Two environmental engineering students earn major National Science Foundation fellowship

Jeff Zehnder — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 15:01:13 +0000

Two environmental engineering students earn major National Science Foundation fellowship Jeff Zehnder Wed, 04/15/2026 - 09:01

Two environmental engineering graduate students have earned prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program awards.

Grace Berg and Kate Rodelli are 2026 recipients of the NSF GRFP awards, which recognize and support outstanding grad students from across the country in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields who are pursuing research-based master’s or doctoral degrees.

Awardees receive a $37,000 annual stipend and cost of education allowance for the next three years as well as professional development opportunities.

Find out about their research below:

Grace Berg

1st Year PhD Student

Advisor: Mike Hannigan
Lab: Hannigan Air Quality and Technology Research (HAQ) Lab

My proposed research focuses on leveraging low-cost sensors, activity data, and crowdsourced reporting to characterize overlapping environmental hazards—such as air pollution, extreme heat, and noise—in urban environments. My goals are to identify coincident drivers of multiple hazards and help cities be more strategic about data collection and mitigation actions.

Kate Rodelli

1st year PhD student

Advisors: Daven Henze and Kelvin Bates
Labs: Henze Group, Bates Lab

Nitrogen oxides (NOₓ) and ammonia (NH₃) are primary contributors to reactive nitrogen (Nr) deposition and react in the atmosphere to form aerosol ammonium nitrate, a key component of fine particulate matter (PM₂.₅). PM₂.₅ causes over four million premature deaths annually, and nitrogen deposition degrades ecosystems. While U.S. NOₓ emissions have declined, NH₃ emissions remain highly uncertain and are often systematically underestimated, limiting the predictive skill of air quality models such as GEOS-Chem. My research uses satellite observations to improve reactive nitrogen emission estimates. I will conduct a high-temporal-resolution joint inversion of NO₂ and NH₃, assimilating TEMPO, CrIS, and IASI satellite observations into GEOS-Chem using an ensemble-based data assimilation framework. This work will produce more accurate emission estimates that strengthen predictions of air quality and nitrogen deposition, supporting exposure assessment, ecosystem analysis, and policy-relevant decision making.

Off

Traditional

White

Awards

Two environmental engineering students earn major National Science Foundation fellowship

Find out about their research below:

Grace Berg

Kate Rodelli

Off