OSU students win NSF Graduate Research Fellowships

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Oklahoma State University students Sunny Evans, Mikayla Marvin, and Josh McLoud have been selected to receive the highly competitive and prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships. The program provides three years of support for the graduate education of those who have demonstrated their potential for significant achievements in science and engineering research.

Sunny Evans is a masters student in the entomology and plant pathology department from Pawnee, Okla.  Her undergraduate work included weed biocontrol of saltcedar, escape strategies of dune lizards in Namibia and arthropod diversity. She will be tracking the food web effects of an exotic beetle that has just crossed over into Oklahoma.

Mikayla Marvin is a graduate student in the biosystems and agricultural engineering department from Yukon, Okla. Her undergraduate research has included studies in the efficient management of pastureland, the use of thermal cameras to detect water stress in citrus groves, and the drainage transport of E. coli macropores, such as earthworm holes. She will research the role of soil piping and internal erosion in causing landslides, stream bank as well as dam and gully failures.Josh McLoud is a graduate student with the botany department from Weleetka, Okla. His undergraduate research included a focus on the effects of the compound Triclosan (an antibacterial agent) on nodule and pod formation as well as biomass production in soybeans. He is currently working with a small flowering plant (Arabidopsis thaliana) to identify genes that will reveal a pathway for a special type of cell division regulation in the reproductive process.

Honorable mentions from NSF went to Courtney Passow from Round Rock, Texas, and William Mausbach from Inman, Neb., both in the zoology department, and Cynthia Dobbs from McKey, Okla., in the biochemistry department. The National Science Foundation receives approximately 40,000 proposals of which 11,000 receive funding, mostly in the fields of science and engineering. 

The 2013 NSF Graduate Research Fellows represent a diverse group of scientific disciplines, and come from all states and the District of Columbia, as well as U.S. commonwealths and territories. They are also a diverse group of individuals: Among the 2,000 awardees, 1,102 are women, 390 are from underrepresented minority groups, 51 are persons with disabilities, and 28 are veterans.