STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: Wilmington’s Caroline Johnston Awarded National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship At USC

Below is an announcement from the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering:

LOS ANGELES, CA — Caroline Johnston, of Wilmington, was recently awarded the highly competitive National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship while enrolled at the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering.

“I feel very grateful and privileged to have been selected as a recipient of the NSF GRFP,” says Johnston. “Many people have helped me along my academic journey both here at USC and my undergraduate institution, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, MA. It was an awesome feeling to reach out to and reconnect with old advisors/mentors to share the great news! With the support of the GRFP, I am excited to keep pursuing the research topics that are both theoretically interesting and have the potential for positive societal impact.

Johnston, a student at USC’s Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, is pursuing research in optimization for group decision making.

“At a high level, my research proposal revolves around the concept of using robust optimization and social choice theory to create a framework that integrates fair, diverse, equitable, and/or inclusive practices into group-decision making processes,” explains Johnston.