AAUW 2023 Fund Fellows and Grant Recipients

We’re going virtual!

34 inspiring California fellow and grant recipients are studying in California this year and are available to share nuggets of their fascinating studies. Watch the short video introduction by each fellow and grant recipient and see what, and who, your AAUW Fund dollars support. Learn about race and gender in U.S. Immigration Policy, gender policy making, Architecture + Advocacy, and other topics.

Speaker Information

Image	First Name	Last Name	Institution	Award Program Name	Degree Sought	Primary Area of Expertise	Specialization	Project Name
	Leen Raed Khaled	Arnaout	University of California-San Francisco (San Francisco-CA)	International Doctoral Degree Fellowships	Doctor of Philosophy	Public Health	Infectious diseases	Using Computational Biology to Understand the Role of Cross-Body Site Microbiome Ectopy in Preterm Birth
		Bio:	Leen Arnaout is a third-year Jordanian Ph.D. student in the University of California, Berkeley – University of California, San Francisco graduate program in bioengineering. She is working in the research group of Dr. Marina Sirota to develop computational methods to investigate how microbiome imbalance in pregnant women's bodies, and the movement of pathogenic bacteria from other body sites to the birth canal, is related to preterm birth.
	Julia	Best	Dominican University of California (San Rafael-CA)	Career Development Grants	Master of Family Therapy	Psychology	Art Therapy	Master of Arts in Marriage and Family Therapy
		Bio:	Growing up on an ashram in Florida, Julia Best has always been fascinated with people’s motivations. Since obtaining her bachelor’s in cultural anthropology, she’s followed a diverse career path as a massage therapist, a small-business owner, and a nanny. Working with clients inspired her to help others, especially women and girls. As an LMFT, she hopes to support women through crisis intervention and group therapy, as well as early intervention through art therapy with girls in school settings.
	Linh	Chuong	University of California-Los Angeles (Los Angeles-CA)	American Dissertation Fellowships	Doctor of Philosophy	Public Health	Health Policy and Management, Public Policy Cognate	Deciphering Divergence: Exploring Differential Uptake of Tax Credits Among Immigrant, Working- and Middle-Class Children, Women, and Families
		Bio:	Recognizing that data is a civil rights issue, Linh Chuong uses research to connect the dots between policy, people, and practice. Her life's goal is to help disenfranchised communities achieve not only equity, but thrive.
	Shuchi	Dwivedi	American Film Institute Conservatory	International Master's/First Professional Degree Fellowships	Master of Fine Arts	Creative Writing	Creative Writing	Screenwriting
		Bio:	Shuchi Dwivedi is a history major and a criminal lawyer who is currently a screenwriting fellow at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. In 2022 she completed cowriting her first feature film. She has previously assisted in adapting an Emmy Award-Winning series airing on Netflix as Call My Agent Bollywood Edition. She is interested in telling big stories about gender, mental health, crime and the individual that are raw, authentic and grounded in lived experiences.
	Shanice	Estrada	Charles R. Drew Univ of Medicine & Science (Los Angeles-CA)	Career Development Grants	Master of Health Science	Health & Medicine	Physician Assistant	Master of Health Science, Physician Assistant
		Bio:	Born and raised in an underserved community has made Shanice Estrada the woman she is today. Because her grandmother was a diabetic, helping her is where Estrada’s passion for health care originated. Growing up in a community filled with inequalities and limited resources, she never let those factors interfere with reaching higher education. Her goal is to give back to her community and be a health-care provider in underserved areas when she begins her career as a physician assistant.
	Brittany	Friedman	University Of Southern California (Los Angeles-CA)	American Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowships	Post Doctorate	Sociology		Cover-ups, Capitalism and the Dark Side of Saviors
		Bio:	Brittany Friedman is a sociologist of punishment and social control, specializing in critical race theory, Black feminist thought and access to justice. Her work examines questions of predation, oppression, capitalism and inequality from the site of institutions, particularly through the lens of prisons and courts. Her new project compares how private and public institutions across organizational fields similarly engage in cover-ups of systemic, gendered violence.
