Inspiring Future STEM Leaders
Our Fellowship Application Window Has Closed
Our 2026 Fellowship application window will be opening in early November 2025.
Check back for updates! Please direct any questions to: [email protected]
Pursuing Science in the National Interest
We’re committed to ‘opening the door to the future’ by inspiring the next generation of STEM leaders. LLF supports STEM opportunities that connect aspiring scientists and engineers with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s premier resources and mentors. Our fellowships and research stipends are aimed at fostering the academic and professional journey of undergraduate and graduate students, with a special interest in those with low-income/financial need, and/or first-generation college students. We place LLF Fellows with Lab mentors engaged in the key research areas we fund, aligned with LLNL core competencies such as Earth and Atmospheric Science, Bioscience and Bioengineering, high-performance computing and data science, and more.
LLF provides direct student funding, enabling more time for research and ultimate success in scientific careers. We also offer an enriching summer program tailored for our annual cohort of fellows to facilitate connections, knowledge sharing, skill building and career development. Our program goes beyond building students’ technical skills and exposure to world-class science; it seeks to empower our fellows to consider a rewarding and impactful STEM career and contributes to the nation’s critical STEM pipeline needed to solve issues of national and global importance.
Thank you to our academic and professional partners, STEM donors, and LLNL colleagues, who make these programs possible!
2025 Fellowship Cohort
Colorado School of Mines
HEDS Fellow
Meet HEDS Fellow James Brague, a graduate student in Engineering Physics at Colorado School of Mines. This past summer at LLNL, James worked on shock equation of state measurements of LiF in the terapascal regime.
University of Washington
Davis Family Carbon Fellow
Meet Davis Family Carbon Fellow Osman Brown, an Electrical and Computer Engineering student at the University of Washington. This past summer at LLNL, Osman worked on an automated control system for studying polymers-on-a-chip.
University of San Francisco
Data Science Fellow
Meet Data Science Fellow Kylie Cancilla, a Data Science major with a minor in Environmental Science at the University of San Francisco. This past summer at LLNL, Kylie worked on computational visual perception research.
Las Positas College
Physics Fellow
Meet Physics with Phones Fellow Nicholas Crandall, a junior at Las Positas College majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with a minor in Computer Science – AI. This past summer at LLNL, Nicholas worked on the Physics with Phones program, an outreach effort that helps provide students and educators with greater accessibility and opportunities to engage with physics.
Johns Hopkins University
HEDS Fellow
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
HEDS Fellow
Meet HEDS Fellow Audrey Devault, a 2nd Year Ph.D. student in Nuclear Engineering at MIT. This past summer at LLNL, Audrey worked on imaging velocimetry for the characterization of inertial confinement fusion ablators.
University of California, Berkeley
HEDS Fellow
Meet HEDS Fellow Alexis Diaz, a senior majoring in Applied Mathematics at UC Berkeley. This past summer at LLNL, Alexis worked on the effects of dynamic screening on Deuterium and Tritium Ions.
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Stanford University
HEDS Fellow
Meet HEDS Fellow Jhonnatan Gama Vazquez, a 5th-year Ph.D. student in Physics at Stanford University. This past summer at LLNL, Jhonnatan worked on unveiling the micro-physics of laser-driven particle acceleration with simulations.
Texas A&M University
Fusion Fellow
Meet Fusion Fellow Travis Hallam, a second-year Ph.D. student in Nuclear Engineering at Texas A&M University. This past summer at LLNL, Travis worked on designing and fabricating new porous materials to improve how fusion reactors produce and extract tritium fuel — helping to pave the way for more practical and sustainable fusion energy.
University of San Francisco
Davis Family Life Sciences Fellow
Meet Davis Family Life Sciences Fellow Danny Humphrey, a senior at the University of San Francisco majoring in Psychology with a minor in Neuroscience. This past summer at LLNL, Danny worked on determining the role of the gut-brain axis in susceptibility and resilience to PTSD.
Bakersfield College
Bakersfield College Fellow
Meet Bakersfield College Fellow Francisco Javier Hernandez, an Industrial Automation graduate from Bakersfield College. This past summer at LLNL, Francisco worked on integrating, designing, and finalizing a microscope, UR5 robot, and an Instron hardness tester to work together in the processing cell.
Bakersfield College
HEDS Fellow
Meet HEDS Fellow Brighten Jiang, a junior majoring in Astrophysics and Math at the University of Florida. This past summer at LLNL, Brighten worked on heavy element nucleosynthesis from hyper-accreting neutron stars.
