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Ph.D. Student Gia Smith Awarded a 2025 GEM Fellowship
Gia Smith, a third-year Ph.D. student at the University of Virginia School of Data Science, has been awarded a 2025 GEM Fellowship. The GEM Fellowship is a highly competitive national program that supports outstanding underrepresented minority students pursuing graduate degrees in applied science and engineering.
Smith studied statistics as an undergraduate at Old Dominion University before starting a career as a software engineer. She soon realized that compiling data for a tool or system wasn't nearly as interesting as finding the story behind the data. Smith applied to UVA's recently launched Ph.D. in Data Science and is currently in her third year, where her research focus is on predictive modeling in epidemiology. The GEM Fellowship will provide Smith with financial support, mentoring, and professional development opportunities throughout her graduate studies and beyond.
