A recent graduate and a first-year doctoral student in the Department of Chemical Engineering were among the 15 Gator engineers who won the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships this year.
The Graduate Research Fellowship Program, known as GRFP, provides three years of financial support for graduate students who have demonstrated potential for significant research achievements. Since 1952, GRFP has supported over 70,000 graduate research fellows. More than 40 former fellows have received Nobel Prizes, according to NSF.
Cianna Rene Scutero
Scutero graduated this spring with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, a minor in biomolecular engineering and an Engineering Project Management certificate from the University of Florida. She will pursue her doctorate in chemical engineering this fall at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
During her time at UF, she worked in the Denard Lab and the Unit Operations Lab. Her long-term goal is to earn her Ph.D. and work in academia. In the Denard Lab, directed by Assistant Professor Carl Denard, Ph.D., Scutero’s research focused on protein engineering, particularly engineering disease-relevant proteases for targeted therapeutic applications.
Michaela Haensgen
Haensgen is a first-year doctoral student in chemical engineering in the Abil lab. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemical and biomolecular engineering from Milwaukee School of Engineering, where she combined engineering principles with molecular biology to solve biological problems. Her research includes computational biology, virology, bacteriology , and synthetic biology. She is involved in the engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi and the Graduate Association of Chemical Engineers. She plans to become an independent researcher focused on advancing therapeutic discovery and biomanufacturing through controllable synthetic cell systems.