Arizona State University's commitment to research aimed at solving specific societal challenges is being supported by  graduate fellowship funding from Science Foundation Arizona.

Science Foundation Fellowships offer up to two years of competitive support. Each year of the award carries a $25,000 personal stipend plus a $5,000 supplemental allowance to the SFAz Fellow to advance the Fellow's research and/or to offset relocation expenses. Full tuition is covered. Second year support depends upon evidence of outstanding performance and progress toward the degree.

Candidates must be nominated by the degree-granting academic unit.

These graduate fellowships will be awarded to biologists, chemists, physicists, bioengineers, chemical engineers, electrical engineers, materials engineers, computer scientists, social scientists and individuals with related degrees interested in addressing one of the following critical needs:

ASU News Release 2008

ASU News Release 2007

Science Foundation Arizona boosts ASU research

Profiles of ASU's 2007-2008 SFAz Fellows

List of all 2007-2008 SFAz Fellows

List of all 2008-2009 SFAz Fellows

"The Arizona Experiment" from Nature Magazine

"Raising Arizona" from Nature Magazine

Diagnosis and Prevention of Disease

The design of new approaches for the early diagnosis of human diseases, and the development of vaccines for prevention and control is essential for the health and safety of Arizonans. ASU has interdisciplinary research strengths from engineering and bioscience disciplines focused on addressing many aspects of infectious disease, cancer, diabetes and diseases affecting brain and behavior.

Core research areas include the development of specific binding agents for detection, the design, modeling and prototyping of nano/micro-diagnostic platforms, optical and electronic diagnostic arrays, clinical imaging techniques, nanoscale diagnostic reagents created by self-assembly of biomolecular complexes, and systems integration coupling sensing with data collection and analysis. Development of an ‘immune system on a chip' will help identify the biosignature of a healthy vs. sick individual well before the patient is aware of the illness.

We are also developing novel methods for creating vaccines, and the ability to rapidly identify the appropriate proteins or pieces of proteins that are needed to generate a vaccine to a pathogen would revolutionize our ability to prevent the rapid spread of infectious disease.

Sustainable Energy and the Environment

The availability of reasonably priced energy sources that are carbon neutral is key in maintaining our economy while mitigating the impact of human activities on the environment.

Core research efforts in the area of renewable energy include photovoltaics (semiconductor and molecular), fuel cells, solar and electric conversion to chemical fuels, biofuel production, bioremediation and environmental monitoring. There is a major focus on solar energy utilizing semiconductor systems, organic mimics of photosynthetic systems and photosynthetic systems themselves in the generation of biofuels. Fuel cell research at ASU involves the development of synthetic membrane technology, catalysis and electrochemical processes, novel hydrogen detection systems, as well as work on microbial fuel cells that utilizes organic wastes as sources of electricity.

Another important example of this work is the use of photosynthetic microbes to create high energy density biofuels from sunlight, CO2 and water. Identifying and developing the tools to assess key sustainability indicators in the environment will also be critical in public assurance of quality and safety of these new energy technologies.

 Information and Communications Technologies at the Human Interface

As communications, biomedicine and embedded computing have continued to advance at a rapid pace, the weak, rate-limiting link is increasingly information transfer between the human and computational or intelligent mechanical devices.

ASU is a leader in the design of ultra low-power devices, processing technologies, and nano/micro-scale fabrication, all of which underpin the next generation of communications and information systems. Application of this technology to rehabilitation of individuals with injuries or disabilities, including intelligent prostheses, direct brain machine interfacing, artificial sight systems for visually impaired, embedded computing, wireless technologies, flexible display technologies and systems integration with sensors is a major emphasis at ASU.

These new applications require such systems to operate reliably for long periods of time in extreme environments and on very low power. Cross-functional teams of biologists, clinicians, engineers and computer scientists are working together to provide workable, real-world solutions.