UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Eleven Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences students have received predoctoral fellowships from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA). The students received a combined total of more than $1.6 million in funding.
The predoctoral fellowship program, part of USDA-NIFA’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), helps new scientists and professionals enter food and agricultural sciences research, education and extension fields in the private sector, government or academia. The fellowships aim to support future leaders who are working to solve current agricultural challenges.
“This year, our college is No. 1 among its national peers in how many students received fellowships,” said Blair Siegfried, associate dean for research and graduate education in the College of Agricultural Sciences. “We’ve consistently had the most students selected over a five-year period. This speaks to the quality of the graduate students recruited by our faculty and their strong commitment to mentoring.”
AFRI is the nation’s chief competitive grant program for food and agricultural sciences. In 2023, USDA-NIFA invested $13.7 million to support the training of doctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars.
The following are the Penn State recipients and their research projects:
- Jennine Lection, animal science: “Investigation into effects of prepartum aspirin in modulating local inflammation and microbial populations in the bovine reproductive tract.”
- Emma Rice, ecology and plant science: “Uncovering cover crop mixture root abundance and composition to maximize ecosystem service provisioning.”
- Sharon Nieves-Miranda, food science: “Classification of new O-antigen gene clusters in Esherichia coli.”
- Chandlar Kern, animal science: “Role of the bovine pramey protein in early embryonic development through epigenetic reprogramming.”
- Olivia Trase, ecology: “Investigating the role of cover crop soil legacies in plant-herbivore interactions.”
- Denise Alving, forest resources: “Bedrock and climate adaptation in forests.”
- Abiel Berhane Haile, animal science: “The potential molecular mechanisms of the effects of palmitic and stearic acids supplementation on bovine mammary gland lipogenesis.”
- Jessica Walnut, plant biology: “Role of heterotrimeric GA subunit RGA1 in rice drought stress.”
- Madeline Luthard, ecology: “Microbial carbon cycling under climate change: Using soil texture gradients to understand agricultural carbon storage.”
- Sarah Richards, ecology: “Directed evolution of beneficial microbial inoculants to improve survival across variable soil conditions.”
- Jennifer Harris, ecology and plant science: “Evaluating microbial functional shifts to bridge the gap between cover crops and ecosystem services.”