Rhodes senior Matthew Huber and alumna Kayla Wilson have been offered the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowships, following a national competition. The new awardees were selected from more than 12,000 applicants.
The program recruits high-potential, early-career scientists and engineers and supports their graduate research training in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.
Huber, a physics major from Saint Peter, MN, plans to pursue a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering with a special focus on medical ultrasound research. He has conducted ultrasound research in labs at Rhodes College, Gustavus Adolphus College, the Mayo Clinic, and Duke University. Huber’s research has resulted in co-authoring manuscripts and winning conference awards. Huber serves as vice president of Rhodes’ Society of Physics Students and is the national organization’s 2016-17 Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award Recipient. In addition, he is a 2017-2018 Goldwater Scholar.
Wilson, who graduated from Rhodes in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, is a first-year graduate student working with Prof. Brad Moore and his colleagues at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. “I’m pursuing a Ph.D. in marine chemical biology, and my research focuses on the biosynthesis of bioactive molecules produced by local marine sponges,” she says. While at Rhodes, Wilson conducted research with Prof. Larryn Peterson on the development of novel inhibitors for an enzyme found in Gram-negative bacteria. She also participated in Sea Semester during fall 2016.