{"id":56969,"date":"2015-04-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-15T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/three-uri-doctoral-students-win-prestigious-fellowships-from-national-science-foundation\/"},"modified":"2015-04-15T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-04-15T00:00:00","slug":"three-uri-doctoral-students-win-prestigious-fellowships-from-national-science-foundation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2015\/04\/three-uri-doctoral-students-win-prestigious-fellowships-from-national-science-foundation\/","title":{"rendered":"Three 溏心vlog免费B站 doctoral students win prestigious fellowships from National Science Foundation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tGraduate Research Fellowships worth $138,000 each<\/p>\n


\n\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 15, 2015 \u2013 Three doctoral students studying at the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s College of the Environment and Life Sciences have been awarded prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships that will provide them with $34,000 stipends for each of three years and up to $12,000 each year for tuition.<\/p>\n


\n\tAndrew Battles of Fort Worth, Tex., Matthew Birk of York, Penn., and Laura Filliger of Yorba Linda, Cal., were awarded the fellowships that recognize outstanding graduate students who are pursuing research-based master\u2019s and doctoral degrees in science and engineering. In addition, 溏心vlog免费B站 alumni Samantha Alger, Syrena Fernandes and Shelby Rinehart also received fellowships to continue their studies elsewhere.<\/p>\n


\n\tBattles, who earned his undergraduate degree in biology at Trinity University, said he was \u201cpretty surprised and definitely excited\u201d when he got word that he was selected for the fellowship, noting that it will provide him with some financial security as he continues work on his doctorate.<\/p>\n


\n\tHis research, under the direction of Assistant Professor Jason Kolbe, focuses on lizards living in urban environments and how the urban habitat is influencing their behavior and evolution. \u201cUrban areas are growing, and that means that more natural species will come into contact with cities,\u201d Battles said. \u201cIt\u2019s important to know how they might react and respond to different aspects of the urban environment.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tHe spends his time observing how anoles in Miami use the urban habitat of walls and utility poles compared to the tree trunks and branches of more natural habitat. And he conducts laboratory studies of lizards running on various man-made and natural surfaces.<\/p>\n


\n\tBirk was shocked when he learned he was successful in his third and last try at earning the fellowship. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, he said \u201cit was a big relief because it frees me up to focus on my research instead of also balancing my time with teaching responsibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tWorking with Associate Professor Brad Seibel, Birk studies the effects of ocean acidification on squid, whose blood may be very sensitive to acidified water. \u201cIf their blood becomes acidified, they won\u2019t be able to pick up oxygen with their gills and then won\u2019t have enough oxygen for their bodies,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m not concerned that they\u2019re going to drop dead from it, but I am concerned that when they\u2019re oxygen-stressed to begin with \u2013 like if they\u2019re living in a low oxygen region of the ocean — they\u2019ll be even more stressed under ocean acidification.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tThe NSF fellowship will allow Birk to conduct another research project as well. This one will focus on measuring the energy that squid use to expand and contract the millions of pigment sacs that provide them with their ability to camouflage themselves.<\/p>\n


\n\tFilliger said that the email message announcing that she received the fellowship went into her spam folder, so she didn\u2019t realize she won until a friend texted her. \u201cAnd since it was March 31, I thought it was just an early April Fool\u2019s joke,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n


\n\tA graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, she studies diatoms in the Southern Ocean and how they respond to nutrient stress. \u201cEven though it\u2019s very low in nutrients there, we found that the diatoms are flourishing,\u201d Filliger said. \u201cMy job is to look at their genes to see which genes they\u2019re expressing to deal with this nutrient-limited environment. They must have very different nutrient requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tShe and her advisor, Associate Professor Bethany Jenkins, have traveled to the waters around Antarctica twice to collect diatom samples and determine \u201cwhich species are the most important players. The Southern Ocean is a rapidly changing environment,\u201d she said, \u201cso it\u2019s important to know how the organisms there are responding to climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n \tA total of 2,000 students from across the country were awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowships, just 10 percent of the applicant pool.

\n# # #\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Graduate Research Fellowships worth $138,000 each KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 15, 2015 \u2013 Three doctoral students studying at the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s College of the Environment and Life Sciences have been awarded prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships that will provide them with $34,000 stipends for each of three years and up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56969\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}