Graduate education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
Mengyao Niu, a PhD graduate in Microbiology from UW–Madison, is among this year’s cohort of Schmidt Science Fellows. The prestigious program seeks to develop the next generation of scientific leaders addressing the world’s most pressing problems.
All gardeners know what it’s like to try and weed a garden. Even when you keep up with it, sometimes you miss a root or a seed, and the weeds grow back.
As it turns out, this experience applies not only to human gardeners but also to a type of ant that farms its own garden of fungus.
PhD candidate Kirsten Gotting studies evolutionary biology and fungus-growing ants as a member of the Currie Lab in the Department of Bacteriology and the Genetics Training Program. The Currie Lab’s collection of leaf-cutter ants, one of many types of fungus-growing ant, offers a window into the relationships between the ants, the fungus, and other pathogens and bacteria.
PhD candidate Isabel Anadon has received a prestigious fellowship from the American Bar Foundation to support her research on immigration policy and criminal law. Anadon is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology and a fellow with the UW Justice Lab.
Dozens of UW–Madison students are among this year’s recipients of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship. UW–Madison graduate students received more GRFP awards in total than all but 20 institutions nationwide and all but seven public institutions.
Two recent PhD alumni have received fellowships from the Graduate School to further the research topics they focused on in their dissertations. This coming year, the Markham fellowship will support recent UW–Madison PhD graduates Sara Farsiu and Kathryn Mara.
Geoscience graduate student Yihang Fang will test whether protein control is the mechanism helping leaf-cutter ants form a layer of mineral “armor” as a fellow at the Smithsonian Institute National Museum of Natural History.
UW–Madison geography PhD candidate Allen Xiao has been awarded a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Xiao’s dissertation explores how residents of Lagos, Nigeria, tell stories of and relate to their life experiences in the largest city in Africa.
Art history PhD candidate Fernanda Villarroel has received two national fellowships that support her scholarship exploring the concept of the feminine through historical and contemporary art in Africa.
In her dissertation, anthropology PhD student Sarah Bruno uses bomba as a site and a method for exploring the emotions of Afro-Puerto Rican women on the island of Puerto Rico and throughout its diaspora. She has received a 2020 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship for this work.
Dozens of University of Wisconsin–Madison students have been awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in this year’s competition. The 31 awardees from UW–Madison include undergraduate and graduate students as well as recent alums who have continued working on campus before starting graduate school.