Chowdhury Awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

University of Maryland (UMD) mechanical engineering Ph.D. student Abdil Muhaymin Chowdhury has been selected for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GFRP)—one of the highest honors available to U.S. doctoral students.

Chowdhury is a graduate student in Associate Professor Ryan Sochol’s Bioinspired Advanced Manufacturing (BAM) Lab. In combination with previous recipients, including Olivia Young, Adira Colton, Bailey Felix, and M. Rho Ma, Sochol's group now includes five current Ph.D. students who have been awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowships—one of the highest numbers for any single research group at the university.

Chowdhury’s award is especially notable as this year marked the most competitive NSF GRFP cycle in 15 years, with approximately 15,000 applicants and only 1,500 recipients. NSF Graduate Research Fellows receive a three-year annual stipend of $37,000 along with a $16,000 cost-of-education allowance for tuition and fees.

The NSF GRFP is the country’s oldest fellowship program for graduate students in numerous science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. It is designed “to help ensure the quality, vitality, and strength of the scientific and engineering workforce of the United States,” according to the program's website. The reputation of the GRFP follows recipients and often helps them become life-long leaders that contribute significantly to both scientific innovation and teaching, the NSF said. Past fellows include numerous Nobel Prize winners, former U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Google founder Sergey Brin, and Freakonomics co-author Steven Levitt.

“I'm truly honored to have been selected for this award,” said Chowdhury. “I’m deeply grateful for the mentorship of my advisor, Dr. Sochol, as well as the incredibly supportive community at the University of Maryland, which has been my academic home for both my undergraduate and graduate studies.”

Chowdhury, who grew up in Greenbelt, Maryland, graduated from the University of Maryland with a B.S. in Bioengineering. As a Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. student in Professor Sochol's group, Chowdhury has been leading a team of undergraduate students through the A. James Clark School of Engineering’s Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) program.

Although the Chowdhury-led project, “3D-Printed Video Game-Playing Soft Robots,” was just launched in Spring 2024, the team’s work has already earned acceptance at multiple international research conferences. Chowdhury presented the team’s results at the International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (µTAS 2024) in Montreal, Canada, this past fall, where he was a finalist for the CHEMINAS Young Researcher Poster Award. Next week, Chowdhury and two of his undergraduate mentees will present their latest findings at the International Conference on Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems (Transducers 2025) in Orlando, Florida.

“Muhaymin’s leadership and mentorship of undergraduate and high school students has been something special,” said Sochol. “He has this remarkable ability to pick up complex material quickly and explain it clearly to others—making him not just a strong researcher, but an outstanding mentor who truly earned this fellowship.”

Published June 24, 2025