Simons Fellows

Since 1984, Simons Fellows have spent six weeks of their summer doing original research in Stony Brook labs. They’re high school juniors, nominated by their schools and chosen from more than 1,800 applicants. Prior research experience isn’t required.

Fellows don’t just shadow our researchers. Each one takes on a question of their own inside an active research group — running experiments, analyzing data — and finishes by writing a research abstract and presenting a poster to the University community.

 

Beyond the Summer

Many Fellows carry that research into Regeneron Science Talent Search, the country’s oldest and most competitive science competition for high school seniors. In January 2026, ten Fellows from the previous summer’s cohort were named Regeneron Scholars. They were among 300 chosen from more than 2,600 applicants across 826 high schools, 46 states and 16 countries. Each Scholar and their high school received $2,000.

Eight of them did that work at Stony Brook:

• Lakshmi Agrawal, Stanford University Online High School, CA. Removing stormwater pollutants with nanocellulose hydrosponges. Mentor: Distinguished Professor Benjamin Hsiao, Chemistry.
• Angie Huang, East Ridge High School, MN. How quantum entanglement breaks down through repeated swapping. Mentor: Associate Professor Nengkun Yu, Computer Science.
• Everett Jin, St. Mark’s School of Texas. Zebrafish seizure behavior as a model for epilepsy. Mentor: Professor Howard Sirotkin, Neurobiology and Behavior.
• Lucienne Keyoung, Manhasset High School, NY. Zero-waste cellulose hydrogels for agriculture and water remediation. Mentor: Distinguished Professor Benjamin Hsiao, Chemistry.
• Shawnak Shivakumar, Menlo Atherton High School, CA. AI-enabled discovery of a hidden drug target in a cancer-linked protein. Mentor: Professor Yuefan Deng, Applied Mathematics and Statistics.
• Keith Xin, Whitney Young Magnet High School, IL. Nanocellulose hydrogels for removing arsenic from water. Mentor: Distinguished Professor Benjamin Hsiao, Chemistry.
• Tina Xing, Ward Melville High School, NY. Carbon-aware scheduling to make GPU computing more sustainable. Mentor: Associate Professor Zhenhua Liu, Applied Mathematics and Statistics.
• Eric Zhou, Troy High School, MI. Machine learning for consensus protocols in distributed systems. Mentor: Assistant Professor Mohammad Javad Amiri, Computer Science.

Two more Fellows from that cohort, Edward Kang and Bryan Zhu, were named Scholars for research done outside the program. In March, Kang placed second in the nation and was awarded $175,000.