	Sneha	George	University of California-Riverside (Riverside-CA)	American Dissertation Fellowships	Doctor of Philosophy	Ethnic & Cultural Studies	Gender Studies, Black Studies, Queer Theory	The Absent Presence of Antiblackness: Ownership and the Self-Making of a Scholar
		Bio:	Arts Bridging the Gap uplifts the voices, experiences, and self-expression of youth from under-resourced communities through healing arts programs. Through our work, youth develop interpersonal skills and growth mindsets that enable them to be their best selves in our community. We currently offer four primary in and after school programs that utilize the arts to provide resources and support for young people in under resourced areas to realize their full potential. Futures Rewired is an in-and after-school program for 12-18 year old female-identifying, non-binary, and gender expansive youth that presents immersive technology as an interest and career path. Students are exposed to a wide range of digital media, associated hardware, and software including: virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, computer science, video games, coding, programming, data visualization, artificial intelligence, machine learning, technical art, 3D modeling, simulation, and basic engineering. Reflecting ABG’s commitment to advancing social justice, the curriculum focuses on how technology can be used for good, thus prompting critical thinking and essential discussion amongst the students. Young people learn how technology can have a positive impact on relevant, timely societal challenges such as: homelessness, animal extinction, climate change, mental health, emergency preparedness, and more! At least twice during the year, ABG brings in industry leaders to participate in a “Career Day” style class and when possible, the company takes the students off campus for educational events and experiences such as VRLA’s Conference.
	Tunisha	Gyawali	Stanford University (Stanford-CA)	International Master's/First Professional Degree Fellowships	Master of Science	Engineering	Structural (Civil)	Master’s in Structural Engineering
		Bio:	Tunisha Gyawali is primarily involved in research in the fields of structural, earthquake and environmental engineering for sustainable built-up environment and infrastructure development. The International Fellowship comes as a great reinforcement to help her pursue a master’s in structural engineering and foster her passion and career goals while championing female leadership in STEM areas.
	Dana	Harmon	California Lutheran University (Thousand Oaks-CA)	Research Publication Grants in Engineering, Medicine and Science		Biology	Molecular Microbiology	Characterizing the Role of the EmrAB-TolC Multidrug Efflux Pump in Regulation of Metabolism in E. coli
		Bio:	Dana Harmon is an assistant professor in the biology department at California Lutheran University. Her research is focused on the role of efflux pumps in metabolism and stress responses in E. coli. Her goal is to understand how efflux pumps control metabolic flux and how the resulting changes to cellular metabolism affect the physiological processes occurring within the cell.
	Katelyn	Harris	Stanford University (Stanford-CA)	Selected Professions Fellowships	Master of Business Admin	Business
		Bio:	Katie Harris is an MBA candidate with a focus on general management and a specialized certificate in public management and social Innovation. She is passionate about the intersection of education, technology and media: three industries that she believes possess the potential to transform culture and amplify opportunity for all. Long-term, she aspires to create a positive impact on society through either impact investing or social impact within Big Tech and/or consulting.
	B. Hope	Hauptman	University Of California-Merced (Merced-CA)	American Dissertation Fellowships	Doctorate	Environmental Sciences	Water	Slipping Through the Cracks: A Geospatial and Treatment Analysis of 1,2,3-Trichloropropane (TCP) in Drinking-Water Supplies
		Bio:	Hope Hauptman is a Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Systems at the University of California Merced. Her research focuses on 1,2,3-Trichloropropane (TCP) contamination and the effectiveness of using point-of-use filters and carbon filters made from agricultural residues to remove TCP from drinking water. Hauptman has contributed to several publications including a systematic review of drinking water treatment methods for TCP in the Journal Water Sanitation and Hygiene for Development, a policy paper advocating for federal TCP limits in drinking water in the Journal of Science Policy and Governance, and a predictive machine learning model published in the Journal of Groundwater for Sustainable Development. Prior to her research, Hauptman taught high school science and served as a science educator in the U.S. Peace Corps in Kenya. She holds a B.S. in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an MS in Instructional Science and Technology from California State University Monterey Bay. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, gardening, and solving crossword puzzles.
	Sonya	Hauser-Steele	University of California-Berkeley (Berkeley-CA)	Career Development Grants	Certificate	Computer & Information Sciences	Programming & Software Development	Programming Certification
		Bio:	Sonya Hauser-Steele is a modern-language major who was intrigued by technology after working at an international company after graduating from college.
