Kojima and Oswald awarded Fellowships

Laura Kojima, a master’s student at SREL and the Odum School of Ecology, is the recipient of a 2021 National Science Foundation Graduate Research fellowship. The fellowship will provide a stipend for up to three years and additional funds to directly support her research.

“Receiving this fellowship is a huge honor, especially as an underrepresented minority in STEM. The process of grant writing and conducting my own research was a completely new process for me, and to have the mentorship and accessibility to successfully do so is something I am very grateful for,” said Kojima.

Kojima’s research assesses levels of chemical contaminants in alligator tail muscle and exposure concerns associated with the public harvest and consumption of alligators that travel on and off contaminated areas.

Scott Oswald, a doctoral student at SREL and the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, was recently named a recipient of the 2020 Office of Science Graduate Student Research fellowship from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The award is given for outstanding accomplishments in academics and research that show the potential to make important contributions to the mission of the DOE Office of Science. The fellowship will allow Oswald to conduct research at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2022.

Oswald’s research will work to improve how large ecosystem models represent sugar and starch dynamics to better predict how plants respond to future climates, and to develop a framework for those dynamics using ecological and evolutionary theory.

“This fellowship is a good opportunity to receive mentorship and guidance about developing the ability to make connections between my background in mathematical biology and experimental observations,” said Oswald.