Computer Science graduate student wins NSF Fellowship

Posted by Jayme Blaschke
University News Service
July 18, 2011

Graduate student Molly Anne O’Neil has received the first NSF fellowship awarded to a Texas State University-San Marcos computer science student and is the first female NSF GRFP recipient from the university.

The fellowship provides three years of support, including a $30,000 annual stipend to the student and a $10,500 annual cost-of-education allowance to the university, for a total of $121,500 of funding.

O’Neil’s research proposal was titled “Developing General Strategies for GPU-Based Acceleration of Irregular Codes.” She is working on this research as a member of the Efficient Computing Laboratory (ECL) run by Martin Burtscher, and explores techniques for the use of graphics processors (GPUs) to accelerate irregular scientific algorithms.

According to the NSF, this fellowship "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." Nationwide, there were 2,000 fellowships awarded in 2011; of these, 113 were in the field of computer science and engineering.