2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) provides funding for aspiring STEM graduate students to pursue research based on their proposed projects and personal narratives. This competitive program has awarded around 2,000 fellows annually, providing financial support and flexibility for recipients to choose their graduate research labs and institutions. For students applying in their second year of graduate school, the fellowship enables them to continue existing projects in their established research groups.

In 2025, only 1,500 applicants were awarded fellowships, and for the 2026 application, the solicitation was posted two months later than in previous years, with submission deadlines delayed by one month. The new solicitation restricted eligibility to first-year graduate students, making second-year students ineligible. In engineering fields, second-year students often already have established positions in a lab, and may have produced preliminary publications or conference presentations. Given these recent changes and program uncertainty, characterizing and communicating the fellowship's impact through the scientific outputs of these fellows is increasingly important.

This work presents a preliminary bibliometric analysis of scientific literature authored by NSF GRFP awardees in engineering disciplines from 2000 to 2025. Using data from research.gov and the database Dimensions, scientific literature authored by NSF GRFP fellows was extracted and analyzed. Quantitative metrics are presented, including total scholarly output, median publications per fellow, and median citations received. Publications were also evaluated on open access status, journals with the most publications, and alignment with UN Sustainable Development Goals. Finally, publishing trends of fellows in the years preceding the fellowship were measured, clarifying the research experience students gain before applying. This analysis directly addresses how the elimination of second-year eligibility may affect applicant preparedness and the competitiveness of future cohorts in engineering fields.