The Mechanical Engineering department at UC Riverside has been awarded $0.9 million by the U.S. Department of Education to provide needs-based fellowships to domestic and permanent resident graduate students. The award is from the Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) program and aligns with the university-wide goal of expanding diversity of the graduate population. When combined with the matching funds from the UCR Graduate Division, the three-year grant will allow for more than 20 graduate student fellowships to pursue doctoral studies in Mechanical Engineering. The award will be run by a team of ME faculty that includes Richard Wilson, Guillermo Aguilar, Lorenzo Mangolini, Suveen Mathaudhu, Fabio Pasqualetti, and Luat Vuong. The award for Mechanical Engineering is part of more than $4.4 million in GAANN awards won by the Bourns College of Engineering this year.