	Madelene	Javier Dailey	University Of Southern California (Los Angeles-CA)	Selected Professions Fellowships	Master of Architecture	Architecture & Planning	Urban Planning, Sustainable Design	Architecture + Advocacy
		Bio:	Madelene Dailey is an urban planner from Florida, working primarily on projects related to community infrastructure planning and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation. Her work intersects equitable urban planning with sustainable design. She also volunteers her time working on community enrichment development and justice-driven civil design projects. She will graduate from the University of Southern California with a master’s degree in architecture in the spring of 2024.
	Adiba	Juya	Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterrey	International Master's/First Professional Degree Fellowships	Master of Arts	Economics	Economic Policy Analysis, Data Policy and Analytics, Research	Research on "The Impact of Female Labor Force Participation on Extreme Poverty: Exploring Afghanistan’s Political and Economic Contexts Post-August 2021"
		Bio:	Adiba Juya’s profound interest in Data Policy and analytics stems from the start of her career with the Afghan Ministry of Finance, where she served as the Policy Evaluation Head. She believes that the scarcity of data and research in her hometown, Afghanistan, hinders informed decision making in almost every sector. While pursuing her master's in international policy and development, she aims to advance data-driven systems and stimulate economic research back in her hometown.
	Paula	Kirya	University of California-San Diego (La Jolla-CA)	Selected Professions Fellowships	Master of Science	Engineering	Mechanical Engineering	Bioinspired nano-optical metasurfaces for histopathology
		Bio:	Paula Kirya is a master’s student at UC San Diego studying Mechanical Engineering. She received her undergraduate degree in bioengineering from UCSD in June 2023. Paula has been working on studying and developing new ways to apply structural color in nature-inspired nanophotonic materials to detect disease progression in biological tissue.
	Jessica	Lau	California State University-Fullerton	Career Development Grants		Education
		Bio:	Hello, my name is Jessica Lau! I am currently finishing up my last year of the Multiple Subjects Teaching Credential Program at California State University, Fullerton in order to become a full-time educator. I would like to wholeheartedly thank AAUW for generously sponsoring the Career Development Grant, which will support my education and projects to further enhance my teaching career! In my spare time, I love to do activities such as dancing, doing yoga, hiking, volunteering, and traveling!
	Krystal	Lau	Stanford University (Stanford-CA)	Selected Professions Fellowships	Master of Business Admin	Business
		Bio:	Krystal Lau is a product manager with experience in emerging markets, with a focus on digital literacy and education products for new-to-internet users. She is currently based out of the San Francisco Bay Area and will be matriculating at Stanford Graduate School of Business in the fall.
	Cambrian	Lopez-Boyd	Southwestern College (Chula Vista-CA)	Career Development Grants	Certificate	Business	Business	Cambrian Lopez career grant
		Bio	My name is Cambrian lopez. I am a wife, and a mother of three beautiful children returning to college 20 years after originally obtaining my degree. My academic and professional goals are to pursue an administrative role within the local school district that allows me the ability to head start and gain funding for a local program that will provide opportunities and resources for our students with disabilities, with a primary focus on those that are deaf and hard of hearing. My main emphasis will be to provide free after school and weekend programs that offer a bilingual and bicultural approach to opportunities that integrate our deaf and hard of hearing population into local hearing communities and social arenas through extracurricular, athletic, and work integration.
	Katherine	Maldonado	University of California-Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara-CA)	American Dissertation Fellowships	Doctor of Philosophy	Sociology	Medical Sociology and Gender	“Let Us Be the Healing of the Wound”: Child-Welfare-System-Impacted Mothers and Mental Health
		Bio:	Katherine Maldonado Fabela is a Chicana mother and activist from South Central Los Angeles and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research areas include socio-legal studies, medical sociology, inequalities, and visual and feminist methodologies. She examines the mental-health impacts of child-welfare-system involvement for criminalized Chicana/Latina mothers and their families across the life course.
	Jennifer	Noji	University of California-Los Angeles (Los Angeles-CA)	American Dissertation Fellowships	Doctor of Philosophy	Language & Literature	Ethnic literature, Human rights, Race and empire, Activism, Memory, Narrative theory	The Implicated Reader: Politics of Address in Literatures of Human Rights
		Bio:	Jennifer Noji is a PhD Candidate in the department of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. She works in the fields of Asian American and ethnic studies, critical race theory, memory studies, and human rights. Her dissertation, titled The Implicated Reader: Politics of Address in Literatures of Political Violence, explores how writers can construct literary works to implicate their readers in political violence. She also researches the roles of stories and storytelling in the 1980s Japanese American Redress Movement and the contemporary Black Reparations Movement. Jennifer’s work is published (or forthcoming) in Narrative, Parallax, and The Routledge Handbook of Memory Activism, and she is a cofounder of the UCLA Working Group in Memory Studies.
