Illinois Center for Advanced Studies of the Universe

Graduate Fellowships

Overview

The Illinois Center for Advanced Studies of the Universe (ICASU) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is pleased to announce its annual Graduate Student Fellowship competition. These one-year fellowships support graduate research on topics of direct relevance to ICASU. Fellowships start at the beginning of the fall semester of the given year, with a duration of one year through the end of the summer of the following year.

The deadline application for the 2025 ICASU Fellowships is May 19, 2025.

Your two page research statement should be combined with the CV, the publication list and the list of presentations into a single pdf document with the file name: FellowshipApp_[your_last_name]_[your_first_name]_2025.pdf

Apply Now

This year, ICASU anticipates awarding two fellowships. One will be joined with the Center for AstroPhysical Surveys (CAPS) at the University of Illinois National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Another one will be joined with the University of Illinois Department of Physics. The ICASU-CAPS fellow will be devoted to theoretical work with synergistic overlap between these centers. The ICASU-Physics fellow will be devoted to theoretical work on the physics aspects of the ICASU mission.

The evaluation criteria will be based on scientific merit and relevance to the ICASU mission, putting special emphasis on theory proposals that can strengthen the connections between ICASU and its partners. In particular, applicants interested in the ICASU-CAPS fellowship should clearly state how the research intended will enhance synergies between CAPS and ICASU. 

*Until more fellowships are available per year, the general guideline is that a student cannot be awarded an ICASU Physics or ICASU CAPS more than once.*

Fellowship Details

The graduate fellowship includes one year (12 months) of funding at $30k/yr for a stipend (with tuition remission) starting in the fall of the given year and extending through the summer of the following year. The ICASU-CAPS fellow will also have computing resources available.

Application Materials:

Cover page

The cover page should be limited to 1 page, and it should contain the following information:

  • full name, email, and home department of the applicant,
  • year of study of the applicant,
  • whether the applicant has passed the qualifying examination (or equivalent),
  • whether the application is intended for the ICASU-CAPS or ICASU-Physics. The applicant must select a primary program. These fellowships are open to graduate students in any department on campus. 

Research Statement

The research statement is limited to two pages and must be concise and clear. It should contain four sections: Motivation, Methods, Deliverables, and Synergy.

  • The Motivation Section discusses the scientific context, including the big picture and how it fits within the ICASU interdisciplinary mission. 
  • The Synergy Section describes how the research will develop connections between ICASU and one of its partners, clearly delineating the connections to CAPS or Physics.
  • The Methods Section describes what theory, equations, simulations, etc, will be performed in the project. 
  • The Deliverables Section will contain a list of the expected outcomes from this funded 1-year research, and it should contain a clear timeline.

Figures and references are encouraged but cannot exceed the page limit. The text layout should be standard with 1-inch margins and a 10- to 12-point font.

CV

A brief 1-page CV with the applicant's most significant achievements (do not include papers or presentations).

List of Publications

Please provide a list of publications (including full author lists and publication titles) and indicate if any papers are Editor Choices or have been highlighted in any way. Please also include conference proceedings and papers submitted to the arXiv, which are still under review.

List of Presentations

A list of invited or contributed presentations (including the talk title, the paper the talk refers to, and the inviting organization). Exclude any internal talks at UIUC.

Letters of Reference (2)

Once you submit your complete application, the system will automatically send an email request to two people that you select (you will be asked to input their email addresses), requesting that they write a letter of reference for your application. One letter must be from your adviser, and the second must be from the person you want to collaborate with in addition to your adviser. Please ask your references to upload their letter before the application deadline.

Questions can be directed to Professor Nicolás Yunes at nyunes@illinois.edu.

CURRENT ICASU GRADUATE FELLOWS

2024 ICASU Physics Fellow - Abhishek Hegade Kumbale Raveesha

For the development of gravitational wave models for the inspiral of a binary neutron star system that include viscous effects and constrain microphysical transport properties such as shear and bulk viscosity using gravitational wave observables.

2024 ICASU CAPS Fellow - Yiqi Xie

For the development of a neural network model to carry out tests of general relativity with gravitational waves emitted by the inspiral of binary black holes.

PAST ICASU GRADUATE FELLOWS

2023 GRADUATE STUDENT FELLOWS

ICASU Physics Fellow - Chloe Richards

For their numerical investigations of black hole hair and binary black hole mergers in axi-dilaton gravity

ICASU NCSA Fellow - Aaron Ouellette

For developing novel methods for analyzing galaxy survey data, with applications in studies of galaxy formation and cosmology.

2022 GRADUATE STUDENT FELLOWS

ICASU Physics Fellow - Yiqi Xie

For their non-parametric modeling of gravitational waves beyond Einstein’s gravity using deep-learning networks

ICASU CAPS/NCSA Fellow - Vedant Dhruv

For developing novel methods for analyzing galaxy survey data, with applications in studies of galaxy formation and cosmology.

2021 GRADUATE STUDENT FELLOWS

ICASU Physics Fellow - Travis Dore

For developing new numerical algorithms  for solving viscous relativistic hydrodynamics with multiple conserved charges

ICASU CAPS/NCSA Fellow - Lunan Sun

For their realistic general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations with neutrino radiation transport