Two Doctoral Candidates Awarded MPower Grants

A side-by-side split image featuring two individual portraits. On the left, a smiling young East Asian woman with long dark hair wearing a grey sweatshirt. On the right, a smiling Black man with short hair and a goatee wearing a white polo shirt against a grey background.

MPower funding will support research on stroke care access in the United States and agricultural drought monitoring in East Africa.

Doctoral candidates Wen Qi and Adebowale Adebayo have earned support from the MPower Early Scholars Investment Fund, a competitive program designed to help emerging researchers advance innovative projects and reach key career milestones. The fund is part of the University of Maryland Strategic Partnership: MPowering the State, a collaboration between the University of Maryland, College Park and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and was launched with a $7.5 million investment to support doctoral students, postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty.

Wen Qi was awarded $19,167 for her research on the Spatial Analysis of Stroke Care Access, and Adebowale Adebayo was awarded $38,332 for his research on Geo-AI for Agricultural Drought Monitoring.

Qi’s research examines the intersection of diet-related health disparities and spatial mismatches in healthcare access. With nominations from her advisor, Professor Giovanni Baiocchi, and Professors Kathleen Stewart and Leila De Floriani, Qi was awarded $19,167 in bridge funding for the final chapter of her dissertation, which analyzes stroke care access in the U.S. The grant allows her to focus on completing her analysis and defending her dissertation in spring 2027.

"The fellowship gives me time to ask where stroke centers are sited today, where they should be, and which communities are paying for the gap, which is very essential for the aging society," Qi said.

Adebayo’s research advances tools for global food and water security, focusing on smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. His dissertation uses satellite data, in-situ measurements and machine learning to build a crop productivity forecasting framework. The $38,332 award will support his work on a Geo-AI framework for modeling soil-water-plant dynamics in drought hotspots in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda through spring 2027.

"Supporting the smallholder farmers across Sub-Saharan Africa who are most exposed to climate extremes means leveraging every available data source, from satellites to in situ stations, to forecast impacts early enough to act on them, and that's what this grant makes possible," Adebayo said.

Image: MPower awardees Wen Qi (left) and Adebowale Adebayo (right)

Published on Tue, 06/16/2026 - 09:36