NSF 2025 Graduate Research Fellowship Awards

Two Harvey Mudd College seniors— Laney Goldman and Anna Rogers—and two recent graduates have been awarded fellowships through the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). Two seniors and eight recent graduates 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.

Laney Goldman is a joint computer science and mathematics major who has conducted research across several prestigious programs and institutions. In quantum optics, she developed a neural network to verify quantum entanglement by predicting the most informative measurements, achieving a 94% success rate using a custom-designed loss function. At Yale University, she contributed to graph neural networks by modifying the geometric scattering transform (a mathematical pre‐built graph neural network) to retain more signal-level information, improving classification accuracy by 10%.

Her work in combinatorics at Williams College extended the concept of De Bruijn sequences—a well studied object in computer science—to polyominoes, creating the notion of “prismatic polyominoes.” She developed theoretical tools to determine minimal configurations and proved closed-form formulas for specific cases, along with novel constructions using two colors.

During industry internships, Goldman worked with Harvey Mudd mathematics professor and CEO of Dasion Weiqing Gu as a machine learning engineer, improving autism diagnostic models using multimodal data and dimensionality reduction techniques. Goldman also contributed production-level audio processing code and mentored high school interns. Earlier, at Carbon, she supported the product management team with internal data visualization to aid product management decision making.

Goldman will pursue a PhD in algorithms, combinatorics and optimization at Georgia Tech.

Anna Rogers is an accomplished chemistry scholar whose undergraduate career has been marked by a passion for research and leadership. She has contributed to a range of advanced research projects. With Professor Matthew Kromer, she studied redox dimerization syntheses of organic compounds using electrochemical characterization techniques, namely potentiometry and cyclic voltammetry and revamped a lab for the Instrumental Analysis chemistry course. In engineering Professor Whitney Fowler’s labshe researched the fluorescent properties of peptide amphiphiles for use as water contaminant sensors. Her chemistry senior thesis explored enhancing the fluorescence of peptide materials by forming electrostatically cross-linked hydrogels.

Rogers also broadened her research experience through competitive summer programs. At UC Riverside, she synthesized photothermal and magnetic nickel nanoparticles for potential applications in drug delivery and microfluidics. Most recently, she served as a process chemistry intern at Gilead Sciences, where she optimized a Negishi cross-coupling reaction and developed reaction monitoring methods using in situ Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy and ultra high performance liquid chromatography.

Beyond the lab, Rogers served as a chemistry Academic Excellence tutor and helped launch the 5C Swim Club, for which she was a founding member and team captain. She also stayed active through intramural sports and volunteer work with Priceless Pets.

This fall, Rogers will begin her PhD in chemistry at Northwestern University, where she plans to continue her research in organic materials.