	Herdís	Pálsdóttir	California State University - Sacramento	International Master's/First Professional Degree Fellowships	Master of Science	Psychology	Applied Behavioral Analysis	An Evaluation of the Effects of Multiple-Exemplar Training on Emergent and Generalized Behavior
		Bio:	My project will be examining a teaching method that is used to teach verbal behavior to children with ASD and other developmental disabilities. Finding an effective and time-efficient method for teaching verbal behavior is crucial as it could reduce the likelihood of a severe problem behavior occurring in the future. For that reason, the parameters and results must be examined in depth to provide reliable, data-based guidelines for practitioners and researchers.
	Laura	Roque	University Of Southern California (Los Angeles-CA)	American Dissertation Fellowships	Doctor of Philosophy	Creative Writing	Fiction	Aguanta, Diana: A Novel
		Bio:	Laura Roque is the daughter of Cuban exiles and was raised in Hialeah, Florida. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Southern California and a fiction writer in their creative writing program. Her project, Aguanta, Diana: A Novel, picks apart matriarchal family structures, educational inequity, female sexuality and girlhood in a Cuban-American immigrant community.
	Carla	Salazar Gonzalez	University of California-Los Angeles (Los Angeles-CA)	American Dissertation Fellowships	Doctor of Philosophy	Sociology	Race/Ethnicity, Stratification, and Gender	Race and Gender in U.S. Immigration Policy: Mothers Seeking Asylum at the U.S.–Mexico Border
		Bio:	Carla Salazar Gonzalez’s dissertation asks how and why are Central American mothers sent to Mexico at the U.S.–Mexico border, despite seeking asylum in the U.S. What are the implications and consequences of restrictive immigration policies and laws? Her research leverages insights from 14 months of participant observations at an immigrant-serving organization and 125 interviews with Honduran, Guatemalan and Salvadoran mothers in Tijuana seeking asylum in the U.S.
	Marina	Segatti	University of California-Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz-CA)	American Dissertation Fellowships	Doctor of Philosophy	Gender Studies		Queer and Trans Digital Activism: Neoconservatism and Democracy in Brazil
		Bio:	Marina Segatti is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Feminist Studies with designated emphases in Latin American & Latino Studies and Critical Race & Ethnic Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz. Her doctoral research is centered on exploring the strategies employed by Brazilian LGBTIQA+ politicians and activists through social media platforms as they respond to the challenges posed by social and political exclusion and escalating violence within the context of the prevailing authoritarianism. During the fellowship year, Marina's primary objective is to complete her dissertation, which aims to make significant contributions to broader discussions surrounding neoconservatism, the influence of gender and sexual normativity in the framework of democracy, and the intricate issues of citizenship and belonging within today’s evolving media landscape.
	Danielle	Senecharles	University of California-San Francisco (San Francisco-CA)	Career Development Grants	Master of Nursing	Health & Medicine	Nurse-Midwifery/Women's Health Nurse Practitioner
		Bio:	I am a first-generation Afro-Caribbean Black American. I am the first registered Nurse and medical professional in my family. I was fortunate to be surrounded by strong, resilient women who exemplified empowerment. These experiences created a desire to pursue my education and training in a field that would allow me to impact women's lives directly. As I navigated my education and career, this passion only grew strong, propelling me into the field of midwifery.
	Carolina	Siqueira de Novaes Franco	University of California-Irvine (Irvine-CA)	International Doctoral Degree Fellowships	Doctor of Philosophy	Biology	Pharmaceutical Sciences	Vitamin B6 is governed by the local compartmentalization of metabolic enzymes during growth
		Bio:	Carolina is a Pharmaceutical Sciences PhD student at UC Irvine. She is interested in how proteostasis and metabolism dictates cancer cell biology. She will use the AAUW International Fellowship to investigate the role of vitamin B6 metabolism in colorectal cancer.
