NSF 2026 Graduate Research Fellowship Awardees 

Four Harvey Mudd College seniors and five recent graduates have been awarded fellowships through the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). Two seniors earned honorable mention.

The GRFP recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited U.S. institutions. Program participants are seen as future experts who will contribute significantly to research, education and innovation in the STEM fields.

Computer science and mathematics major Mithra Karamchedu has been involved in three main research projects as a student at Harvey Mudd. “Since my freshman year, I’ve been working with computer science professor Lucas Bang on research in graph algorithms, where we study the problem of generating the spanning trees of a graph G up to the automorphisms or ‘symmetries’ of G,” he says. “I’ve also been doing research in Ramsey theory with former HMC President Maria Klawe, my brother Chaitanya Karamchedu ‘21 and mathematics professor Andrés Vindas Meléndez. In our research, we attempt to determine the Ramsey numbers of graphs known as ‘double stars.’ As part of an REU program with the Santa Fe Institute after my sophomore year, I’ve also been working with Cristopher Moore and Gülce Kardeş, researching the so-called ‘phase transitions’ in hard computational problems.”

Karamchedu is a member of the HMC improv club DUCK! and has been an Academic Excellence tutor for mathematics and a CS department grutor. This fall, he will begin a PhD in theoretical computer science at Columbia University, where he hopes to specialize in combinatorial algorithms and complexity theory.

During her sophomore year, engineering major Marika Ragnartz conducted research in Professor Steven Santana’s lab, working on developing a 3D bioprinter to print synthetic tissue. However, she says, “most of my experiences have actually not been in research labs. I was part of the Summer Entrepreneurship Studio at Mudd and worked on a project with my friend Sara Wexler ‘26 making a thermoelectric-cooling wearable for multiple sclerosis patients. We received multiple grants to continue working on it past the summer. I’ve worked with two other startups, Lifemotion Medical Technology for Clinic and Telos Health during an internship, on devices for heart and lung failure patients and stroke patients.” Ragnartz also was a grutor and teaching assistant for E79 and has been a member of the 5C hip-hop group Groove Nation throughout her time at Harvey Mudd.

In the fall, Ragnartz will begin a PhD program in mechanical engineering at Northwestern University, doing research on soft robotics and controls for rehabilitation robotics.

“Models of opinion dynamics have the potential to explain how individual beliefs and collective opinions spread in a social network. However, many canonical models in this field are deterministic and thus fail to capture uncertainty present in social interactions,” says mathematics major Madeline Reeve. “My mathematics senior thesis focuses on how adding randomness affects long-term behavior in a class of opinion dynamics models called bounded-confidence models. In particular, my work focuses on when adding noise promotes consensus, or when all agents eventually adopt the same opinion.”

Reeve made the most of her summers during college. In 2023, she conducted biostatistics research at the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health. This work helps explain the natural history progression of oral cavity cancer when untreated in an individual. In 2025, she conducted research at Williams College as part of the SMALL REU, studying chip-firing games on Graphs, “totally different from my thesis and the more applied work I’ve done otherwise,” she says. “My research team and I proved theoretical results about a quantity called the gonality of a graph, a discrete analog of a classical concept in algebraic geometry.”

Since 2023, Reeve has worked for the Office of Career Services as a peer consultant, hosting workshops, meeting with Mudders to review their resumes and cover letters and helping organize OCS events. She has also been a mathematics department grutor, including for Math131: Mathematical Analysis 1, and an Academic Excellence mathematics tutor/facilitator. Reeve also served as a North Dorm president. 

After graduation, Reeve will move to Salt Lake City to pursue a PhD in mathematics at the University of Utah, where she plans to conduct research in applied mathematics and/or mathematical biology.

Lilian Zhu is a mathematics major with emphasis in environmental analysis and data science. With her thesis advisor, mathematics and climate professor Robert Sanchez, Zhu researched salinity feedbacks in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) for different climate models and studied how to disentangle natural versus anthropogenic forces in the AMOC response to rising CO2.

In 2024, Zhu participated in an REU at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) with advisors Rodney Johnson and Dennis McGillicuddy. Zhu investigated mesoscale eddy transformations using Argo float and satellite altimetry data and took part in weeklong research cruises to collect data. Zhu also worked at BIOS as an education intern, developing Python tutorial workshops for local Bermudian students to expand oceanographic data science knowledge for the BIOS Curriculum Enrichment program. 

“I spent the last two summers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research studying humidity trends in the U.S. Southwest with advisor Isla Simpson,” Zhu says. “Climate models simulate a rise in humidity contradicting observations that show a decline. My work analyzed evapotranspiration regimes within models and observations to diagnose this problem.”

At HMC, Zhu served as a grutor for the mathematics and CS departments. Having benefitted from the College’s Gateway to Exploring Mathematical Sciences program as a high school sophomore, Zhu volunteered as a mentor for the program’s monthly workshops throughout her time in college.

After graduation, Zhu will pursue a PhD in physical oceanography at MIT-WHOI, studying coral reef hydrodynamics and using machine learning to optimize the performance of autonomous underwater vehicles. “I’m excited to continue my outreach through both community education and creative science communication,” she says.