Before coming to college, Devin Tulio ’25 had never picked up a pipette. By the time she graduated, she had spent five terms investigating how sulfated peptides regulate plant cell development, completed two full-time leave terms in the lab, earned high honors on her senior thesis, and deferred graduate school for a year to keep the project going. This fall, she heads to Johns Hopkins for a doctoral program—supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
Tulio is one of 19 Dartmouth undergraduates and recent alumni to receive fellowship offers from the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program this year, selected from a pool of nearly 14,000 applicants nationwide. Nine current Guarini graduate students also received fellowships, and nine students and alumni earned honorable mentions. The NSF awarded 2,500 fellowships total for the 2026–27 academic year.
The Graduate Research Fellowship Program, which has operated for more than 75 years, provides three years of financial support over a five-year period to graduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. It is among the most competitive fellowship programs in the country.
“Dartmouth’s incredible success with the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program this year speaks to the strength and range of undergraduate research on campus,” says Christie Harner, associate dean of undergraduate education for fellowships and scholars programs. “From students’ early research beginnings, onwards to their senior projects and graduate school plans, it’s wonderful to see how their intellectual work has developed.”
Research that builds over time
Of the 19 undergraduate and alumni recipients, 18 participated in research programs through Scholars Programs, Undergraduate Research, and Fellowships at Dartmouth (SURFD). Thirteen received funding through the Undergraduate Research program, collectively logging 39 funded research terms. Eight participated in the two-term James O. Freedman Presidential Scholars program, which enables students to experience research first-hand by working with faculty in part-time research assistantships. Seven were members of the first-year research program in the sciences, now known as Early Research Access in the Sciences, with six of those also serving as peer mentors through the Women in Science Project.
Three of the 19 recipients are also Goldwater Scholars: Calista Adler ’26, John Guerrerio ’26, and Shannon Sartain ’21. Guerrerio and Arjun Anand ’26 were also named Rhodes finalists this year.
For Tulio, that experience began through a first-year research internship, which placed her in the lab of Professor of Biological Sciences Magdalena Bezanilla. What started as a project studying a single signaling peptide in the moss model organism Physcomitrium patens grew steadily in scope—eventually expanding to the enzyme that modifies the peptide, then to the entire signaling pathway. The project eventually earned its own National Science Foundation Plant Genome Research Program grant.
“I would not be where I am today without all of the resources at Dartmouth,” Tulio says. “The fellowship will give me the freedom of exploring my interests without the burden of worrying about funding.”
Calista Adler ’26, a biomedical engineering concentrator, followed a similar arc. She began working in the lab of Assistant Professor of Engineering Katherine Hixon as a first-year student, spending her early terms learning techniques and contributing to existing projects. By junior year she was leading her own research, developing sodium alginate nanoparticles to carry the antibiotic tobramycin into the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients—a disease in which abnormally thick, dehydrated mucus prevents antibiotics from reaching their bacterial targets. The project became her senior thesis.
“The start of my junior year was a major turning point for me when I transitioned to leading my own project," Adler says. “The project evolved through iterative experimentation and troubleshooting and eventually became my thesis.”
John Guerrerio ’26 came to Dartmouth interested in cybersecurity and national security, then followed his questions into the emerging field of trustworthy AI. His Presidential Scholars project with professors Timothy Pierson and O. Sami Saydjari focused on a practical problem: helping people who aren’t comfortable with technology express their privacy preferences for smart home devices in plain language, and having those preferences automatically translated into device settings. That work became a bridge to his current research on bias and uncertainty in large language models.
“LLMs are trained in ways that make them overconfident: they can give confident-sounding answers even when the available evidence is incomplete, ambiguous, or wrong,” Guerrerio says. “I find this process of exploration especially rewarding.”
Mentorship behind the research
“What makes Dartmouth’s research culture distinctive is that students aren’t observers—they’re working alongside faculty scholars who are genuinely invested in their development,” says John Carey, interim dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “That kind of close, sustained mentorship is what produces researchers who are ready to lead.”
