Wellesley, Massachusetts – Wellesley College students and alums are once again among a select group of students receiving awards to support graduate study.
Here are some of this year’s fellowship recipients.
Knight-Hennessy Scholars
Kavindya Thennakoon is one of just 90 students to receive a Knight-Hennessy Scholarship to support graduate study at Stanford University.
A 2019 Wellesley graduate from Warakathenna, Sabaragamuwa, Sri Lanka, Thennakoon is pursuing a Ph.D. in developmental and psychological sciences at the Stanford School of Education. An anthropology and cinema studies major at Wellesley, Thennakoon earned an M.S. degree in learning, design and technology from Stanford, where she was a Dean’s Fellow. Thennakoon is the co-founder of Tilli, a play-based learning tool designed to build foundational cognitive skills before a child’s 10th birthday.
Knight-Hennessy scholars receive up to three years of financial support to pursue graduate studies at Stanford while engaging in experiences that prepare them to be visionary, courageous, and collaborative leaders who address complex challenges facing the world. Scholars are selected based on their demonstration of independence of thought, purposeful leadership, and a civic mindset.
Thennakoon is the second Wellesley alum to receive the Knight-Hennessy award; Ally Kim ’21 was named to the 2023 cohort last year.
NSF Graduate Research Fellowships
Wellesley College alums received 14 NSF Graduate Research Fellowships this year—the best among liberal arts colleges.
This year’s NSF recipients are:
– Grace Callahan ’21, a Wellesley biology major who is now studying population biology at the University of California at Davis
– Annie Gomez ’22, a Wellesley physics and Latin American studies major who is now studying engineering at Northwestern
– Rosalie Grijalva ’22, a neuroscience major and biochemistry minor at Wellesley who is now studying neurosciences at Yale
– Lydia Dahyun Han ’18, an economics major and anthropology minor at Wellesley who this fall will begin the joint sociology and demography Ph.D. program at the University of California at Berkeley
– Claire Hayhow ’21, an environmental studies and political science major at Wellesley who is about to begin study toward at Ph.D. degree at MIT
– Maya Igarashi ’20, a physics and Japanese major at Wellesley who is now studying biophysics at the University of Chicago
– Nafisa Iyatunde Rashid ’23, a cognitive and linguistics science major at Wellesley who this fall will begin studying linguistics at UC Berkeley
– Else Schlerman ’17, a Wellesley physics major now studying geosciences at the University of New Hampshire
– Isabella Stewart ’24, a Wellesley chemistry major now studying civil and environmental engineering at MIT
– Zahra Alexandra Thabet, a math and economics major who is now studying economics at Stanford
– Jenny Shan Wang ’23, a Wellesley computer sciences and economics major now pursuing a Ph. D. degree in technology and operations management at Harvard
– Jannitta Yao ‘21, a geosciences and computer science major who is now studying earth sciences at Dartmouth
– Jing Zhang ’22, a chemistry and political sciences major at Wellesley now studying chemistry at the University of Washington
– Cynthia Ann Zhao ’22, an economics and mathematics major at Wellesley now studying economics at Princeton
Wellesley College students and graduates who are interested in applying for a post-graduate fellowship, including the NSF and the Knight-Hennessy awards, are encouraged to reach out to Wellesley’s Fellowships and Scholarships Office for information.