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.
graduate student research
Cortney Anderson Kramer
PhD candidate, Art History
If you’ve ever driven by a roadside concrete art park – think sculptures, grottos, or even houses – and been intrigued, art history PhD candidate Cortney Anderson Kramer is the person to ask. Kramer studies and writes about this unique art style in the Midwest.
With NASA award, PhD student seeks answers to life’s biggest questions
Lena Vincent started her career as a graduate student with big questions: How did life begin? Does life exist elsewhere in the universe?
“Realizing that you can turn these existential questions that everyone asks themselves into a scientific career was really exciting,” said Vincent, a PhD student in David Baum’s lab at UW–Madison.
Ant armor may provide insight into mineral formation
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.
PhD candidate Xiao receives Newcombe Fellowship
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.
Coronavirus sequencing leads to insights on transmission, vaccine development
Graduate student Katarina Braun and Gage Moreno’s work with sequencing the 2019 novel coronavirus has helped scientists better understand how the virus has traveled in Wisconsin and whether the protective equipment and safety protocols used in local hospitals are effective.
PhD candidate Villarroel explores the concept of the feminine through art and history
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 times of trouble, Puerto Rican women turn to dance
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.
Mathematics research builds better ways to identify gerrymandering
Mathematicians use algorithms to identify cases of gerrymandering, but even computer-generated results can be biased. PhD student Lorenzo Najt’s work aims to identify the signatures of deliberate algorithm manipulation to prevent the extreme excesses of gerrymandering.
Graduate student studies how snake fungal disease could spread
While scientists have studied the symptoms and behavior of snakes infected with snake fungal disease, few studies looked at whether the fungal pathogen responsible could spread to other species. That was the central question for Savannah Gentry, a botany PhD student in Anne Pringle’s lab, who wanted to find out whether snake fungal disease could affect other reptiles.