The fellowship recognizes outstanding graduate students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Ten current students and recent alums of the University of Maryland’s Department of Mathematics received prestigious 2026 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships, which recognize outstanding graduate students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

This year’s awardees are:

• Anirud Aggarwal (B.S. ’25, computer science; B.S. ’25, mathematics)
• Yash Anand (B.S. ’25, physics; B.S. ’25, mathematics), Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Hannah Cairo, Ph.D. student in mathematics
• Owen Deen, Ph.D. student in applied mathematics and statistics, and scientific computation
• Darsh Gandhi, Ph.D. student in applied mathematics and statistics, and scientific computation
• Erin Hopper, computer science and mathematics double-degree student
• Jeremy Kuznetsov (B.S. ’25, mathematics), senior aerospace engineering major, Princeton University
• Gary Peng, computer science and mathematics double-degree student
• Rishi Pradeep (B.S. ’25, computer science and mathematics)
• Yujing Tang, Ph.D. student in mathematics

The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program helps ensure the quality, vitality and strength of the United States' scientific and engineering workforce. The five-year fellowships provide three years of financial support, including an annual stipend of $37,000.

Since 1952, NSF has funded over 70,000 Graduate Research Fellowships out of more than 500,000 applicants. More than 40 Fellows have gone on to become Nobel laureates, and more than 450 have become members of the National Academy of Sciences.

Sujay Konda, Ishan Raghavendra and Daniel Yuan each ranked in the top 200 out of more than 4,300 competitors in one of the most prestigious mathematics contests for undergraduates in North America.

Every winter, thousands of college students across the United States and Canada sit down for six hours to take the 12-question Putnam Competition exam, widely considered one of the most difficult undergraduate math contests in the world. 

Most people who tackle the test walk away with a score of zero. Getting even a single point is considered an accomplishment.

But in December 2025, three University of Maryland students—computer science majors Sujay Konda and Ishan Raghavendra and mathematics major Daniel Yuan—represented UMD as a team and individually finished in the top 200 out of over 4,300 Putnam competitors.

Overall, UMD placed 14th among 487 participating institutions—marking the ninth consecutive year that the university has finished in the top 20 nationally. Although not part of UMD’s official team, computer science major Hanson Bai and mathematics majors Boheng Shao and Kelin Zhu were each recognized among the top 500 as well.

For Doron Levy, chair of UMD’s Department of Mathematics, this year’s results mean something beyond just a ranking.

“Schools like MIT, Princeton and Stanford recruit math majors specifically for their Putnam teams,” Levy said. “This is an amazing achievement, in particular given that there are very few public universities with comparable ranking. Our continued success says a lot about the quality of our students and the support they receive here.”

First-timers at the top

What makes this year’s results particularly striking is that two of the students who represented UMD in the competition had never tackled the Putnam before. Unlike Yuan, a returning contestant with previous Putnam success, Konda and Raghavendra were first-time competitors. Yet both freshmen finished among the top scorers in the country. 

Raghavendra, who plans to add a mathematics major, arrived at UMD already well-versed in competition math after years of proof-based contests, including high school-level American Mathematics Competitions, American Invitational Mathematics Examinations and HMMT tournaments. For him, Putnam was less a leap into the unknown than a continuation of something he already loved.

“I heard about the contest in high school and decided to participate because I love proof-based math,” Raghavendra said. “I credit most of my preparation to my previous math competition background, but Putnam was still a very different experience.”

With a background rooted more in competitive programming, Konda heard about the competition through friends and decided to give it a shot. He went in curious, worked through old Putnam exams to prepare and came out with something he had not quite expected—a new way of seeing problems.

“Coming from a mostly computer science background, I think taking the Putnam helped expand the different perspectives and ways to approach problems from a different field,” he said. “It was interesting to see the different types of solutions that exist in math, stuff you don’t see in computer science.” 

The formula for success

Students like Konda and Raghavendra are exactly the kind of contestants Roohollah Ebrahimian, a principal lecturer in UMD’s Department of Mathematics and the university’s Putnam coordinator, wants to reach. Ebrahimian, who has coached UMD’s Putnam team for more than a decade, noted that UMD’s nine-year winning streak was no accident.

“The formula for our success really comes down to two things,” he said. “Recruitment of our best students and extensive preparation.”

Ebrahimian maintains a running list of close to 100 students—drawn partly from top finishers at a high school math competition he runs for students in D.C. and Maryland (Yuan and Zhu both participated). Ebrahimian personally reaches out to each student at the start of every fall semester.

“UMD’s one-credit, 90-minute Putnam Express course has also helped prepare decades of students for the contests,” noted Ebrahimian, who teaches the class and established its accompanying guide. “The class predates my own time here and ensured many high scorers.”

