Two students named 2025 Quad Fellows

Northwestern students Tisha Dash and Piramon Kumnurdmanee have been named 2025 Quad Fellows.

The Quad Fellowship, an initiative of the governments of Australia, India, Japan and the United States, is designed to build ties among the next generation of scientists and technologists.

“This fellowship provides a unique opportunity for awardees to build meaningful collaborations with fellow Quad recipients whom they might not otherwise interact with as graduate students,” said LaTanya Williams, associate director of STEM in the Office of Fellowships. “Tisha and Piramon are both pursuing innovative research, and with the support of the Quad fellowship, will make great advances in their fields of study.”

Tisha Dash

Originally from Durgapur, a small city in India, Dash moved to the U.S. this fall to pursue her Ph.D. in Northwestern’s Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences (IBiS) program.

“I hope to focus my research on uncovering the structure–function relationships of cellular devices that drive essential biological processes,” she said.

Building on her previous work on copper homeostasis and endocytic dynamics, she aims to bridge molecular-scale insights with a broader understanding of cellular quality control and disease mechanisms, ultimately linking fundamental biology to global health challenges.

Piramon Kumnurdmanee

Originally from Hatyai, a city in the south of Thailand, Kumnurdmanee is an astronomy Ph.D. candidate and a member of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Exploration in Astrophysics (CIERA). She is advised by Professor Wen-fai Fong.

She discovered joy in the interdisciplinary perspective of observational astronomy during her undergraduate years at the University of California, Santa Cruz, before deciding to continue her studies at Northwestern where her research explores the environments of some of the most energetic explosions in the universe through multiwavelength observations.

“It is exciting to leverage both space- and ground-based telescopes around the world to collect photons across the electromagnetic spectrum of these rapid cosmic booms,” she said.

The Quad Fellowship is administered by the Institute of International Education. It is operated in consultation with a non-governmental task force composed of academic, foreign policy and private sector leaders from each of the Quad countries.

Northwestern students interested in pursuing scholarship and fellowship opportunities can contact the Office of Fellowships.