Fellows are provided professional development opportunities, in addition to a three-year annual stipend of $37,000 and a $16,000 education allowance for tuition. According to the NSF, the purpose of the fellowship program is to help ensure the quality, vitality and diversity of the scientific and engineering workforce of the United States.
Daniel Campa — Helping family farmers build climate resiliency
For Daniel Campa, data science isn’t about algorithms. It’s about helping people make smart, sustainable decisions.“I want to help small family farmers with data-driven insights so they can be more climate resistant to phenomena like droughts or floods and distribute resources like water and fertilizer more efficiently,” he said.
A Morgantown native, Campa credited his connection to West Virginia’s landscape and agricultural heritage with pushing him to use data science to address real-world challenges.
“My analytical mind led me to become interested in math, statistics, and computer science. Data science is the combination of these,” Campa said. “And I have an appreciation for environmental conservation efforts and believe that fixing our food system is a great start.”
Working with his faculty mentor, Srinjoy Das, assistant professor in the School of Mathematical and Data Sciences at the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, Campa studies “offline reinforcement learning,” a type of machine learning that trains systems to make decisions based on past data, rather than requiring new interactions.
He works to improve training datasets, strategically resampling rare but important scenarios to better represent real-life conditions.
After his May 2026 graduation from WVU, Campa will use the NSF fellowship to pursue a master’s degree in engineering in data science at the University of Pennsylvania.
There, he plans to apply data-driven approaches to agricultural challenges such as crop yield prediction and resource management.
Rebecca Ozbolt — Controlling carbon levels with soil microbes
Nontraditional student Rebecca Ozbolt discovered environmental science when she decided to ditch her unfulfilling career as a hairstylist and start over.She enrolled at WVU as an undergraduate and was drawn to environmental microbiology because, she said, “I loved learning about the hidden life surrounding us and how it operates. And I wanted to do something to aid the health of the planet.”
Ozbolt’s research at the Eberly College and the Davis College focused on the role that microscopic organisms in soil play in the storage of carbon in forest soil and the release of carbon back into the atmosphere.
“Soil microbial communities differ in their metabolic capabilities, and those differences shape how carbon is stabilized in the soil,” she said. “Carbon sequestration research is increasingly urgent as atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to climb, destabilizing global weather patterns and driving more frequent extreme events.”
She credits her success to her research experiences in the lab of Ember Morrissey, associate professor, and to the mentorship of her academic advisor, Jenna Edwards, who provided vital encouragement as Ozbolt began her degree “as a doubtful and tentative 43-year-old who really wanted to become an environmental scientist,” she said.
After her graduation in May 2026, Ozbolt will transition into the Eberly College master’s program in biology to continue her work in the Morrissey Lab, learning to leverage microbial communities in grassland ecosystems for carbon sequestration and ecosystem restoration.
Samuel Stalnaker — Advancing space propulsion with lasers
Samuel Stalnaker launched into laser physics in his first semester at WVU, when a tour of Oleg Jefimenko Distinguished Professor Earl Scime’s lab introduced him to plasma physics and advanced laser diagnostic systems.“I was so impressed with the labs that I immediately asked to start working in one,” he said.
Stalnaker quickly immersed himself in research focused on developing laser systems that measure the properties of gases and plasmas, including density, temperature and velocity, without disrupting them.
His future work focuses on Hall thrusters, a key technology in modern propulsion systems that powers everything from the SpaceX Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit to NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, which traveled beyond Mars to the asteroid belt in a deep-space mission.
“Improvements in the designs of these thrusters will allow for more efficient spacecraft and improve space travel across a wide range of missions,” he explained.
A December 2025 graduate of the Eberly College, Stalnaker will transition his work on laser diagnostics to a physics doctoral program at the University of Maryland, where he will use “quantum beat spectroscopy,” a laser-based technique, to measure magnetic fields inside plasma-based Hall thrusters, aiming to improve how they are tested and modeled.
“The mentorship from Dr. Scime and Thomas Steinberger was invaluable in getting me to where I am today,” he said. “The grad students in the group created a welcoming environment for learning that allowed me to grow even further.”
This article is republished from WVU Today — read the original article.
