Grusz Lab undergraduate wins prestigious NSF-GRFP

Across the United States, graduate students in STEM fields spend months preparing proposals for the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Graduate Research Fellows are provided with academic stipends and a research budget, as well as many additional opportunities and resources. The Grusz lab is proud to announce that undergraduate Blake Fauskee (University of Minnesota Duluth ‘19) has been invited to join the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF-GRFP 2019). After graduating from UMD, Fauskee will join the Department of Biology at Duke University as a Ph.D. student, matriculating Fall 2019.

Updates: In his GRFP, Faukee proposed to examine the influence of specialized post-transcriptional RNA-editing on molecular substitution rates in land plants. Since receiving this fellowship, Blake has made progress toward his research goals, some of which he presented at the 2019 meeting of the Botanical Society of America (Fauskee et al. in prep.; see slideshow below).

From the NSF GRFP website:

“The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees at accredited United States institutions.“

“Fellows benefit from a three-year annual stipend of $34,000 along with a $12,000 cost of education allowance for tuition and fees (paid to the institution), opportunities for international research and professional development, and the freedom to conduct their own research at any accredited U.S. institution of graduate education they choose.”

“NSF Fellows are anticipated to become knowledge experts who can contribute significantly to research, teaching, and innovations in science and engineering.”