Science and Engineering Scholarships and Fellowships Blog

Society of Women Engineers Scholarships

The SWE Scholarship Program provides financial assistance to women admitted to accredited baccalaureate or graduate programs, in preparation for careers in engineering, engineering technology and computer science. In fiscal year 2005, SWE disbursed more than 130 new and renewed scholarships valued at more than $300,000. Scholarships and fellowships range from $1,000 to $10,000 each

All SWE Scholarships are open only to women pursuing baccalaureate or graduate degrees in engineering or computer science, as well as engineering and computer science students. Application information for the 2008-2009 school year will be available in December.

Related: Science and Engineering Scholarship Directory

Carnegie Mellon University Electrical and Computer Engineering Students win NDSEG Fellowships:

ECE students John Reinke and Nicholas O’Donoughue were selected for the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship, which will cover their tuition and stipends over three years. Alumnus Daniel Weller (B.S. 2006) also qualified for the honor and will use his fellowship at MIT, where he is a graduate student in electrical engineering.
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Spending two summers interning at Honeywell’s primary research center, John Reinke was exposed to several microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) projects, including a chip-scale atomic clock, a MEMS gyroscope, and a liquid gallium switch. His experience led him to pursue graduate study in the MEMS Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon designing radio frequency (RF) micromechanical switches and tunable capacitors made in foundry complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) processes.
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Nicholas O’Donoughue conducts research in signal processing applications and algorithms in the Time Reversal Imaging Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon. His studies focus on creating novel algorithms to improve the resolution and applicability of radar imaging through time reversal techniques. This new methodology has applications of interest to national defense, because it may be used to detect objects that are buried under heavy clutter, such as under forest canopies.

Related: NDSEG Fellowships website - directory of science and engineering fellowships

We have posted a new profile of a past NSF Graduate Research Fellow: Burton Richter, 1976 Nobel Laurette in Physics.

“Modern science is fast-moving, and no laboratory can exist for long with a program based on old facilities. Innovation and renewal are required to keep a laboratory on the frontiers of science.” Autobiography on Nobel site

Burton Richter was born in New York City and attended undergraduate and graduate studies at MIT. There, he earned a B.S. and, with the support of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (1952-1953), a Ph.D.. Early on in his research at MIT’s magnet laboratory, his interest in nuclear and particle physics and in an accelerator that he had used in his experiments became apparent. That revelation led him in his studies to a program in which “not only did [he] have to design and build the apparatus required for [his] experiments, but …also had to help maintain and operate [an] accelerator.”

In 1957, he began what became a six-year project to build the first colliding-beam device—the ancestor to all modern high-energy physics accelerators. Soon, his vision enlarged further, dreaming of a high-energy electron-positron colliding-beam machine and its uses.

When invited to a position at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in 1963, Richter led a team that immediately began work on the design of a high-energy electron-positron machine (later called SPEAR). Following the construction of both the machine and a large magnetic detector, experiments began in 1973. The results were as exciting and revealing as Richter had hoped.

Read the full NSF Fellow profile of Burton Richter.

ASEE administers the Science, Mathematics, And Research for Transformation Defense Scholarship for Service Program (SMART) for DoD (and runs this blog). While in school participants receive a starting salary/stipend ranging from $22,500 for undergraduates to $38,000 for doctoral students and tuition and related education fees are paid. The program also includes summer internships and work at a DoD lab upon graduation (one year for each year receiving benefits as a student).

Navy Keeps Technical Workforce Savvy via SMART Program

Working full time for Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City (NSWC PC), mechanical engineer Rob Cole was taking online courses with Virginia Tech and wondering if there was a faster way to obtain his master’s degree in Ocean Engineering. He found the application to achieve his objective was simply to — get SMART. “I had been doing one online class per semester and started feeling like I really just needed to go back to school full time — maybe do a little research on the side,” Cole said, but adding he wondered how he would do this, keep his job, and pay for the education.

Cole said his answers came when a basewide e-mail about SMART was disseminated. “I read through it and thought,’Man, this is how I’m going to pay for my graduate degree,.” Cole said. “The SMART Program was established to recruit and retain civilian scientists and engineers throughout DoD agencies and laboratories,” said Ed Linsenmeyer, NSWC PC scientist and coordinator for the SMART Program, adding that SMART was open to college students at the undergraduate junior-level or above.

Apply for SMART

We have finally added a section to our site, that I have wanted to for several years: profiles of past NSF Graduate Research Fellows. We started with probably the most famous and certainly the richest: Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin.

“Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical and ultimately making a big difference in the world.”

Sergey Brin, Co-Founder of Google, graduated from University of Maryland with high honors in mathematics and computer science in 1993 and, as a NSF Graduate Research Fellow, went on to Stanford to further study Computer Science. Early in his graduate studies, he showed interest in the Internet, specifically data-mining and pattern extraction. He also wrote software to ease the conversion of information into HTML format.

In 1995, he began collaborating with Larry Page, another Stanford graduate student on a more efficient search engine than previously available - Google - in The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, and soon began to attract public interest.

In his short executive biography, Brin lists the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship that supported him while at Stanford among his top achievements. Like NSF, Brin understands the importance of research in innovation, and sponsors it in part through Google’s “20% time” program - all engineers at Google are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time on projects that interest them.

Read the full NSF Fellow profile of Sergey Brin.

The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program application is now open. The program provides students with three years of funding, paying all tuition fees and a yearly stipend of $30,500. This year the program announced the intention to provide 1,100 fellowships - an increase of 10% from the announcement last year.

The deadlines for applying are determined by the primary field of the application:

November 1, 2007 (Thursday): Interdisciplinary Fields of Study
November 2, 2007 (Friday): Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering
November 2, 2007 (Friday): Mathematical Sciences
November 6, 2007 (Tuesday): Geosciences
November 6, 2007 (Tuesday): Psychology
November 6, 2007 (Tuesday): Social Sciences
November 7, 2007 (Wednesday): Life Sciences
November 8, 2007 (Thursday): Engineering
November 9, 2007 (Friday): Chemistry
November 9, 2007 (Friday): Physics and Astronomy

This paper from 1999 Evaluates the Impact of the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program. The information is obviously a bit old but still provides good information and a historical context.

Related: Increasing Fellowship Support for American Scientists and Engineers - Proposed legislation on Graduate Scholar Awards in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math

The application for the Air Force Summer Faculty Fellowship Program (SFFP) is now open. The SFFP promotes communication between research faculty and Air Force research scientists and engineers. The SFFP provides an opportunity for hands-on exposure to Air Force research challenges through eight to twelve week research residencies at participating facilities for full-time science and engineering faculty at U.S. colleges and universities.

Potential fellows are strongly encouraged to contact an advisor at one of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Directorates, the U.S. Air Force Academy, or the Air Force Institute of Technology to discuss their proposed research topic prior to applying to the program.

Awardees may apply for renewal of their award for a 2nd and 3rd year, providing they wish to renew at the same SFFP Laboratory and with the same SFFP Research Advisor. Science and Engineering Faculty Fellowship Directory