Lilly Hinkley, working on her PhD with Peter Neff as part of the Minnesota NICE research group, received an honorable mention on her National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship proposal last week! It was encouraging to see a healthy number of graduate research fellowships awarded from NSF after a 50% reduction in 2025. Lilly was the only geoscience honorable mention at the University of Minnesota, with one geoscience NSF Graduate Research Fellowship awarded to Natalie Keating in Earth & Environmental Sciences.
Lilly will continue her work on West Antarctic ice cores with the support of a university Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellowship for academic year 2026-27 which will embed her with the Polar Geospatial Center on the Saint Paul campus, a National Science Foundation center providing remote sensing geospatial support for operations and research conducted by NSF Office of Polar Programs.