Forest Agostinelli Selected for NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

Graduate student Forest Agostinelli has been awarded a prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to continue his studies in computer science and engineering.

Forest has worked with Prof. Honglak Lee in the Artificial Intelligence Lab on multi-column neural networks and published his work, “Adaptive Multi-Column Deep Neural Networks for Robust Image Denoising,” in the conference proceedings of Advancements in Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS). His research won second place at the University of Michigan Graduate Symposium. He has also had the opportunity to work with John Laird, the John L. Tishman Professor of Engineering, on cognitive architectures and deep learning.

In addition to research, Forest has enjoyed volunteering with Prof. Chinedum Okwudire to do engineering outreach activities with middle school children. He has also enjoyed participating in the Lunch and Lab with a Grad mentoring program, in which undergraduate students learn from graduate students about the timeline for graduate school preparation and the activities that are offered during the undergraduate years to aid in the process.

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The National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) helps ensure the vitality of the human resource base of science and engineering in the United States and reinforces its diversity. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited United States institutions.