-Magdalen Lindeberg
Congratulations to SIPS graduate students Aimee Schultz, Michael West Ortiz, and Erin Farmer who have been awarded NSF-GRFP awards for 2021, and to Fernando Romero Galvan, recipient of a NASA FINESST Graduate Research Fellowship.
The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program is the country’s oldest fellowship program that directly supports graduate students in various science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields and who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited United States institutions. Eleven SIPS graduate students have received NSF-GRFP awards in the past three years including four in 2020.
The NASA FINESST (Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology) program was created to support graduate student-designed and performed research projects that contribute to the Science Mission Directorate’s science, technology and exploration goals.
Fernando Romero Galvan, graduate student with Katie Gold (NASA FINESST awardee)
Fernando obtained his undergraduate degree in Geographic Information Science at Cal State – Northridge, after which he worked as an intern at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The goal of his proposal is to develop a scalable, remote sensing framework for detecting plant-pathogen interactions in grapevine, an economically important specialty crop, using NASA’s Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging spectrometer Next Generation (AVIRIS-NG).
Michael West Ortiz, graduate student with Clare Casteel (NSF-GRFP awardee)
Michael obtained his Bachelor’s Degree from University of Puerto Rico – Rio Piedras where he researched hyperparasitism of an invasive cacti mealybug followed by an internship in plant virology. The goal of his project is to investigate virus manipulation of vector chemical sensing through changes in odorant binding receptors using pea aphids (Acyrthosiphon pisum), pea (Pisum sativum), and Pea enation mosaic virus (PEMV) as a model.
Aimee Schultz, graduate student with Ed Buckler (NSF-GRFP awardee)
Aimee obtained B.S. degrees in Genetics and Agronomy from Iowa State University where she studied inbreeding depression in teosinte and root architecture across the genus Zea. Her project explores the extent to which traits such as plant height, leaf angle, and root architecture play a role in a plant’s competitive ability. She will use prior datasets to evaluate between-row interactions and new data in a mixed plot field experiment to explore which traits related to resource capture play the largest role in competitive ability and predict neighbor interactions between two unique genotypes.
Erin Farmer, graduate student with Mike Gore (NSF-GRFP awardee)
Erin graduated in 2019 from the University of Arkansas with a BA in Economics and a BS in mathematics and physics. She conducted research in both physics and economics. In 2020 she graduated with an MS in local economic development from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research will focus on development of robotic tools to better understand the below-ground environment of plants and soil.
Stephanie Priesing, graduate student with Michelle Heck (NSF-GRFP honorable mention)
Marlie Lukash, graduate student with Michael Mazourek (NSF-GRFP honorable mention)