Las Positas College
Physics with Phones Fellow
Meet Physics with Phones Fellow Rayane Kadri, a junior majoring in Electrical Engineering at Las Positas College. This past summer at LLNL, Rayane worked on the Physics with Phones program, an outreach effort that helps provide students and educators with greater accessibility and opportunities to engage with physics.
University of California, Los Angeles
Early Intern Program Fellow
Meet Early Intern Program Fellow Tanusha Kolli, a freshman studying Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology at UCLA. This past summer at LLNL, Tanusha worked on logic and circuit simulations.
Sorbonne Université
HEDS Fellow
Meet HEDS Fellow Jeremy La-Porte, a Ph.D. student in Plasma Physics and Fusion at Sorbonne Université. This past summer at LLNL, Jeremy worked on magnetic field from helical plasma waves driven by spatio-temporal light springs.
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
Kim Cupps Fellow
Meet Kim Cupps Fellow Katherine Meezan, a senior majoring in Mechanical Engineering at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. This past summer at LLNL, Katherine worked on Direct Ink Write 3D Printing.
California Institute of Technology
HEDS Fellow
Meet HEDS Fellow Robert Morgan, a senior majoring in Physics at the California Institute of Technology. This past summer at LLNL, Robert worked on oxygen emission measurements using a double crystal von hamos spectrometer for EFI collimation experiments.
University of California, Merced
Carbon Fellow
Meet Carbon Fellow Nathan Nugen, a Mechanical Engineering student at UC Merced. This past summer at LLNL, Nathan worked on the design, prototyping, and testing of temperature impacts of materials produced through In-Air Microencapsulation – an advanced manufacturing technique.
University of California, San Diego
HEDS Fellow
Meet HEDS Fellow Alex Pietrow, a 2nd-year Ph.D. student in Engineering Physics at UC San Diego. This past summer at LLNL, Alex worked on enhanced short pulse laser-driven ion sources.
University of California, Los Angeles
HEDS Fellow
Meet HEDS Fellow Nathan Pulver, a graduate student in Geochemistry at UCLA. This past summer at LLNL, Nathan worked on Diamond Formation in Shocked Kapton Ablators.
University of California, Merced
HEDS Fellow
Meet HEDS Fellow Emmanuel Rabago, a 1st-year Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering at UC Merced. This past summer at LLNL, Emmanuel worked on the density effects on the opacity of hydrogen at white dwarf atmospheric conditions.
University of Chicago
Fusion Fellow
Meet Fusion Fellow Alice Roberson, a Chemistry major with a minor in Computer Science at the University of Chicago. This past summer at LLNL, Alice explored scaling law correlations between laser-driven short-pulse ion and neutron sources.
Bakersfield College
Bakersfield College Fellow
Meet Bakersfield College Fellow Julien Rodriguez, a sophomore majoring in Mechanical Engineering at Bakersfield College. This past summer at LLNL, Julien worked on P1 system documentation, improvements, & design.
University of California, Berkeley
John S. Foster Jr. Undergraduate Fellow
Meet John S. Foster Jr. Undergraduate Fellow Kirtana Romfh, a senior at UC Berkeley majoring in Engineering Physics with a minor in Spanish. This past summer at LLNL, Kirtana worked on setting up, running, and analyzing two-dimensional large-scale smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations on the Lab’s high-performance computer clusters.
Bakersfield College
Bakersfield College Fellow
Meet Bakersfield College Fellow Loy Salarda, a senior majoring in Industrial Automation at Bakersfield College. This past summer at LLNL, Loy worked on Mission Assurance: Industrial Automation for Reliable Electronics and Facility Operations.
University of California, Merced
Life Sciences Fellow
Meet Life Sciences Fellow Felizardo Salazar, a senior studying Biology at UC Merced. This past summer at LLNL, Felizardo worked on producing bacteria that enhance the production of algae biofuels as a renewable energy source.
Bakersfield College
Bakersfield College Fellow
Meet Bakersfield College Fellow Marcos Salazar-Lopez, a Junior majoring in Engineering at Bakersfield College. This summer at LLNL, Marcos will work on precision, calibration and alignment fixtures for EXAFS I and EXAFS II.
