The Ken Kennedy Institute at Rice University is proud to collaborate with industry leaders and Rice affiliates to offer one-year graduate fellowships available to graduate students pursuing research related to high performance computing, computational science & engineering, AI, data science, and machine learning at Rice University.
Bottom Row: Catherine He, Arnold Kazadi, Ziran Wang, Yihua Xu, Nicolas Zilberstein
Congratulations to the 2024-2025 Recipients
Yu-Neng (Allen) Chuang, Computer Science — awarded the Andrew Ladd Memorial fellowship for research centered on addressing explainability, safety, and uncertainty issues in AI and machine learning to enhance trustworthiness, particularly in healthcare and large language models.
Anindita Dash, Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences — awarded by ExxonMobil for research focused on monitoring carbon storage stability and developing simulation tools for predicting and managing risks from fluid-induced seismic hazards.
Hossein Gazmeh, Civil and Environmental Engineering — awarded by the Energy HPC Conference for his work to guide data-driven policy and infrastructure design for electric vehicle charging that ensures resilience and equitable access during the energy transition.
Dragana Grbic, Computer Science — awarded by bp for her work on measuring and analyzing the performance of large-scale and GPU-accelerated application codes on exascale supercomputers.
Catherine He, Computer Science — awarded a Ken Kennedy-HPE Cray fellowship for research focused on developing efficient and interpretable computer vision algorithms with multimodal supervision while utilizing cognitive psychology to enable human-level artificial general intelligence capabilities.
Arnold Kazadi, Computer Science — awarded a Ken Kennedy-HPE Cray fellowship for his work to build graph neural networks inspired by physics-based flood simulators to improve extreme weather and flood prediction models.
Ziran Wang, Civil and Environmental Engineering — awarded the Scott Morton Memorial fellowship for research on system-level reliability of infrastructure networks, aiming to improve the accuracy and efficiency of Monte Carlo simulations and enhance energy resilience.
Yihua Xu, Computational Applied Mathematics and Operations Research — awarded by Shell for research developing adaptive stochastic models and scalable linear programming policies to optimize resource allocation for applications in cloud computing, disaster relief, and energy management.
Nicolas Zilberstein, Electrical and Computer Engineering — awarded a Ken Kennedy-HPE Cray fellowship for his work developing fast and scalable learning-based algorithms to solve inverse problems, addressing challenges in real-time tasks related to 5G wireless networks and image restoration.
View All Past Recipients
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Sponsored Fellowships Awarded Between 2001-2023
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2023-2024
- Sina Alemohammad, Electrical and Computer Engineering (bp)
- Anja Conev, Computer Science (Ken Kennedy-HPE Cray)
- Katherine Garcia, Psychological Sciences (Shell)
- Jaewoo Kim, Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences (ExxonMobil)
- Nhi Le, Statistics (Energy HPC Conference)
- Kashif Liaqat, Mechanical Engineering (Scott Morton)
- Edward Duc Hien Nguyen, Electrical and Computer Engineering (Ken Kennedy-HPE Cray)
- Tianyang Pan, Computer Science (Andrew Ladd)
- Carlos Taveras, Electrical and Computer Engineering (Ken Kennedy-HPE Cray)
2022-2023
- Fatima Ahsan, Electrical and Computer Engineering (ExxonMobil)
- Paola Cascante-Bonilla, Computer Science (SLB)
- Chen Chen, Civil and Environmental Engineering (Scott Morton)
- Aditya Desai, Computer Science (Shell)
