Computational Science and Engineering Graduate Recruiting Fellowships

In addition to the Ken Kennedy Institute's Sponsored Fellowships, the Ken Kennedy Institute Computational Science and Engineering Graduate Recruiting Fellowships are provided to support the recruitment of outstanding graduate students to select departments in the George R. Brown School of Engineering and the Wiess School of Natural Sciences at Rice University. The goal of the fellowship program is to help attract exceptional graduate students to Rice University in the fields of computational science and engineering, high performance computing, and data science, with special consideration given to students with research interests in areas of relevance to the energy industry.

The Ken Kennedy Institute Recruiting Fellowships will be 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 Ken Kennedy Institute Recruiting Fellowships are jointly funded by the Ken Kennedy Institute and the nominating department/program. The Institute is currently receiving support for this program from the annual Energy High Performance Computing Conference hosted by the Ken Kennedy Institute at Rice University. These combined contributions have led to 60 four-year recruiting fellowships totaling $860,000 since 2014.

Fellowship Nomination Process:

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.

The application submission opens January of each year.

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

Four-Year Award Recipients

2024-2028

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

2021-2025

• Kelsey Murphy, Earth, Environmental, & Planetary Sciences
• Jose Palacio, Statistics
• Xinyu (Xin) Yao, Computer Science

All Past Recipients