University of California, San Diego
Fusion Fellow
Meet Fusion Fellow Perry Samimy, a 2nd-year Ph.D. student in Engineering Physics at UC San Diego. This past summer at LLNL, Perry worked on Analysis of X-Ray Framing Camera Images from Deuteron Coupling Experiments on OMEGA.
Harvard University
Early Internship Program Fellow
Meet Early Intern Program Fellow Prisha Sheth, a sophomore double majoring in Computer Science and Economics at Harvard University. This past summer at LLNL, Prisha worked on logic and circuit simulations.
University of California, Berkeley
HEDS Fellow
Meet HEDS Fellow Jaya Sicard, a 1st Year Ph.D. student in Nuclear Engineering at UC Berkeley. This past summer at LLNL, Jaya worked on the development of an activation-based diagnostic for measurement of laser-driven ion sources in support of ion fast ignition.
University of California, Merced
Data Science Fellow
Meet Data Science Fellow Prerana Somarapu, a Computer Science and Engineering student at UC Merced. This past summer at LLNL, Prerana worked on GIS Modeling of Pathogen Survival: Identifying Microbial Risk Zones Across California.
University of California, Davis
HEDS Fellow
Meet HEDS Fellow Ava Staas, a junior majoring in Physics with a minor in Astronomy at UC Davis. This past summer at LLNL, Ava worked on inferring density profiles from refraction enhanced radiography signals in imploded capsules.
University of Texas at Austin
HEDS Fellow
Meet HEDS Fellow Akhilesh Tiwari, a 5th-year Ph.D. student in Aerospace Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. This past summer at LLNL, Akhilesh worked on the analysis of DANTE data to improve hydrodynamic simulations of laser-driven flyer plate impacts.
University of California, Los Angeles
Early Intern Program Fellow
Meet Early Intern Program Fellow Euleena Trinh, a sophomore studying Statistics and Data Science at UCLA. This past summer at LLNL, Euleena worked on logic and circuit simulations.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
HEDS Fellow
Meet HEDS Fellow Niels Vanderloo, a third-year Ph.D. student in Physics at MIT. This past summer at LLNL, Niels worked on the nonlinear evolution of the filamentation instability: Particle-in-Cell Simulations of Laser-Driven Experiments.
University of California, Berkeley
HEDS Fellow
Meet HEDS Fellow Mercedes Vasquez, a Ph.D. student in Earth and Planetary Science at UC Berkeley. This past summer at LLNL, Mercedes worked on Evaluation of Pressure Dependence of Thermal Conductivity using Measurements on Lithium Fluoride.
Illinois State University
HEDS Fellow
Meet HEDS Fellow Levi Webb, a 2nd-year master’s student in Physics at Illinois State University. This past summer at LLNL, Levi worked on microscopic electric fields of hot, dense
plasmas.
University of California, Los Angeles
Fusion Fellow
Meet Fusion Fellow Jasmine Yang, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in Materials Science and Engineering at UCLA. This past summer at LLNL, Jasmine worked on design, fabrication, and characterization of additively manufactured fusion targets.
University of California, Merced
HEDS Fellow
Meet HEDS Fellow Sameen Yunus, a 4th-year graduate student in Physics at UC Merced. This past summer at LLNL, Sameen worked on electron collimation studies for fast ignition.
Latest STEM News
This summer, the Livermore Lab Foundation welcomed three college students as Early Intern Program Fellows at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who graduated from Livermore and Tracy high schools.
The achievement of ignition by LLNL in December 2022 was groundbreaking. Moving beyond that to the nation’s decadal vision of commercial fusion energy will require, among other things, creating pathways and opportunities for the next generation to work in fusion. In 2023, the Foundation launched an inaugural Fusion Fellowship opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students to work with the Inertial Fusion Energy team at LLNL. This summer, LLF was pleased to bring two more fusion fellows to the Lab.
UC Climate Entrepreneurs Fellows
Four UC Climate Entrepreneurs Fellows, recruited by the LLF, came to LLNL for the Summer of 2024 to collaborate with Lab researchers. Students received training, networking, and coaching on entrepreneurship and product development best practices designed to innovate and develop their technology ideas for market.
Willimam B. Shuler Life Sciences Fellow
William “Bill” Shuler dedicated over 29 years at LLNL to astrophysics, high-energy experimental physics, and strategic weapons design. Following his tragic passing in 2021, his sister, Leslie Blain, established the William B. Shuler Fund for Neurodegenerative Disease Research. While Bill’s legacy is tied to the Lab’s mission, Blain saw this fund as a way to honor him and give back to society.