who have received GRFP funding since 1952, nearly 50 have gone on to become Nobel laureates, and more than 450 have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