Faculty mentors describe watching students move from early participation to independent inquiry as the defining feature of Dartmouth’s undergraduate research model.
Annabelle Niblett ’26, who spent four terms studying stellar ages by analyzing lithium in the spectra of dim red stars under Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy Elisabeth Newton, also served as a peer mentor to first-year students in the sciences during her time at Dartmouth.
“Annabelle is dedicated and persistent in both her research on exoplanets and in her support of the Physics and Astronomy community,” Newton says. “She’s well-positioned to be a leader in her field, and I’m delighted that this was recognized by the GRFP.”
Lara Roelofs ’25, who heads to the University of Utah for a doctoral program this fall, worked with Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Shersingh Joseph Tumber-Dávila on root and microbe dynamics along temperate forest edges—research that grew from a single URAD term into a senior thesis completed at the Climate Interactions and Forest Fragmentation Experiment at Harvard Forest.
“Lara first reached out to me before I had even officially joined Dartmouth’s faculty, and that eagerness never wavered,” Tumber-Davila says. “Over the course of their senior thesis, Lara developed novel lab protocols, led complex fieldwork, and produced research of a caliber I rarely see at the undergraduate level. Lara stands out as the most talented student I have had the privilege of mentoring.”
On campus in the fall
For the Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies, the nine new recipients—Thomas Ackleson (Thayer), Giovanna Durante, Gabriel Fajardo, Aidan Hennessey, Isabel Thorberry, Matthew LaCapra (Thayer), Yeel Lee (Thayer), Maria Eduarda Torres Gouveia (Thayer), and Benjamin Velguth—will join current NSF Graduate Research Fellows on campus this fall, bringing Guarini’s total to 24 active fellows.
For doctoral students, that head start translates into unusual flexibility. The fellowship follows the student rather than the lab, freeing recipients to choose their research direction, take intellectual risks, and change course without losing funding.
“These fellows are arriving with serious research experience already behind them,” says F. Jon Kull ’88, dean of the Guarini School and the Rodgers Professor of Chemistry. “That makes a real difference in how quickly they can contribute to their fields and to the graduate community here.”
2026 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Recipients
Undergraduates and Alumni
- Calista Adler ’26, biomedical engineering
- Muriel Ammon ’21, linguistics
- Arjun Anand ’26, economics
- Wyatt Cummings ’24, ecology
- Alexandra Farnell ’24, paleoclimate
- John Guerrerio ’26, machine learning
- Vanessa Haggans ’23, biological oceanography
- Jessica Jiang ’25, machine learning
- Yeel Lee ’26, materials science and engineering
- Jeancarlos Llerena ’26, materials science and engineering
- Lindsey Lu ’26, environmental and/or ecological engineering
- Annabelle Niblett ’26, astronomy and astrophysics
- Julia Picker ’24, systems and molecular biology
- Katherine Plaza ’25, volcanology
- Lara Roelofs ’25, ecology
- Shannon Sartain ’21, geomorphology
- Kendall Sippy ’24, astronomy and astrophysics
- Matthew Timofeev ’25, electrical and electronic engineering
- Devin Tulio ’25, developmental biology
Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies
- Thomas Ackleson, engineering, biomedical engineering (Thayer)
- Giovanna Durante, bioinformatics and computational biology
- Gabriel Fajardo, cognitive neuroscience
- Aidan Hennessey, algebra, number theory
- Matthew LaCapra, chemical engineering (Thayer)
- Yeel Lee, engineering and material science (Thayer)
- Isabel Thornberry, life sciences, ecology
- Maria Eduarda Torres Gouveia, biomedical engineering (Thayer)
- Benjamin Velguth, astronomy and astrophysics
Honorable Mentions: Undergraduates and Alumni
- Peter Blatchford ’23
- Miranda Clack ’25
- Shuxuan Li ’25
- Olivia Pendas ’25
- Bradyn Quintard ’25
Honorable Mentions: Guarini School
- Claudia Gonciulea
- Shannon Li
- Cassidy Metzger
- Artemis Theodoridis
- Matia Whiting