Wig Earns NDSEG Fellowship for Electrical Engineering PhD

Elizabeth Wig COE’20 has earned the highly competitive National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship to support her doctoral work in electrical engineering, which she will pursue at Stanford University. The award, which is funded by the research agencies within the United States Department of Defense, recognizes the potential of Elizabeth’s research to contribute to US national security interests. News of the NDSEG Fellowship comes in addition to Elizabeth’s recent receipt of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, as well.

Elizabeth’s primary engineering research interest is in the diverse, high-impact applications of electromagnetics for imaging and sensing. A University Scholar and Honors student, Elizabeth earned the 2018 Goldwater Scholarship in recognition of her outstanding achievements and potential as a researcher.

Her research experience began at Northeastern’s Awareness and Localization of Explosives-Related Threats (ALERT) Center under the mentorship of URF Faculty Fellow and Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Carey Rappaport. Elizabeth’s research continued through co-ops at Draper Labs, NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab.

These research experiences have allowed her to apply her knowledge of electromagnetics to problems as diverse as airport security, detection of water underground on Mars, LIDAR for autonomous vehicles, and supersonic flight. She will enroll in the doctoral program in electrical engineering at Stanford and aspires to a research career in either an academic or industrial setting.