Four SBS Students Earn NSF Graduate Research Fellowships
Congratulations to the four SBS students who were awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, one of the most prestigious graduate fellowships in the nation by the National Science Foundation!
The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program recognizes students in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, supporting the development of the nation's STEM workforce. Awardees receive three years of financial support for graduate studies, including a $34,000 annual stipend and $12,000 cost-of-education allowance to the graduate institution, along with other benefits. Twenty-one students associated with the University of Arizona received the award.
Gitanjali Gnanadesikan is a graduate student in the School of Anthropology. Her research focuses on cognitive evolution and social behavior, especially in the context of domestication. By comparing domestic dogs, wolves, and a population of selectively bred service dogs, she works to shed light on domestication and similar processes.
Dino Kadich is currently a senior in the School of Geography and Development. His honors thesis, an exploration of youth politics through the lens of popular culture, was based on independent research in Bosnia. In graduate school, he intends to continue his research on youth activism and the politics of memory in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Kadich is declining the NSF fellowship as he has accepted the Gates Cambridge Fellowship! He will study at Cambridge University in the fall.
Danielle Soza is a graduate student in the School of Anthropology. Across the U.S. Southwest, preceramic hunter-gatherer archaeology lags behind research focusing on the advent of agriculture and sedentism. Soza’s research aims to understand the evolution of Paleoindian and Archaic groups in the Southwest by investigating their colonization of and persistence in this arid landscape.
Julia Yang is a first-year master's student in the School of Geography and Development. She will investigate how forest ecosystems interact with a changing global environment across a range of spatial scales, focusing on the semi-arid forest on Mount Bigelow in the Santa Catalina Mountains.