Leon Min, a second-year PhD student in the Department of Bioengineering and the School of Medicine’s Medical Scientist Training Program, has been awarded a prestigious fellowship to support his research on tissue-engineered vascular grafts.
Andrew Stricklin (ENGR ’23), a mechanical engineering PhD student in the Swanson School, and Lance Long, who is studying bioengineering in the Swanson School’s MS-to-PhD program, are among the five University of Pittsburgh students who earned the SMART Scholarship-for-Service, which provides merit-based scholarships from the U.S. government to bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral students seeking degrees in science, math, technology and engineering.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has named its 2026 class of Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) scholars, which includes 7 Pitt graduate students among the awardees and 3 more in its honorable mentions.
Pitt Public Health doctoral student Aubree McMahon has been selected to join the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) Student Think Tank Fellowship for the 2026–2027 cohort.
Varun Shelke, a master’s student studying information science at SCI, was part of a team with four Pitt Business graduate students who took home first place in the Fall 2025 KPMG Cup Showcase.
When Yoni Preuss (MPA ’26) was awarded the Alex Yerkey Memorial Scholarship from the Southwest Section of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Planning Association (APA PA SW) in recognition of his commitment to the field of urban planning, it marked the next step in a journey he traces back to a summer spent studying in Berlin, Germany.
Research led by Daniel Ivanov, a physics and astronomy graduate student in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at Pitt, uncovered a contender for one of the earliest observed spiral galaxies containing a stellar bar, a sometimes-striking visual feature that can play an important role in a galaxy’s evolution.
From the campaign trail to city hall, second-year Master of Public Administration (MPA) student David Bilger is putting public service into action—and being recognized for his impact.
Doctoral student Alex Fixler is the recipient of the 2026 Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) Doctoral Fellows Award for her dissertation proposal “Policy, Penalties, and Public Safety: Measuring the Impact of State Drug Laws on Arrest and Overdose Rates.” Alex was also a recent recipient of a Provost’s Dissertation Completion Fellowship.
Becca Segel, a 2024 ChemE PhD graduate, was just named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Manufacturing & Industry list for 2026. Becca is the founder of FlowCellutions, which makes predictive diagnostics and hardware sensors for grid-scale batteries. Learn more in Becca's Forbes profile.