- Victoria Granja, Mechanical Engineering (SLB)
- Yumeng Liu, Computer Science (bp)
- Zichang (Emma) Liu, Computer Science (bp)
- Nicolae Sapoval, Computer Science (Andrew Ladd)
- Guanchu Wang, Computer Science (Ken Kennedy-Cray)
2021-2022
- Shabnam Daghaghi, Electrical and Computer Engineering (bp)
- Luqin Gan, Statistics (Shell)
- Bishal Lamichhane, Electrical and Computer Engineering (Energy HPC Conference)
- Thiago Jose Pinheiro dos Santos, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (Energy HPC Conference)
- Xin Tan, Statistics (Energy HPC Conference)
- Morgan Underwood, Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences (Ken Kennedy-Cray)
- Zichao (Jack) Wang, Electrical and Computer Engineering (SLB)
- Zhaozhuo Xu, Computer Science (bp)
- Zhiwei Zhang, Computer Science (Andrew Ladd)
2020-2021
- Alejandro Diaz, Computational and Applied Mathematics (bp)
- Boning Li, Electrical and Computer Engineering (Ken Kennedy-Cray)
- Huiming Lin, Statistics (OG-HPC Conference)
- Tharun Medini, Electrical and Computer Engineering (bp)
- Thomas (Mitch) Roddenberry, Electrical and Computer Engineering (ExxonMobil)
- Ivan Rosa de Siqueira, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (SLB)
- Jiarong Xing, Computer Science (Andrew Ladd)
2019-2020
- Nidish Narayanaa Balaji, Mechanical Engineering (Ken Kennedy-Cray)
- Randall Balestriero, Electrical and Computer Engineering (bp)
- Ao Cai, Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences (Shell)
- Mae Markowski, Computational and Applied Mathematics (Shell)
- Afsaneh Rahbar, Computer Science (Andrew Ladd)
- Thomas (Mitch) Roddenberry, Electrical and Computer Engineering (AMD)
- Christina Taylor, Computational and Applied Mathematics (bp)
- Keren Zhou, Computer Science (ExxonMobil)
- Ye Emma Zohner, Statistics (SLB)
2018-2019
- Manav Bhati, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (OG-HPC Conference)
- Ao Cai, Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences (bp)
- Carly Fagnant, Statistics (ExxonMobil)
- Jaeho Lee, Computer Science (SLB)
- Eleni Litsa, Computer Science (Andrew Ladd)
- Mae Markowski, Computational and Applied Mathematics (bp)
- Alana Semple, Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences (OG-HPC Conference)
- Jordan Shivers, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (OG-HPC Conference)
- Wenya Shu, Civil and Environmental Engineering (OG-HPC Conference)
- Philip Taffet, Computer Science (Ken Kennedy-Cray)
- Christopher Thiele, Computational and Applied Mathematics (Shell)
- Yicheng Wu, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Applied Physics (OG-HPC Conference)
2017-2018
- Ashesh Chattopadhyay, Mechanical Engineering (bp)
- Beidi Chen, Computer Science (bp)
- Jeffrey Dudek, Computer Science (Ken Kennedy-Cray)
- Kaihang Guo, Computational and Applied Mathematics (OG-HPC Conference)
- Christopher Metzler, Electrical and Computer Engineering (OG-HPC Conference)
- Ewa Nowara, Electrical and Computer Engineering (SLB)
- Narmadha Rajan Babu, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ExxonMobil)
- Luqing Wang, Materials Science and Nanoengineering (OG-HPC Conference)
- Keren Zhou, Computer Science (Andrew Ladd)
2016-2017
- Maurice Fabien, Computational and Applied Mathematics (ExxonMobil)
- Xin Huang, Computer Science (SLB)
- Ali Mousavi, Electrical and Computer Engineering (SLB)
- Kim Raath, Statistics (Shell)
- Yen Sun, Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences (bp)
- Luqing Wang, Materials Science and Nanoengineering (Shell)
- Dingqiao Wen, Computer Science (Andrew Ladd)
- Michael Weylandt, Statistics (bp)
- Yabin Zhang, Computational and Applied Mathematics (Ken Kennedy-Cray)
2015-2016
- Suguman Bansal, Computer Science (Andrew Ladd)
- Simbarashe Dzinamarira, Computer Science (SLB)
