Selected Honors, Awards, Grants and Fellowships

She was honored by the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Merced with an Outstanding Service Award (2024/2025 academic year), recognizing her exemplary volunteer service to the Graduate Program.

Abigail was selected among the 16 Winners of the 2025 Merck Next Gen Leaders in Chemistry Award by Merck, a research-intensive biopharmaceutical company. Merck recognizes the passion and potential of rising stars in chemical sciences and celebrates the incredible STEM talent that is driving innovation for the future. This competitive national recognition for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows across the USA, is designed to offer mentorship, a series of seminars, and professional development workshops to prepare early-career scientists to succeed in industry and academia.  

Recipients of this prestigious award will join the Merck NGL alumni community, and network with Merck scientists and mentors.  In Fall 2025, the award recipients presented their graduate research at the 2025 Award Symposium in Rahway, New Jersey, alongside their colleagues and members of Merck’s scientific community. 

Abigail was selected as a recipient of the 2025 American Chemical Society (ACS) Leader Scholars Award. The ACS Leader Scholars program recognizes outstanding undergraduate students, graduate students, and early career scientists. 

This competitive award provides Leader Scholars with year-long access to monthly professional development programs, leadership training, funding, and networking opportunities led by professionals across STEM and social sciences in academia and industry. 

She served as Chemistry and Biochemistry Delegate for the 2024/2025 academic year. The UC Merced GSA Delegate Assembly, serve as representative for their respective departments, actively seek and promote opportunities and professional development for graduate students.

The Advancing Science Conference Grant is given to exceptional chemistry, chemical engineering and chemical sciences graduate and undergraduate students to attend and present their research at the annual NOBCChE national meeting. She was given this grant to attend the Fall 2024, and Fall 2025 annual meetings in Orlando FL, and  Atlanta GA respectively.

Recipients of this prestigious fellowship devote themselves full-time to their academic pursuits and contribute meaningfully to their field of study. The NSF-CREST Center’s outreach programming focuses on integrating exciting and challenging topics of relevance and interest to diverse K-12 students in an inclusive atmosphere.  

Recipients of this fellowship actively contributed to the outreach programs by designing engaging experiments for K-12 students from the Central Valley, California focused on increasing the number of talented students in STEM fields & other community-focused efforts.

She was recognized by the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Merced with an Outstanding Teaching Award (2023/2024 academic year) for her exceptional and inclusive teaching abilities. 

This award provides travel funds for graduate students in the Chemistry and Biochemistry (CBC) program to present their research work at scientific conferences. Abigail received this award to support her travel to her first American Chemical Society's (ACS) ACS Fall 2022 Meeting in Chicago, Illinois. 

In Spring 2024, she was a recipient of the CBC Travel Award, which enabled her to participate in her first Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Molecular and Ionic Clusters, held in Ventura, California.

Abigail has received multiple prizes from the California Section of the American Chemical Society (CALACS) in recognition of her active participation in Women Chemists Committee (WCC) meetings.