Texas A&M undergraduate William Frendreiss ‘23 has been selected to receive the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program.
The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is one of the most prestigious awards to support graduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. It is the oldest fellowship program of its kind, founded in 1951 after president Harry Truman appointed Alan T. Waterman to run NSF. Waterman established GRFP as the first program for the foundation to fund and apply its goal of encouraging individuals to pursue graduate school in science. Since its inception, it has funded over 60,000 Graduate Research Fellowships, 42 of which have become Nobel Laureates, 450 of which have become members of the National Academy of Sciences.
The program seeks out students who are pursuing full-time research and demonstrate that they are high achieving scientists and engineers, ensuring quality, vitality, and diversity of scientific and engineering workforces. GRFP lasts for five years and provides three years of financial support, including an annual stipend of $37,000 along with a $12,000 cost of education allowance. Participating in the program also grants students access to special opportunities for professional development.
William Frendreiss ‘23
William Frendreiss ‘23 is a mathematics major with a minor in computer science from Chicago, Illinois. William’s research focuses on areas of pure mathematics such as analytic and computational number theory, a method that uses calculus techniques and specially constructed functions to study numerical objects such as prime numbers. His two primary advisors for his research are Dr. Wencai Liu and Dr. Matthew Young, both from the Department of Mathematics. He has published five articles about his research, most recently publishing “Cuspidal projections of products of Eisenstein series” in ScienceDirect. In his most recent article, William and his fellow researchers showed through a series of inequalities that projections of modular forms (a type of analytical function) could not be included in an important class of functions called Hecke eigenforms. Aside from his research, William also participates in University Honors in the Honors Housing Community and University Scholars through LAUNCH. William is also a member of the Math Club at Texas A&M University, where he organizes activities and volunteers at events designed for the local community to attend. By receiving the Fellowship, William will be able to focus on his research during graduate school because of the financial support it offers. When he graduates, William will be attending the multidisciplinary graduate program of Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization (ACO) at Georgia Tech.
To read more about how LAUNCH: National Fellowships helps prepare outstanding students to compete for nationally-competitive awards such as the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program with the generous support of the Association of Former Students, please visit https://natlfellows.tamu.edu.
Learn more about how to become a University Honors student and/or join an Honors Housing Community through LAUNCH.
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