Public Policy Student Lands Prestigious NSF Fellowship

Emma Menardi, a master’s student in the School of Public Policy, was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship this spring. The fellowship provides three years of funding and tuition assistance, which Menardi plans to use to complete her M.S. in Public Policy and pursue a Ph.D.

The prestigious NSF program touts Nobel Prize winners and the founder of Google among itsalums. According to the website, “the program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines,” focusing on bringing more diversity and underrepresented groups to STEM. 

Menardi’s research focuses on issues of inequality in science, technology, and public health. As a research assistant at the Center for the Studies of Women, Science, and Technology, she studies scientific authors and knowledge production around women, science, and engineering. Outside the Center, her work examines HIV policy, testing technologies, and bioethics.

Menardi, who graduated from Georgia Tech with a B.S. in History, Technology, and Society and a B.S. in Public Policy, is no stranger to accolades. In 2023, she received the Bellon Award, the highest honor for undergraduates from the School of History and Sociology. She also received the 2024 Ivan Allen Jr. Legacy Award for Graduate Students at this year’s Distinguished Alumni Awards.

Menardi is one of 60 graduate students at Georgia Tech to receive the NSF fellowship this year. Their awards total more than $9.5 million in funding, the most Georgia Tech has ever had in the program.