Cassie Wesseln, a first-year PhD student and former undergraduate researcher in the Punyasena lab, received an Honorable Mention from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships Program (GRFP) earlier this year. The NSF GRFP is one of the most competitive national fellowships available to graduate students in their first two years of study. A belated congratulations to Cassie!
Cassie is also currently an NSF Integrated Graduate Research and Education Traineeship (IGERT) fellow. The IGERT fellowship in Vertically Integrated Training with Genomics – a Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and UIUC collaboration – included a semester in Panama (Spring 2013). As a result of the program, Cassie was able to participate in a Tropical Ecology course led by STRI staff scientists, and in seminars and field trips conducted by over thirty different STRI scientists and fellows. In four short months, she visited almost all of the STRI research stations in Panama. Cassie adds: “It was an incredible experience in which I learned a great deal about the tropical biology and the research opportunities at STRI.”