Scholarship recipients will benefit from facilitated networking opportunities, including hosted meals with community colleagues and touch-base sessions offering leadership support. The program fosters connections with peers, national and international R&E IT leaders, and related initiatives (Network Startup Resource Center, Workforce in Networking at SC, and the MS-CC). Awardees gain access to conference sessions for all career levels and are introduced to future engagement opportunities, such as joining Internet2 working groups, including the I2EL alumni community group, or participating in the Internet2 Community Leadership and Culture (I2CLC) Steering Committee.
The 2025 Technology Exchange I2EL Scholarship recipients are:
- Shira Acosta, IAM business analyst at University of Virginia
- Nathan Carlson, systems operations engineer at University of Minnesota
- Pablo Garcia Acuna, network operations field coordinator at Merit Network
- Esen Gokpinar Shelton, program manager & UI/UX lead at Indiana University
- Stella Kwon, project manager at Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC)
- Luis Marin Vera, assistant director of IT at Florida International University
- Sasmita Mohapatra, high-performance computing (HPC) research scientist at University of Texas-Dallas
- Bradly Shoen, system administrator at University of Montana
- Brian Stookey, network engineer at Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN)
- Katie Whitfield, client support specialist at Virginia Institute of Marine Science
- Reilly Wolfe, network engineer at University of Idaho
Read their bios to learn more about the I2EL Scholarship recipients.
Showcasing the Rising Talent and Leaders
We are excited to share that two of the I2EL Scholarship recipients are presenters at TechEX25! Shira Acosta will co-present with her University of Virginia colleague, Kellen Murphy, Identity Architect, on Wed., Dec. 10 from 9:25-9:50 a.m. MT in a session called Grouper Attestation in Action: UVA’s Transition from MyGroups to Grouper. The duo will share how UVA has leveraged Grouper Attestation to clean up outdated groups, remove unnecessary ones, and ensure all groups comply with the new governance policies introduced with Grouper.
Sasmita Mohapatra will co-present with her son, Vedant Mohapatra, a senior in high school, on Wed., Dec 10 from 1:40-2:30 p.m. MT. In their presentation, they will share how the combination of drones and AI could make disease detection in crops faster, more accurate, and more efficient than traditional methods, greatly helping farmers.
Esen Gokpinar Shelton will be participating in the Poster Social on Wed., Dec. 10, from 5-6:00 p.m. MT. Her poster will focus on the National Science Foundation (NSF) project working to make it easier for providers (RPs) to make their resources available for researcher use through the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS), a national network that supports research. Right now, it can be complex and time-consuming for RPs to integrate their resources into ACCESS. To address this, the team is using human-centered computing design to better align the system with user needs. They have developed a new badge-based roadmap system that simplifies navigation and helps users complete tasks more efficiently.
Come listen to Acosta, Mohapatra, and Gokpinar Shelton on Wed., Dec. 10, as these emerging leaders share projects they are collaborating on at TechEX25.
Global Partnership with NSRC
The Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC) and Internet2 are
thrilled to continue their partnership and announce the NSRC-Internet2 Global Fellowship recipient for the 2025
Technology Exchange in Denver, Colo., Dec. 8-12.
Anne Inapat Osamong is a network engineer at the Kenya Education Network (KENET) with over a
decade of experience in system administration and network engineering. She has played a key role in planning,
deploying, and supporting network and connectivity solutions across Kenya’s research and education institutions,
as well as in network analysis and performance measurement at KENET. Currently, she is part of the Network
Operations Center (NOC) team, where she monitors, maintains, and supports the performance and reliability of
KENET’s network infrastructure. Her role also involves managing helpdesk escalations and documenting incident
resolutions to ensure efficient communication and continuous improvement in network service delivery.
The I2EL scholarships cover travel expenses, hotel accommodations, and event registration for the Internet2 2025 Technology Exchange. Funding for this year’s I2EL Scholarships is made possible by industry sponsor Delinea, Fortinet, Google Cloud-CDW Education, TD Synnex, Vocareum, Internet2 community member Northern Tier Network Consortium (NTNC), and Internet2. We are grateful for the support and generosity of the community in providing these important opportunities.