Recruiting Fellowships

The Ken Kennedy Institute is proud to collaborate with departments at Rice University and the Energy HPC & AI Conference to offer four-year fellowships to graduate students. The goal of the recruiting program is to strengthen the presence and scope of AI & Computing research at Rice, especially in areas of relevance to the energy industry. Combined contributions have led to 65 recruiting fellowships totaling $935,000 since 2014.

Congratulations to our 2025-2029 Cohort of Recruiting Fellowship Recipients

Fellowship Nomination Process:

The Ken Kennedy Institute Computational Science and Engineering Graduate Recruiting Fellowships are provided to support the recruitment of outstanding graduate students to Rice University. These fellowships are awarded annually by the Ken Kennedy Institute during the admission process and are based on nominations from the department/program to which the graduate student applied. Each Ken Kennedy Institute Recruiting Fellowship is an enhancement fellowship that provides a stipend enhancement in the amount of $15,000, paid in monthly installments over four years. Fellowships are in addition to regular department/graduate advisor support. Ongoing fellowship support will depend upon the candidate’s satisfactory academic performance and reasonable progress toward their degree.

The application submission opens January of each year.

Departments across science and engineering at Rice University are required to submit a letter of nomination summarizing the candidate’s qualifications along with the candidate’s application portfolio. A single department can submit up to 3 (three) outstanding graduate student applicants that fit the overarching objectives for the Ken Kennedy Institute Recruiting Fellowships. The nominations must be received by the Ken Kennedy Institute no later than the deadline for the submission year.

For additional information, please contact the Ken Kennedy Institute at kenkennedy@rice.edu.

Four-Year Award Recipients

2025-2029

• Nahid Hasan, Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences
• Yueen Ma, Statistics
• Jyotiraditya (Aditya) Mishra, Applied Physics
• Trey Turner, Statistics
• Aoran Zhang, Electrical and Computer Engineering

2024-2028

• Saisrinivas (Sri) Gudivada, Applied Physics
• Aleksandr Gulkanov, Mechanical Engineering
• Nikki Hart, Computer Science
• Daniel Illera, Statistics
• Yangqianzi (Qianzi) Jiang, Statistics
• Siyuan Tao, Bioengineering
• Lingxi Zhang, Computer Science
• Xiaobei (Emma) Zhang, Applied Physics

2023-2027

• Alexander Ahrens, Applied Physics
• Cesar Cardenas, Statistics
• Khushbu Pahwa, Computer Science
• Xiaorong Zhang, Electrical & Computer Engineering

2022-2026

• Brianna Barrow, Computer Science
• Alyssa Cantu, Computer Science
• Rose Graves, Statistics
• Kevin McCoy, Statistics
• John Steinman, Computational Applied Mathematics & Operations Research
• Ria Stevens, Computer Science
• Xiaoyu (Rosie) Zhu, Earth, Environmental, & Planetary Sciences

All Past Recipients