Fifteen Tufts Students and Alumni Recognized Nationally with NSF Research Fellowships

Fifteen current students and recent alumni of Tufts University have been recognized with awards from the Graduate Research Fellowship Program of the National Science Foundation.

The prestigious and competitive fellowship program provides three years of support over a five-year fellowship period for outstanding graduate students who are pursuing full-time research-based master's and doctoral degrees in STEM fields.

The 2026 recipients were selected from a highly competitive pool of nearly 14,000 applicants nationwide, representing all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, based on their intellectual merit and broader impacts, including their potential to contribute to scientific innovation.

The fellowship program recognizes and supports the awardees with the objective of ensuring the quality and strength of the nation's scientific and engineering workforce.

"We are deeply proud that Tufts is so well-represented by these promising students and alumni among this distinguished group of emerging researchers," said Cigdem Talgar, vice provost for education. "The university is grateful, as well, to all the faculty members whose mentorship and guidance have prepared these students and alumni as the future leaders required for the nation to sustain its global leadership in the sciences."

The awardees from the Tufts community, with their anticipated areas of study and (if known) graduate schools, are:

• Isabella Arabia, A25, AG26, Tufts (biological anthropology)
• Alexander Bai, A25, New York University (formal methods, verification, and programming languages)
• Nolan Caile, A25, Weill College Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Cornell University (life sciences/systems and molecular biology)
• Rebecca Donahue, A22, University of California San Francisco (cell biology)
• Liana Feller, A24, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (ecology)
• Mason Gao, A26 and current student, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University (industrial engineering and operations research)
• Daniel Harrington, A26, MIT (quantum information science)
• Catherine Kean, A25, University of Colorado, Boulder (genetics)
• Lydia Kresin, E24, MIT (mechanical engineering)
• Bailey Levin, E23, Gerstner Sloan Kettering Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (biomedical engineering)
• Jacob Newmark, A23, Northwestern University (chemical structure, dynamics, and mechanism)
• Gardner Olson, student, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University (STEM education and learning research)
• Saskia Solotko, A26 (algebra, number theory, and combinatorics)
• Kevin Yu, E26 (bioinformatics and bio-inspired computing)
• Andy Zhang, A26 (physics or astronomy education)

In addition, eight Tufts alumni were recognized with honorable mentions from NSF.

The National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship Program was established in 1952 to recruit and support individuals who have demonstrated the potential to make significant contributions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), including STEM education.

Pictured above: (top row) Isabella Arabia, Alexander Bai, Nolan Caile, Rebecca Donahue, Liana Feller, Mason Gao, and Daniel Harrington; (bottom row) Catherine (Catie) Kean, Lydia Kresin, Bailey Levin, Jacob Newmark, Gardner Olson, Kevin Yu, and Andy Zhang.