Graduate Research Fellows

With a goal of enhancing the global competitiveness of Arizona's graduate programs and developing a pool of talented job candidates in high-tech fields, Science Foundation Arizona funds the Graduate Research Fellows  (GRF) program. The intention is to strengthen the three research universities by providing access to the best and the brightest prospective scientists and engineers, deepening the pool of candidates for the jobs in aerospace and defense industries, electronics and IT, bioscience and biomedicine, environmental protection and construction.  Since 2007, SFAz has funded 263 GRFs in Arizona.

The GRF program recognizes that none of this happens without propelling still younger students along the STEM pathway and into the pipeline.  The program accomplishes that task by requiring all research fellows to spend a day a week working in middle and high school classrooms with teachers and students, and participating in summer teaching internships. One important consequence of this linkage is to introduce STEM education into classrooms as positive, in-context experiences favoring high-tech career choices. What could be more important at this critical moment in history?