- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
DAVIS--Graduate students Ralph Washington Jr. and Christopher Pagan, both of the Steve Nadler lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, are among the recipients of the prestigious National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Program (NSF GRFP) Fellowship Awards. They were among 2,050 recipients selected from a national pool of 16,500 applications.
The awards are designed to “ensure the nation's leadership in advancing science and engineering research and innovation,” according to Maria Zacharias of NSF. Since 1952, NSF has provided fellowships to individuals based on their demonstrated potential for significant achievements in science and engineering. (See list of 2015 recipients)
Washington and Pagan are both first-year graduate students seeking their doctoral degrees. The GRFP provides three years of financial support within a five-year fellowship period ($34,000 annual stipend and $12,000 cost-of-education allowance to the graduate institution) for graduate study that leads to a research-based master's or doctoral degree in science or engineering.
Washington, who studies mosquitoes, and Pagan, who studies nematodes, won in the same GRFP category and subcategory, Life Sciences, Systematics and Biodiversity.
They credit Professor Nadler with encouraging them to apply for fellowship awards, “coaxing us to tell the story we wanted to communicate and then reviewing our proposals.” Through Nadler's encouragement leadership, they were accepted for enrollment in a six-week UC Davis ecology seminar last year. In a rarity, 11 of the 36 students in the UC Davis seminar received National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Awards. It is even rarer for two graduate students in the same lab to receive the honor.
Washington, the newly elected president of the UC Davis Graduate Student Association and a recent recipient of the McNair Graduate Fellowship Award, studies mosquito evolution and ecology, focusing on “how mosquitoes choose to lay their eggs, and how those choices affect their evolution.” He received his bachelor of science degree in entomology from UC Davis in 2010.
Active in the Entomological Society of America (ESA), Washington captains the UC Davis Linnaean Team that recently won the Pacific Branch of ESA championship. The three-member team, also including Jéssica Gillung, and Brendon Boudinot, will now compete at the nationals in Minnesota in November. The Linnaean Games are college-bowl like games centering on entomological facts, trivia and entomologists. Washington served as a member of the UC Davis Linnaean Team that competed in the ESA nationals in 2010. He was also a member of the UC Davis Debate Team that won the ESA national championship in 2014. In addition to his studies and leadership activities, he serves as a volunteer at the Bohart Museum of Entomology.
Pagan received his bachelor's degree in 2003 in biochemistry and molecular biology from UC Davis. “I study nematodes, the most common creature that most people know virtually nothing about,” said Pagan, who plans a career in agricultural nematology. “It is the most abundant multicellular animal on the planet. Some 26,000 nematodes have been described. In comparison, there are 35,000 species of fish.”
Pagan's research involves the molecular systematics and biodiversity of nematodes, specifically, ecology of soil nematodes. Pagan worked as a lab technician in the Nadler lab for eight years, and also worked with nematologist Valerie Williamson for two years in the Department of Plant Pathology.
Pagan enjoys teaching youngsters in the education outreach program, Kids Into Discovering Science (KIDS) . He recently taught three fifth-grade classes at the KIDS program in Lower Lake, Calif.
Among the 2,000 GRFP awardees, 1,053 are women, 494 are from underrepresented minority groups, 43 are persons with disabilities, and 31 are veterans. Nearly 500 institutions are represented.
A high priority for NSF and GRFP is increasing the diversity of the science and engineering workforce, including geographic distribution and the participation of women, underrepresented minorities, persons with disabilities, and veterans. With its emphasis on support of individuals, GRFP offers fellowship awards directly to graduate students selected through a national competition.
NSF is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering.The purpose of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program is to “help ensure the vitality and diversity of the scientific and engineering workforce of the United States,” according to its website. “The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees in science and engineering. The GRFP provides three years of support for the graduate education of individuals who have demonstrated their potential for significant achievements in science and engineering.”
Four UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology graduate students received the NSF Graduate Research Fellowships in 2011:
- Matan Shelomi, who studied with major professor, Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology. Shelomi is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany.
- Kelly Hamby of the Frank Zalom lab, who is now an assistant professor of sustainable agroecosystems and an Extension specialist in the Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park
- Irina Shapiro of the Ed Lewis lab, who is now a research and development specialist at the Bayer CropScience Biologics, Sacramento.
- Katharina Ullmann of the Neal Williams lab, who is now a pollination ecologist with the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.
Related Links:
2011 NSF Graduate Research Fellowships (UC Davis)
2015 Graduate Research Fellowships, All
General Information about the Awards