Jennifer Beals received a National Science Foundation – East Asian Pacific Fellowship for summer 2015 at Tokyo Gakugei University in Japan. Submitted photo
St. Cloud State University’s Jennifer Beals will conduct her research at Tokyo Gakugei University in Japan through a National Science Foundation (NSF) – East Asian Pacific Sciences Fellowship for summer 2015.
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Beals, a biology graduate student, is one of 215 graduate students from across the nation to receive the award.
“It is gratifying to know that my hard work and research experience prior to starting my master’s research made my proposal competitive with those of Ph.D. students at top universities across the country,” Beals said. “I am excited to put in much more hard work during the summer fellowship that will be integral to my thesis project.”
Beals will work alongside Prof. Shigeki Mayama, a world expert in Beals’ group of study.
“This fellowship will make me more competitive for Ph.D. programs, research opportunities and other NSF proposals after I complete my master’s degree at St. Cloud State,” Beals said.
The competition for these fellowships are highly competitive as the majority of the students selected are at the doctoral level.
A light microscope image of a Eunotia lapponica diatom that Beals took.
“Her hard work is actually just beginning,” said Matthew Julius, professor of biology. “She needed this fellowship to make her master’s thesis truly distinctive and world class in its scope. This fellowship provides her the opportunity to do that.”
Her thesis is on the the origin and evolution of motility and attachment structures in diatoms. Diatoms are single-cell algae that build cell walls from silicon dioxide, which is essentially glass. She will be doing this research by studying both the morphology and genetics of several groups of diatoms, focused around the Eunotioid group. The largest genus she is studying in Japan is called Eunotia.
Prior to the start of the program, Beals will spend the first part of her summer doing research toward her thesis in the Diatom Herbarium at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, where she was employed prior to the start of her master’s work at St. Cloud State.
Beals leaves for her fellowship June 8.