- Maurice Fabien, Computational and Applied Mathematics (Ken Kennedy-Cray)
- Robert Kosar, Statistics (Shell)
- Caleb Magruder, Computational and Applied Mathematics (ExxonMobil)
- Yen Sun, Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences (Shell)
- Lai Wei, Computer Science (bp)
- Muhong Zhou, Computational and Applied Mathematics (bp)
2014-2015
- Rajesh Balagam, Bioengineering (OG-HPC Conference)
- Milind Chabbi, Computer Science (OG-HPC Conference)
- Xiaodi Deng, Computational and Applied Mathematics (OG-HPC Conference)
- Lei Fu, Earth Science (OG-HPC Conference)
- Jie Hou, Earth Science (OG-HPC Conference)
- Ryan Luna, Computer Science (Andrew Ladd)
- Shangyu Luo, Computer Science (Ken Kennedy-Cray)
- Brianna Lynn, Computational and Applied Mathematics (Shell)
- Caleb Magruder, Computational and Applied Mathematics (bp)
- Deepak Majeti, Computer Science (ExxonMobil)
- Alina Sbirlea, Computer Science (SLB)
- Javier Villarreal, Mechanical Engineering (SLB)
- Zheng Wang, Computational and Applied Mathematics (Shell)
- Chaoran Yang, Computer Science (bp)
2013-2014
- Zhuhua Cai, Computer Science (SLB)
- Milind Chabbi, Computer Science (OG-HPC Conference)
- Caleb Fast, Computational and Applied Mathematics (ExxonMobil)
- Lei Fu, Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences (bp)
- Rajesh Gandham, Computational and Applied Mathematics (OG-HPC Conference)
- Ellis Giles, Electrical and Computer Engineering (Ken Kennedy-Cray)
- Golnaz Habibi, Computer Science (Chevron)
- Jie Hou, Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences (bp)
- Jizhou Li, Computational and Applied Mathematics (OG-HPC Conference)
- Xu Liu, Computer Science (NAG)
- Eleazar Marquez, Mechanical Engineering (SLB)
- David Medina, Computational and Applied Mathematics (OG-HPC Conference)
- Kuldeep Singh, Computer Science (Andrew Ladd)
- Jun Tan, Computational and Applied Mathematics (Shell)
- Zheng Wang, Computational and Applied Mathematics (Shell)
2012-2013
- Devin Grady, Computer Science (SLB)
- Jonathan Grossman, Computer Science (OG-HPC Conference)
- Yin Huang, Computational and Applied Mathematics (OG-HPC Conference)
- Huafeng Liu, Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences (Chevron)
- Kun Liu, Computational and Applied Mathematics (Shell)
- Xu Liu, Computer Science (bp)
- Jianxin Lu, Mechanical Engineering (ExxonMobil)
- David Medina, Computational and Applied Mathematics (Shell)
- Azalia Mirhoseini, Electrical and Computer Engineering (SLB)
- Yiting Xia, Computer Science (Ken Kennedy-Cray)
- Muhong Zhou, Computational and Applied Mathematics (bp)
2011-2012
- Yenny Chandra, Civil and Environmental Engineering (Ken Kennedy-Cray)
- Rajesh Gandham, Computational and Applied Mathematics (bp)
- Xu Li, Computer Science (SLB)
- Kaijian Liu, Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences (bp)
- Corina Serediuc, Electrical and Computer Engineering (SLB)
2010-2011
- Drew Bryant, Computer Science (SLB)
- Saifon Chaturantabut, Computational and Applied Mathematics (Ken Kennedy-Cray)
- Samantha Summerson, Electrical and Computer Engineering (SLB)
- Xin Wang, Computational and Applied Mathematics (bp)
- Jie Zhang, Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences (bp)
2009-2010
- Sanda Lefteriu, Electrical and Computer Engineering (SLB)
- Travis Martin, Computer Science (SLB)
- Igor Terentyev, Computational and Applied Mathematics (Ken Kennedy-Cray)
- Xin Wang, Computational and Applied Mathematics (bp)
2008-2009
- Arta Sadrzadeh, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Nanoengineering (Ken Kennedy-Cray)
2007-2008
- Mack Joyner, Computer Science (Ken Kennedy-Cray)
2006-2007
- Kelsey Beach, Mechanical Engineering (SLB)
- Elica Skorcheva, Electrical and Computer Engineering (SLB)
2005-2006
