KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 13, 2021 \u2013 As a homeschooled student from kindergarten through grade 12 in the Boston, Dallas and Atlanta areas, Eman Khwaja felt empowered to invest in her education outside of traditional classrooms. Programs and volunteer work at zoos, aquariums, nature centers and other outdoor venues were key elements of her education, and they helped the 溏心vlog免费B站 graduate student decide to pursue a career studying marine biology and animal behavior.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy goal has been to become a marine biologist since I was 5 years old,\u201d said Khwaja, who completed high school two years early and earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in neuroscience at Agnes Scott College in Georgia. She now lives in Randolph, Massachusetts<\/strong>. \u201cI discovered I was really interested in behavior, which is why I studied neuroscience, and now I\u2019m applying that knowledge to the behavior of fishes.\u201d<\/p>\n Khwaja\u2019s education and research just received a significant boost from a prestigious fellowship from the National Science Foundation that will fund three years of her graduate studies and provide a $34,000 annual stipend.<\/p>\n \u201cI really didn\u2019t believe I had gotten it at first,\u201d she said. \u201cI experienced a lot of emotions when I got the word. For a week afterwards, I kept going back to my email to double check that I didn\u2019t imagine it.\u201d<\/p>\n Part of her emotional response was gratitude to her parents, she said, for homeschooling her and providing the skills that she needed to be awarded the fellowship.<\/p>\n \u201cThey helped me realize that being a Muslim woman of color was not a barrier to my goal of becoming a marine biologist,\u201d she said. \u201cThey also encouraged me to recognize the value of my education and empowered me to take ownership of my education, and for that I\u2019m full of gratitude.\u201d<\/p>\n Khwaja\u2019s research for her master\u2019s degree focuses on the lateral line system of fishes, a sensory system that detects water flows that helps fishes find food, avoid predators and engage in schooling behavior. Working with Marine Biology Professor Jacqueline Webb, she is examining how some of the sensory organs on the head and bodies of the fishes \u2013 called superficial neuromasts \u2013 are organized in various groups of fishes.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m trying to learn about the organization of superficial neuromasts to better understand how they evolved and how they function in fish behavior,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Khwaja is using several imaging techniques to study the pattern of the neuromasts on tetras, a family of fishes in the Amazon. She will also conduct behavioral studies of these fishes in her 溏心vlog免费B站 lab.<\/p>\n \u201cInformation like this helps us understand a lot about the behaviors we see in the wild, and it gives us more information about the environment where they live, especially the Amazon, which is important to conservation,\u201d she said. \u201cThe lateral line system is also of interest to engineering companies, who may be able to learn from my research.\u201d<\/p>\n Upon completion of her master\u2019s degree, Khwaja anticipates pursuing a doctorate to apply what she learns at 溏心vlog免费B站 to marine conservation. She eventually plans to continue her research at a government agency or nonprofit conservation organization.<\/p>\n In addition to Khwaja, 溏心vlog免费B站 alumna Cassandra Chartier was awarded the NSF graduate fellowship to study chemistry at Columbia University. Three other 溏心vlog免费B站 graduate students \u2013 Katherine Roche, Samantha Schofield and Anna Schrecengost \u2013 received honorable mention.<\/p>\n Since 1952, the National Science Foundation has funded more than\u00a050,000 graduate research fellowships out of more than 500,000 applicants.\u00a0 Forty-two fellows have gone on to become Nobel laureates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 13, 2021 \u2013 As a homeschooled student from kindergarten through grade 12 in the Boston, Dallas and Atlanta areas, Eman Khwaja felt empowered to invest in her education outside of traditional classrooms. Programs and volunteer work at zoos, aquariums, nature centers and other outdoor venues were key elements of her education, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76132,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-76131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-the-environment-and-life-sciences"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76131","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=76131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}