2024 Dean’s Scholar Fellow | Soumya Sahu, PhD Candidate
Congratulations to Soumya Sahu, PhD Candidate in Biostatistics in the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics on being one of the recipients of the 2024 Dean’s Scholar Fellowship, a one-year, non-renewable award presented by the Dean of the Graduate College in recognition of a student’s scholarly achievement. The award is intended to provide the most distinguished, advanced-level graduate students with a period of time dedicated solely to the completion of their programs. The Dean’s Scholar competition is open to doctoral students who have passed the Graduate College-required Preliminary Examination and are well into their dissertation work, and also to MFA students who have passed second-semester review. ONE nomination per program and the nomination must be submitted by the program. Applications are reviewed by the Graduate College Awards Committee and the selection process is competitive.
Soumya's doctoral research centers on enhancing statistical approaches for health studies with limited sample sizes. This includes addressing challenges in agreement assessment between AI systems and trained healthcare experts, as well as pinpointing brain connectivities as mediators of treatment effects in mental health. This is achieved through the utilization of best subset selection methods and multiple testing techniques to control the false discovery rate (FDR).
Recipients of the Dean’s Scholar Fellowship will receive a fellowship stipend of $30,000 for a twelve-month academic year. (The appointment period will be August 16th-August 15th with monthly payments September 16th-August 16th.) The recipients also receive a tuition and partial fee waiver from the Graduate College. The waiver covers all tuition (including differential) service fee, health service fee, academic facilities maintenance fund assessment, library and information technology assessment, and part of the cost of coverage for fall and spring semester towards CampusCare, if applicable. All other fees are the responsibility of the student.
Best wishes to Soumya in his fellowship and continued doctoral studies. For more information on the Dean's Scholar Fellowship, please visit: https://grad.uic.edu/funding-awards/graduate-college-fellowships/ds/