The Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship (SIGF) is a competitive University-wide program that awards three-year fellowships to outstanding doctoral students engaged in interdisciplinary research.
SIGF
SIGF supports doctoral students whose research crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries.
2020 SIGF Fellows
Cristina Ceballos
Michelle and Kevin Douglas Graduate Fellow, PhilosophyI study the ethics and regulation of artificial intelligence, with a focus on privacy. My dissertation examines privacy in three contexts shaped by artificial intelligence. Chapter 1 describes privacy in healthcare contexts, as hospitals and...
Gustavo Chau Loo Kung
Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow (Anonymous Donor), SIGF Affiliated with the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, BioengineeringAbsence epilepsy is a form of generalized epilepsy, common in pediatric populations, which causes seizures with brief lapses in awareness. Electron microscopy (EM) results in rat and mouse models of absence epilepsy support the hypothesis that...
Zonghe Chua
Lubert Stryer Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow, Bio-X SIGF, Mechanical EngineeringSurgeon skill is a strong predictor of patients’ post-operative outcomes, such as length of hospital stay and occurrence of complications. One important skill, tissue handling ability, is thought to be difficult to learn in robot-assisted...
Madeline Cooper
Lavidge and McKinley Interdisciplinary Fellow, Bio-X SIGF, BiophysicsMyelination of axons by glial cells called oligodendrocytes is essential for regulating axon conduction velocity in the central nervous system of vertebrates. However, the ways that axons and oligodendrocytes respond to each other during...
Margaret Daly
William and Eva Price Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow, Civil and Environmental EngineeringWhen I started research at Stanford, I studied how kelp forest ecosystems modify coastal currents and change ocean chemistry. I’m excited to combine this research with marine policy and think about how humans interact with these environments. In...
Frances Davenport
Neukermans Family Graduate Fellow, Earth System ScienceSevere precipitation and flooding cause tens of billions of dollars in damages and thousands of fatalities globally each year, with these numbers expected to grow in the future. My research combines methods from geophysics, hydrology, and...
Justin Donnelly
Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow (Anonymous Donor), SIGF Affiliated with Stanford ChEM-H, ChemistryGalectin-1 is a glycan-binding protein and a long-sought cancer therapy target that regulates tissue biology and the immune system. Given that changes in the localization of galectin-1 often accompany this regulation, my research combines...
Yuhang Fan
Enlight Foundation Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow, Bio-X SIGF, BioengineeringDuring animal wound healing and tissue regeneration, local wound signals need to propagate a long distance to induce tissue-wide global response to enable regeneration. However, the underlying signal transduction mechanism remains unknown. I aim...
Shivam Garg
Weisberg/Feng Graduate Fellow, Computer ScienceHow does the human vision seamlessly adapt to ever-changing environments, while our computer vision systems tend to err even in the presence of the slightest of changes? How do ant colonies find food at the most unexpected places, without...
Sonia Giebel
John Evans Gessford Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow in K-12 Education, Graduate School of EducationDespite gains in higher educational attainment, women remain underrepresented in STEM disciplines, a disparity that disenfranchises women from higher earnings later in life. Scholarship from across the social sciences has uncovered the gendered...
