Nikki Seymour says joining the 2017-18 cohort of the Colorado State University Vice President for Research Graduate Fellows Program kicked off the chain of events that ultimately led to her current role as a tenure-track geology professor at Occidental College.
“I was able to use VPR funding to attend a scientific conference, and that’s where I met one of the researchers I ultimately did a postdoc with at Stanford, as well as connections that have continued to pay dividends,” she said. “The program opened up doors and opportunities that I wouldn’t have received otherwise.”
The VPR Graduate Fellows Program has been helping to support researchers like Seymour since 2015, and the latest class is made up of 16 students from seven of CSU’s colleges whose work focuses on everything from pollinators to community reentry programs to proteins that have gone to the “dark side.”
In addition to receiving up to $4,000 in research and travel funding, each cohort is given the opportunity to undergo a series of training sessions as well as network with fellow graduate students and leaders from across the university.
“I think this is the most competitive year we’ve had,” said Heather Pidcoke, who leads the program and serves as the chief medical research officer for the Office of the Vice President for Research. “In addition to boosting their careers, this is truly a way for top graduate students to meet people from outside their departments and make connections across CSU and beyond.”
Seymour added: “The people you’re in the cohort with have really unique ideas. Explaining your research to people who aren’t experts helps you get a better grasp on the science, and it was especially nice to be able to talk about the challenges of being a graduate student with people who were at the same career stage.”
Sociology researcher Hannah Love was part of the first VPR Graduate Fellows Program class. She and Ellen Fisher, the former head of the VPR Research Fellows program, co-founded a small business called Divergent Science LLC. Love now comes back to CSU to teach the latest generation of VPR fellows about the concept of team science.
She says the interdisciplinary nature of the VPR Graduate Fellows Program gives her hope.
“I think the scientific problems that the world wants to answer are getting bigger and bigger, and we need a team working together to combat these global programs,” she said.
The VPR Fellows program is continuing to further its work to grow that team of problem solvers. This year, OVPR is providing support to four second-year undergraduate students who received support during their first year as part of CSU’s Multicultural Undergraduate Research Arts and Leadership Symposium.
They’ll receive research funding and the opportunity to present at a national conference.
“It’s a way for undergraduate students who are interested in research to distinguish themselves even before they become graduate students,” Pidcoke said.
And they’ll also have the opportunity to connect with fellow researchers from across campus – creating the relationships that could pave the way for their future careers.
“Being a VPR research fellow showed how important it is to make connections and meet people, because you never know when it’s going to come in handy,” Love said.
Pidcoke added: “Looking back at our previous cohorts, it’s pretty clear they’re all doing some amazing things.”
Meet this year’s fellows and see their projects below:
College of Agricultural Sciences
Taylor Bacon
Department of Soil and Crop Sciences
Sharing Sunlight: Ecological Impacts of Co-Locating Regenerative Livestock Grazing and Solar Energy Generation
Laura Moore
Department of Soil and Crop Sciences
Microbial Architects: Exploring the Microbial Contributions to Mineral-Associated Organic Matter Storage Across Grazing Regimes
College of Health and Human Sciences
Lamya Alsubaie
Department of Occupational Therapy
Exploring The Role of Culture in Cognitive Rehabilitation
Anjali Tiwari
Department of Health and Exercise Science
Fluctuations in Cognitive Processing Speed Predict V ascular Cognitive Impairment After Stroke
College of Liberal Arts
Lauren Buisker
Department of Communication Studies
Organizing Beyond Individual and Systemic Binaries: The Rhetoric of Anti-Sexual Violence Activism
Meghan Cosgrove
Department of Communication Studies
Connected Through Community: An Engaged Approach to Justice-Involved Community reentry
College of Natural Sciences
Alina Galyon
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Damage Control at the Extremes: Playing with Fire Without Getting Burned
Dani Lustig
United in Discovery: The Push for Carbon Neutrality Through Collaborative and Interdisciplinary Research
Kylie Pearce
Investigating the Permeation of Cryoprotectant Molecules into Plant Cells
Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering
Chika Agha
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Early-Career Engineers’ Experience with Equity and Ethics in Workplace
Somayeh Baghersad
Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering
Sustainable Biopolymers as the Future of Hemocompatible Medical Device Engineering
Warner College of Natural Resources
Carolyn Coyle
Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology
Songbirds as Pollinators: Mapping Bird-Flower Interactions for North American Passerines
Megan Podolinsky
Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability
Assessing Surface Water Dynamics in Depressional Wetlands of the US High Plains and Beyond
College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences
Jebrail Dempsey
Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology
Investigating Community Transmission Dynamics of Plasmodium falciparum in a West African Cohort Study
Elena Lian
Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology
Evaluating a New Biomarker for Mycobacterium Abscessus Infection
Diana Lowe
Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology
When Proteins Join the “Dark Side”: The Prion Disease Paradox and an American Wildlife Epidemic Gone Global
VPR MURALS Scholars
Nyla Bickham
Department of Biomedical Sciences
Advancing Adolescent Wellbeing: Integrating Mindfulness for Mental Health Interventions and Community Outreach
Andrew Medina
Characterizing Novel Temperature-Sensitive Viral Resistance in Colorado Wheat
Ximena Sanchez Paredes
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
DNA-Protein Co-Crystal Engineering: Optimizing Junction Ligation Efficiency Through Combined Enzymatic and Chemical Approaches
Zawadi Yahuma
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Investigating Myoglobin Expression in Hypoxia-adopted Cells. A Comparative Study
