All admitted students are guaranteed funding throughout their time at Ohio State, provided they continue to make sufficient progress toward the PhD. Funding is provided by University Fellowships, National Fellowships, Graduate Teaching Assistantships (GTA), and Graduate Research Assistantships (GRA), or a combination.
Teaching Associates
Virtually all of our students will serve as a GTA for at least one semester, and many students will be GTAs for several semesters, depending on the availability of funding for their research projects.
Research Associates
Graduate Research Associates (GRAs) are funded by individual grants or personal research funds of our faculty, and typicaly requires some commitment of work on the sponsored projects for which the grant was awarded.
University Fellowships
University Fellowships can cover one, two, or three years of graduate study and are awarded during the admissions process in a University-wide competition. Eligible students are nominated by the Astronomy Department and awards are typically made between February and April of any given year.
National Fellowships
National Fellowships include the DOE, NSF, and Hertz Fellowships to name a few. Here, we list several opportunities our students have applied for in the past:
- The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)
- Hertz Foundation Graduate Fellowship
- The Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (CSGF)
- National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowships
International students are encouraged to apply for outside funding such as the Fulbright Program for Foreign Students.
Other Sources
Getting full support for your research is of course ideal, but there are smaller grants and awards that you can apply for. For example, there is the Sigma Xi Grants-in-Aid of Research Program, which awards grants of up to $1,000 to students from all areas of the sciences and engineering.
Designated funds from the National Academy of Sciences allow for grants of up to $5,000 for astronomy research and $2,500 for vision related research. Students use the funding to pay for travel expenses to and from a research site, or for purchase of non-standard laboratory equipment necessary to complete a specific research project.
Several of our students have also won Philanthropic Educational Organization (PEO) awards.
There are a number of additional graduate student funding opportunities listed atMcNair Scholars, which includes a number of opportunities for underrepresented minority students.