Two current graduate students in the UC Santa Barbara Materials Department, Anya Mulligan and Logan Winston, have received prestigious 2025 Graduate Research Fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF). They are among the one thousand students nationwide who were offered 2025 Fellowships, which come with three years of financial support, totaling nearly $150,000, in the form of an annual stipend, tuition, and fees.
Mulligan, a second-year PhD student who is advised by materials professor Ram Seshadri, was notified of her fellowship in April, while Winston, who was initially placed on the honorable mention list, found out only in June that he, too, would receive a full fellowship.
Mulligan said that the fellowship validated the idea that hard work pays off. “I came into graduate school knowing I would apply for the Fellowship Program in my second year, which pushed me to prove I could do high-level research while managing coursework, lab responsibilities, and mentoring,” she noted. “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.”
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 advance prediction and tuning of material functionality.
Because Winston received his notice later, he said, “I thought that perhaps it was a scam. It wasn't until I checked their website that I believed the award.”
Advised by assistant professor Daniel Oropeza, Winston studies the mechanisms of ultrasonic atomization, a process in which ultrasonic vibrations are used to create custom metal powder — feedstock — for metal 3D printing. Winston, who earned a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Physics from UC Davis before working as a staff scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is working to optimize the process in order to develop higher-quality feedstock that will provide increased flexibility and efficiency in metal 3D printing. He says that receiving the NSF Fellowship has affirmed the importance of his work.
“I am proud that my proposal was deemed worthy of scientific pursuit, and I am even more passionate and motivated about my research,” said Winston, who earned a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Physics from UC Davis before working as a staff scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “Likewise, I am grateful to the NSF for trusting recipients to pursue our research with minimal intrusion.”