ECE Ph.D. Student Samarth Chopra has received a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Chopra has recently joined the University of Maryland after graduating from the University of Pittsburgh with a BSE in electrical and computer engineering. He has joined the UMD GAMMA Lab (Geometric Algorithms for Modeling, Motion, and Animation), under the guidance of Professor Dinesh Manocha.

The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) supports individuals who have demonstrated the potential to make significant contributions to STEM-related fields. The purpose is to strengthen the scientific and engineering workforce of the United States. The program is open to full-time students in master’s and doctoral programs and provides three years of support over a five-year fellowship period. The 2025 Fellowship was awarded to approximately 1500 US students.

Chopra is the recipient of the Vikram Manikonda Endowed Distinguished Graduate Fellowship in Electrical and Computer Engineering. The award was established by ECE Alum Vikram Manikonda (M.S. ’94 / Ph.D. ’97) to provide merit-based support to students studying controls or microelectronics with the intention of enhancing diversity, including but not limited to racial or gender diversity in engineering. 

Other awards include the University of Pittsburgh ECE Outstanding Graduate Award and Senior Design Expo SSOE Best Overall Project Award and SSOE ECE Department First Place Award.

At UMD, Chopra will focus on photorealistic and geometrically accurate Gaussian Splatting for autonomous robot navigation, as well as ground robot navigation stack in partnership with Army Research Labs (ARL).