Fellowships and Prizes Available To Students In The MSD-EBD Program

Annual fellowship at Green Building United

The Martin Fellow will work in Green Building United’s (GBU) office on current research projects with direct support from GBU's executive director and board of directors, as well as from Penn faculty. The Fellow will be paid a stipend and to work with GBU.

Eligibility. Students in good standing in the MSD-EBD program are invited to apply for the fellowship during the second semester of the program. 

The Fellow will present the results of their research in a public seminar organized by GBU.

Muscoe Martin, AIA, LEED Fellow was a lifelong environmentalist, coming of age in the energy and environmental movements of the 1970s. After completing his BA at Princeton in 1978, he worked at the Habitat Center in Berkeley, before completing his Master of Architecture at Penn Design in 1985. After graduation, he worked with Adelle Naude Santos, JacobsWyper Architecture, Wallace Roberts & Todd, and Susan Maxman Partners, before founding his own firm M².

He was a founding board member of the Delaware Valley Green Building Council (DVGBC, now GBU), a chair of the AIA Committee-On-The-Environment (COTE), a member of the USGBC Board and Sustainable Buildings Industry Council, a long-time LEED faculty member, and taught at Penn for nearly 20 years where he helped establish the programs in Ecological Architecture and Environmental Building Design.

Recent Fellows

Yuto Morishita, 2024
Ming Yan, 2023
Tian Tian, 2022
Chenyang Li, 2021
Vidyashree Unnikrishnan, 2020
Xuehan Zhang, 2019

Annual Teaching Fellowship

Every year we award a teaching fellowship to a student completing their second semester in the MSD-EBD. It is named after Don Prowler (see below) who taught environmental courses at Penn for many years, and is intended to support the study of environmental design at Penn. In addition to the financial award, we also hire the recipient of the prize as a teaching assistant in the required environmental systems course. We base the selection of the fellowship on the performance in the two semesters of the program and a statement explaining their interest in environmental design.

Don Prowler taught courses in the Department of Architecture starting in 1976 and also at the School of Architecture at Princeton University. He taught design studio and technology courses focusing on the thermal and luminous performance of buildings and industrialized building systems.

He co-founded the Mid-Atlantic Solar Energy Association in the late 1970s and was actively involved with the Sustainable Buildings Industry Council during the 1980s and the 1990s (then the Passive Solar Industry Association), including six years as its Chair. Don collaborated with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory on development of the Energy-10 software, and he trained thousands of designers and builders in its use. He also was the father of the Web-based Whole Building Design Guide, originally funded by the Naval Facilities Engineering Command. Don’s contributions to energy efficiency and sustainability will be sorely missed.

Recent Fellows
Yudi Dong, 2024
Hemant Diyalini, 2023
Zhen Lei, 2022
Jun Xiao, 2021
Abinayaa Perezhilan, 2020
Catherine Kai Shih, 2019
Uroosa Ijaz, 2018
Nikita Jathan, 2016

Starting in 2025, we have a special opportunity for incoming MSD-EBD students to take part in an award program funded by the National Science Foundation, to join an interdisciplinary group of students from the Weitzman School of Design conducting research together with students from Penn Engineering on climate solutions.

All matriculated students can apply to participate in the program. U.S. citizens or permanent residents can also receive a tuition award through this program. This award may be granted for 1 or 2 years of study. For further details, please contact professor William Braham or professor Dorit Aviv.