Another Season of High Honors for Hunter-Educated Scientists: Celebrating Six Recipients of NSF Graduate Research Fellowships

Hunter congratulates the four recent graduates and two graduating seniors whose work has just won major funding from the National Science Foundation. For the next three years, NSF Graduate Research Fellowships will support the doctoral studies and independent research of these outstanding young scientists:

Munazza Alam ’16 – now at Harvard pursuing her PhD in astrophysics, Alam is exploring the atmospheres of planets that orbit distant stars. Read more.

Dina Buitrago ’17 – a biology major headed to a doctoral program in pharmaceutical sciences and pharmacogenomics at the University of California, San Francisco, Buitrago is investigating the effects of genetic mutations on the body’s response to drugs for hard-to-treat diseases. Read more.

Hila Tzipora Chase ’15 – now at the University of Montana pursuing her PhD in organismal biology, Chase is conducting research on the biomechanics and skeletal changes that enable flight in today’s birds and their dinosaurian ancestors. Read more.

Hala Haddad ’17 – a psychology major headed to a doctoral program in neuroscience at Brown University, Haddad is studying the impact of the environment on brain structure and motor development. Read more.

Thomas Hart ’15 – now at Rockefeller University pursuing his PhD in neuroscience, Hart is examining how the organization of ant brains enables ants to communicate. Read more.

Lashawn Peña ’15 – now at Stanford pursuing his PhD in immunology, Peña is looking for the ways cancer cells can be reprogrammed into immune cells. Read more.


Past NSF Fellows include eight Nobel laureates and Google founder Sergey Brin.