Nia Hodges, a second-year master's student studying data analytics and statistics at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, recently won a Diversity Fellowship Award from the Taylor Geospatial Institute (TGI). The award will provide $35,000 a year for up to four years to fund Hodges' study and research.
After earning a bachelor's degree in computer science in 2022 from Jackson State University, Hodges came to McKelvey Engineering on a Department Chair's Master's Research Fellowship, a pipeline program designed to encourage students to continue to doctoral programs. She will transition to a doctoral program in systems science and mathematics in the spring under the Dean's Select Fellowship Program, which offered early admission and a bonus.
"The Chair's Fellowship allowed us to recruit Nia to come to WashU," said Jim Feher, a teaching professor of electrical and systems engineering. "She originally was thinking only about a master's degree, but getting exposure to a research lab allowed her to contemplate what a PhD might be like."
The TGI is a research collaboration that unites eight institutions within the Midwest, including WashU, to advance geospatial technology. Hodges works in the lab of Nathan Jacobs, a professor of computer science and engineering, where she researches computer vision techniques.