	Kimberly	Soriano	University of California-Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara-CA)	American Dissertation Fellowships	Doctor of Philosophy	Gender Studies	Race and Nation	Toward Building a Rebel Archive of Suciedad: Aesthetic Refusal and Disrespectable Embodiments Disrupting Banishment, Gentrification and Policing in Los Angeles
		Bio:	Kimberly Soriano’s project argues that technologies of policing such as gang injunctions and unhoused-encampment sweeps mark subjects as undesirable due to their racialized, gendered and sexed differences. Simultaneously she traces the potentiality of aesthetic refusal within queer and women of color cultures to build a rebel archive of suciedad that presents illegible acts of agency, style and culture that nonetheless disrupt Los Angeles projects of banishment.
	Ahu	Sumbas Yavasoglu	University of California-Los Angeles (Los Angeles-CA)	International Postdoctoral Fellowships	Post Doctorate	Gender Studies	Political Science	Gendering Policy Making in the Elimination of Gender Disparities in Health: The Case of the United States
		Bio:	Ahu Sumbas Yavasoglu earned a doctorate in political science from Hacettepe University in Turkey. Later, she conducted research in Germany (2009–2010), the U.S. (2019) and Hungary (Luduvika Fellow, 2022–2023). She is coeditor of Economic, Legal and Policy Studies on Health (Peter Lang, 2021). In addition, her articles on politics and gender appear in international journals and books. She’s also a feminist scholar who contributes to women NGOs and UN Women in Turkey to empower women in politics.
	Meron Aberra	Tassew	University Of Southern California (Los Angeles-CA)	International Master's/First Professional Degree Fellowships	Master of Business Admin	Business		MBA
		Bio:	I am Meron Aberra Tassew, pursuing an MBA at USC's Marshall Business School. I aim to make a social impact by combining my passion for business with a deep sense of responsibility. I aspire to leverage my education to drive positive change in my community.
	Katalina	Torres-Garcia	University of California-Irvine (Irvine-CA)	Career Development Grants	Master of Nursing	Health & Medicine	Community and Population Health Concentration	Career Development Grant
		Bio:	Katalina Torres-Garcia is continuing her journey as a care provider as she pursues her master of science in nursing with the goal of becoming a certified nurse midwife. With a background in community mental health, she hopes to contribute her knowledge, insight and education to provide equitable care as well as advocate for and empower birthing people to feel secure, safe and confident in their health- care experiences.
	Georgia	Van Cuylenburg	Arts Bridging the Gap	Community Action Grants - One Year	Community Project	Art	Art/tech for social change	Futures Rewired
		Bio:	Founded in 2014 by Georgia Van Cuylenburg, Arts Bridging the Gap creates arts programs to support youth in developing their communication skills, cognitive abilities and problem-solving skills. Futures Rewired is an after-school program for 12- to 18-year-old female-identifying and nonbinary students that presents immersive technology as an interest and a career path. Students are exposed to a wide range of digital media, associated hardware and software.
	Joyce	Weaver	Academy Of Art College (San Francisco-CA)	Career Development Grants	Master of Arts	Art	3D Character Modeling	Game Development
		Bio	Joyce Weaver is a full-time florist in San Francisco and a student at the Academy of Art University, obtaining her master of arts degree in Game Development with a concentration in character modeling for games. She hopes to get an internship during the summer of next year to further her skills. After graduating, she wants to create realistic and stylized 3D video game characters for indie and AAA companies. She aims to inspire little girls and women, especially ones who look like her, to enter the gaming industry by educating others.
	Hamee	Yong	University Of Southern California (Los Angeles-CA)	Selected Professions Fellowships	Juris Doctor	Law	Public Interest
		Bio:	Hamee Yong seeks to defend the rights of the colored, marginalized, and accused as an aspiring public defender. Hamee hopes to provide trauma-informed, holistic indigent defense from criminal to immigration law. During her final year of law school, she hopes to understand the role of human dignity and human rights as legal principles in fighting the oppression innate to the U.S. criminal legal system.
	Carolyn	Zola	Stanford University	American Dissertation Fellowships	Doctor of Philosophy	History	Gender and Women's History	Public Women: Urban Provisioners in 19th-Century America
		Bio:	Carolyn Zola is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Stanford University, where she explores questions of gender, race and labor in early America. Working at the intersection of social and cultural history, her dissertation explores the lives of female street peddlers and market women who sold food in northeastern port cities in the 18th and 19th centuries. She studied at City College of San Francisco and earned a B.A. in history at University of California, Berkeley before pursuing her doctorate.