- Kelsey Beach, Mechanical Engineering (SLB)
- Heather Johnson, Electrical and Computer Engineering (SLB)
2004-2005
- Sarah Burkhart, Mechanical Engineering (SLB)
- Gina Upperman, Electrical and Computer Engineering (SLB)
2003-2004
- Christine Ambrose, Mechanical Engineering (SLB)
- Elspeth Simpson, Computer Science (SLB)
2002-2003
- Anne Christian, Computer Science (SLB)
- Katherine Streit, Electrical and Computer Engineering (SLB)
2001-2002
- Sarah Densmore, Mechanical Engineering (SLB)
- Ginger Walden, Electrical and Computer Engineering (SLB)
Since 2001, the Institute has awarded 158 sponsored fellowships totaling $1.1 million. For more information on each fellowship and a list of past fellowship recipients, visit the links for each sponsor.
Industry Sponsored Fellowships
Past industry sponsors include AMD, Chevron, NAG, and SLB. If your company is interested in sponsoring a one-year graduate student fellowship, view information about our Corporate Partner Program.
Memorial Sponsored Fellowships
- Andrew Ladd Memorial Excellence in Computer Science Graduate Fellowship
- Ken Kennedy – HPE Cray Graduate Fellowship
- Scott Morton Memorial Graduate Fellowship
Annual Fellowship Application
This application is available for current Ph.D. students at Rice University. This is a common application, meaning you will only need to submit your information once to be considered for all available one-year graduate fellowships. Applications will reopen fall 2025.
Upon application the student will be asked to answer a series of questions, sign a FERPA form, and include their current CV and a one-page research statement. In addition, each applicant's advisor must send a letter of recommendation directly to the Ken Kennedy Institute via email at kenkennedy@rice.edu. Faculty advisors should be a current member of the Ken Kennedy Institute at the time of submitting the letter of recommendation. Advisors that are not a current member or are not sure of their membership status can reach out to the Institute team to get set up. View additional details about the application requirements below.
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Requirements and Important Information:
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- Candidate must be registered as a Ph.D. student at Rice for the entire calendar year in which the candidate is nominated.
- Candidate must not be in last year of study upon application.
- Candidate must be willing to visit with the various companies funding the Ken Kennedy Institute's sponsored graduate fellowships.
- Candidate should be willing to consider a paid industry internship.
- Faculty advisor should be a current member of the Ken Kennedy Institute.
- Recipients are required to acknowledge the fellowship on relevant publications, presentations, posters, and research products, including the Ken Kennedy Institute logo when appropriate.
- Recipients are required to attend the annual and present their work at the Ken Kennedy Institute Fellowship Reception and Research Showcase.
- Recipients are strongly encouraged to present a poster during the AI in Health Conference in the fall and Energy High Performance Computing Conference in the spring.
- Fellowship funds disbursed as follows:
- Student recipients are awarded $6,500 on top of their current stipend (except for the Andrew Ladd Memorial fellowship that awards $5,000).
- Advisors receive $1,000 to be allocated to a designated fund (does not include Andrew Ladd Memorial fellowship).
Fellowship recipients are announced late October. The selection process is completed by a fellowship review committee made up of Rice faculty, the Ken Kennedy Institute, and sponsoring companies. For additional information, please contact the Ken Kennedy Institute at kenkennedy@rice.edu.
