Draper Scholars Program Grows to More Than 100 Graduate Students with Its Next Class
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Draper announced its next class of Draper Scholars for the academic year beginning this fall. The group of 55 new master’s and Ph.D. candidates will join the continuing Draper Scholars, bringing the program total to 115.
“Draper has an education mission as part of its charter, so university engagement is a critical part of the company’s identity. Engagement can take many forms, including internships, workshops and capstones. The Draper Scholars program is the pinnacle of these offerings featuring collaborative work involving the student, their university faculty advisor, and Draper advisor,” said Christopher Yu, Draper Scholars Program Director. “And Draper is actively growing the program with an eventual goal of 250 Scholars that will reflect Draper’s overall growth.”
Since 1973, the Draper Scholars Program has provided students with the opportunity to engage and work with experienced engineers and scientists while conducting graduate-level research. The Scholars Program is intended to be a collaborative joint research program, pairing each Scholar with a member of the company’s technical staff and a university faculty advisor while they conduct research in technical fields of mutual interest.
Students join the program from partner universities that include Brown, Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, Purdue, Tufts and the University of Colorado Boulder. MIT continues to be the largest source of Scholars while seven of the new students come from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, its largest contingent to date. The new class also includes the first student from the University of Utah, the newest school to join the program. Both UMass Lowell and University of Utah represent strategic partnerships for Draper as we expand in other sites beyond Cambridge.
The students conduct research that can potentially lead to customer solutions in national security, space systems, biotechnology and strategic systems. The students’ work is highlighted each year at a research symposium held in the fall.
You can read more about the work previous Draper Scholars have done here. For information on how to apply to the program, visit the Draper Scholars Program webpage.
About Draper
Draper is a non-profit research, development, and manufacturing company that solves some of the nation’s most important challenges. With more than 2,000 employees working in collaboration across 12 locations, Draper delivers transformative, mission-driven solutions that successfully meet our customers’ requirements. These efforts focus on four critical mission areas: Strategic Systems, Space Systems, Electronic Systems, and Biotechnology Systems. To extend our legacy into the future, the Draper Scholars program engages with the next generation of innovators while DraperSPARX™ seeks to partner with startups and small businesses that can further our mission. To learn more about Draper, visit www.draper.com.
Released August 14, 2025
