Sarah Sanderson and Hailey Jones are heading into their PhDs with full rides and even fuller resumes.
If you're looking for inspiration - or a reason to finally email that professor about research - look no further than Sarah Sanderson and Hailey Jone, two of BYU's very own mechanical engineering students who have just received the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (aka the GRFP, aka one of the most competitive, prestigious awards out there for aspiring researchers).
The award provides three years of funding for grad school and recognizes students who are not only brilliant, but also poised to make big waves in the world of research. Spoiler alert: Sarah and Hailey definitely fit the bill.
Sarah Sanderson: Simulations, Stanford, and Staying Grounded
Sarah Sanderson is headed to Stanford for her PhD, and she's taking a BYU-powered rocket ship of research and experience with her. Her NSF research proposal centers on focused ultrasound, a technology that can burn tumors with pinpoint precision (think of a magnifying glass, but way cooler and inside the human body). Sarah's goal? To make treatment planning faster and more accurate by combining heat transfer simulations with deep learning. Yep - she's training neural networks to predict how tissue behaves when it's heated up, so doctors can plan more effective cancer treatments in record time.
She explains that once you turn the normal simulation on a supercomputer "based on all that data, it could learn it... and then you can use a physics informed neural net to have the accuracy. So for doctors, who have around a 24 hour window to plan a treatment, this simulation could help a lot... because it could predict something that's still accurate in a couple minutes."
Casual genius? Maybe. But Sarah's also incredibly grounded. She started doing research her freshman year and has since co-authored multiple papers (no big deal). She says that BYU gave her opportunities most undergrads don't get - opportunities that helped her realize she wants to become a professor and mentor future students.
Her advice? "For people who aren't doing research right now and what to do research, just go to a professor from a class that you really liked or something you found really interesting, and just go talk to them! Send them an email and see if you can do it. Put yourself out there ask lots of questions."
She's also proud of learning to balance it all. "I was able to look at myself and ask: who am I and who do I want to be? And I made more decisions in my life to serve others. Even if I had a lot of homework going on, and there's a service activity, I'm going to go do that instead. Working hard has a lot of value, but I'm glad I've been able to work on all parts of myself and feel like a complete person." (And yes, she still got into Stanford.)
Outside the lab, Sarah's a distance runner. Classic mechanical engineer: she'll outpace you academically and on the trail.
Hailey Jones: Baby Monitors and a Big Impact
Hailey Jones took a different path, but one just as impactful. Her NSF proposal is focused on developing a wearable sensor that monitors fetal movement - giving expectant moms peace of mind and helping doctors detect distress signals early. She combined nano-composite sensors from Dr. Fullwood's lab with previous wearable tech research form Andres Pena and Dr. Bowden. The result? A concept that could literally save lives during pregnancy.
Hailey's engineering origin story started in high school calculus ("I absolutely loved it," she said), followed by an engineering summer camp at USU where she fell head-over-heels for mechanical engineering. "It just seemed like the coolest way to use math," she said.
She encourages other students to get into research now. She also emphasized the importance of mentorship: "The key factor to my success was the support of several professors." In regards to the success of her application, Hailey notes, "Make sure you answer the questions they ask, not the ones you want to tell them about."
When she's not building the future of maternal health, Hailey loves hiking, traveling, and hanging out with friends - proving that even fellowship winners still make time for fun.
Final Thoughts
Whether they're developing life-saving tech or making supercomputers work smarter, Sarah and Hailey are reminders of just how far curiosity, kindness, and hard work can take you.
So, to the current BYU mechanical engineering students reading this: don't be afraid to reach out, ask questions, or take that intimidating research opportunity. You might just be writing your own NSF success story next.