CHEE Graduate Student in First Class of Herbold Fellows

Bob Herbold, former chief operating officer of Microsoft Corp., and Patricia Herbold, who served as a U.S. ambassador to Singapore, started the Herbold Foundation in 2002 to provide college scholarships to students across the United States studying STEM subjects. This year, they are sponsoring the inaugural class of University of Arizona Herbold Fellows. The five graduate student fellows will each receive $10,000 for their work applying computer science and data sciences to a wide range of subjects. Chemical engineering graduate student Kira Zeider, for example, will be supporting a NASA mission to collect an unprecedented volume of airborne data about the Earth’s atmosphere and to analyze it using machine learning methods and other advanced data science techniques.

During her time double majoring in chemical and environmental engineering for her UA undergraduate studies, Zeider worked as an environmental engineering intern at Freeport-McMoRan and conducted research into water purification for tribal nations. Now, she’s preparing to start her PhD in chemical engineering, with University Distinguished Professor Armin Sorooshian as her adviser. 

“This fellowship was a large part in helping me recruit a tremendous student such as Kira, who did not have a shortage of other opportunities,” Sorooshian said.

Zeider said receiving the fellowship made her feel more confident about beginning her graduate studies and reinvigorated her passion for environmental research.

“With this fellowship, I’ll be able to actually dedicate myself just to my studies and my research, which is something I’ve never truly been able to do,” she said. “One of the things about this fellowship is that it will add credibility to my resume and open a lot of doors to me in the future.”