Ebrahimian also found less conventional ways to stay connected to students, such as offering office hours in UMD’s dining halls to chat informally with students directly over a meal.

A few years ago, he also launched a YouTube channel to reach UMD math majors and prospective students and support their academic aspirations. Within weeks, students were finding his channel and emailing him about his math videos, and what began as an outreach experiment grew into something more. Ebrahimian began uploading videos specifically about Putnam and how to tackle math competition exams. The videos work through multiple failed attempts before landing on an answer, with him narrating what went wrong at each turn and explaining the “behind-the-scenes” reality of competitive test-taking.

“I wanted to be a resource for anyone trying to understand not just what the solutions to competition problems were but also how to arrive at them,” Ebrahimian said. “There are many resources that give you problems along with solutions, but not many that actually walk you through the process.”

Thanks to his efforts both online and in real life, UMD’s reputation for mathematical rigor and success in competitions has spread widely. In fall 2025, students from other institutions—including local community colleges in Maryland—began sitting in on Ebrahimian’s Putnam Express classes, hoping to find a formula for success.

“They’ve seen our success and have seen how Maryland has been consistently doing well,” Ebrahimian said. “Students want to be a part of that and learn.”

What’s next

Encouraged by their results this year, Konda and Raghavendra look forward to the next Putnam competition in December. Both freshmen are eager to test themselves against the nation’s best undergrad mathematicians again. And they hope others join them—the more, the merrier.

“Putnam’s for anyone passionate about math,” Raghavendra said. “There’s nothing to lose because even just getting a non-zero score is a big deal, and you can always try again the next year.”

“Considering how much fun I had preparing for Putnam and the different problem-solving skills I’ve developed from it, I think I’ll probably continue to participate for the rest of the time I’m here at UMD,” Konda added. “I just hope that more students will get involved in one way or another.”

This is the highest honor bestowed on a graduating senior each academic year, based on academic distinction, exemplary character and service to the campus or broader community. 

Two undergraduates in the University of Maryland's Department of Mathematics were named finalists for 2026 University Medalist, the highest honor bestowed on a graduating senior each academic year, based on academic distinction, exemplary character and service to the campus or broader community. 

Anirud Aggarwal

Anirud Aggarwal’s undergraduate research accomplishments read like a standout doctoral student’s: In Rio de Janeiro this year, the dual-degree scholar in computer science and mathematics presented a paper on artificial intelligence (AI) image generation at the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR). Next month he will present a paper on scaling vision systems at the IEEE/Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition—a study that earned him a Computing Research Association’s Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award honorable mention.

But it was during Aggarwal’s semester abroad at Kyoto University in Japan when his passions bloomed. By establishing a philosophy and ethics reading group that discussed Japanese and English texts, he developed a space for cross-cultural expression. He called Kyoto and UMD places “where curiosity sparks discovery, kindling the next generation of researchers.”

More recently, Aggarwal joined a San Francisco-based startup as their founding research engineer to advance computer vision and generative AI. His research impact has also rippled through his community; through his work with Computer Engineers of the Next Generation, he developed curricula and taught computer science to thousands of students and trained numerous instructors. 

Aggarwal “represents the very best of what the University of Maryland strives to cultivate in its students: exceptional intellectual ability, meaningful contributions to research, and a deep commitment to service and mentorship,” said Associate Professor of Computer Science Abhinav Shrivastava.

Nishkal Hundia 

Nishkal Hundia arrived at UMD from India as an international student struggling to find his place. He’s graduating as one who helped classmates find theirs, believing that “hard work is not rewarded equally when access is unequal,” said the double-major in computer science and mathematics.

In his freshman year Hundia co-founded UMD’s AI/ML Club, recruiting students without experience so they could find mentors, opportunities and a sense of belonging. He grew it to more than 800 members, many of whom partnered with startup companies or used the experience to land jobs.

A teaching assistant for discrete mathematics, Hundia has helped his peers not just academically but also financially. In 2024 he launched a “hackathon” awareness initiative and secured more than $5,000 in travel funding for UMD students who otherwise could not afford to compete.

Hundia’s paper on modern AI models was presented last year at an ICLR workshop in Singapore. Also last year he presented a paper on deep learning and historical storm data at the International Conference on Structural Safety and Reliability. The recipient of a $45,000 Open Philanthropy grant to study AI reasoning, Hundia also earned both the Andrew Reisse Endowed Memorial Scholarship and John D. Gannon Scholarship from the Department of Computer Science.

“Nishkal is extremely bright and has personally shattered my expectations of what undergraduate students are capable of and how quickly they can become strong researchers,” said Assistant Professor of Computer Science Sarah Wiegreffe.

Hundia this fall will enroll at Boston University as a Ph.D. student in computing and data science.

Written by John Tucker