Twelve Graduate Students Earn External Fellowships in 2021

Each year, the Pratt School of Engineering encourages graduate students to seek support from external fellowship awards. Earning these competitive fellowships goes a long way toward helping emerging scientists conduct their research while raising Duke Engineering’s profile and research portfolio in turn.

This year, new and returning Duke Engineering graduate students nabbed 12 fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health and the Thai Government.

Fellowship can usually either be activated the year in which they are awarded, or deferred until the following year, as noted in the descriptions below.

“The selection process for these fellowships is incredibly competitive,” said Aaron Franklin, the Addy Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Associate Dean for PhD Education at Duke. “We commend these doctoral students for their hard work and impressive preparation that earned them such top-notch recognition.”

Congratulations to This Year’s Recipients

Ouwen Huang

Undergraduate Institution: Duke University
Duke Faculty Advisor: Mark Palmeri
Department: BME
Fellowship: National Institutes of Health F30
Fellowship Use: Immediate

Christopher Keys

Undergraduate Institution: California State University Sacramento
Duke Faculty Advisor: Krishnendu Chakrabarty
Department: ECE
Fellowship: Department of Defense SMART Scholarship
Fellowship Use: Immediate

Suphachart Leewiwatwong

Undergraduate Institution: King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Thailand
Duke Faculty Advisor: Bastiaan Driehuys
Department: BME
Fellowship: Royal Thai Government Scholarship
Fellowship Use: Immediate

Joy Li

Undergraduate Institution: Cornell University
Duke Faculty Advisor: Tuan Vo-Dinh
Department: BME
Fellowship: The National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship
Fellowship Use: Immediate

Ethan LoCicero

Undergraduate Institution: University of Notre Dame
Duke Faculty Advisor: Leila Bridgeman
Department: MEMS
Fellowship: National Science Foundation
Fellowship Use: Immediate

Ty Naquin

Undergraduate Institution: Troy University
Duke Faculty Advisor: Tony Jun Huang
Department: MEMS
Fellowship: National Science Foundation
Fellowship Use: Immediate

Marisa Patsy

Undergraduate Institution: University of Maryland
Duke Faculty Advisor: Nenad Bursac
Department: BME
Fellowship: National Science Foundation
Fellowship Use: Immediate

Jake Peloquin

Undergraduate Institution: Georgia Institute of Technology
Duke Faculty Advisor: Ken Gall
Department: MEMS
Fellowship: National Science Foundation GRF, National Science Foundation aiM NRT
Fellowship Use: Immediate

Shannon Plunkett

Undergraduate Institution: University of Wisconsin-Madison
Duke Faculty Advisor: Helen Hsu-Kim
Department: CEE
Fellowship: National Science Foundation
Fellowship Use: Deferred

Joseph Rich

Undergraduate Institution: Brigham Young University
Duke Faculty Advisor: Tony Jun Huang
Department: BME
Fellowship: National Science Foundation
Fellowship Use: Immediate

Josh Wu

Undergraduate Institution: Duke University
Duke Faculty Advisor: Timothy Dunn
Department: BME
Fellowship: National Science Foundation
Fellowship Use: Immediate