A West Virginia University master’s candidate has received a prestigious fellowship from the National Science Foundation.
Kari Thompson, a student in WVU ’s genetics and developmental biology program, will participate in the NSF ’s East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute.
The institute provides U.S. graduate students in science and engineering firsthand research experience in Australia, China, Japan, Korea or Taiwan; an introduction to the science and science policy infrastructure of the respective location; and orientation to the culture and language.
The primary goals of the institute are to introduce students to East Asia and Pacific science and engineering in the context of a research laboratory, and to initiate personal relationships that will better enable them to collaborate with foreign counterparts in the future.
Only 65 graduate students from institutions across the United States have been awarded fellowships for travel to Japan.
Thompson, of Grove City, Pa., will spend eight weeks this summer in Okazaki in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture working with Mitsuyasu Hasebe of the National Institute for Basic Biology.
She’s thrilled at the opportunity to forge linkages with an international community of scientists.
Science isn’t just a United States endeavor,she said.We need to learn how to work together.
When investigating potential fellowship sites, Thompson said she was happy to find that Hasebe’s research dovetails nicely with her own. The National Institute of Basic Biology is doing cutting-edge studies of plant evolution, and Thompson has been looking into the evolutionary history of plant proteins related to their adaptation to low temperature stress.
Dr. Hasabe has been very accommodating,Thompson said.I’ll have my own lab space in Okazaki.
At WVU , Thompson works with Dale Karlson, an assistant professor of genetics and developmental biology in the Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer Sciences. Karlson encouraged Thompson to apply for the fellowship, having completed one during his graduate studies.
This fellowship changed the whole course of my professional life,Karlson said. After his initial stay in Japan, he returned once more during his graduate studies and again during his post-doctoral research.
It connected me to the National Science Foundation at an early stage in my career, and it opened up so many opportunities for me,Karlson said.I hope that Kari will have an eye-opening experience.
Thompson has already attended an orientation session in Washington, D.C. Her time in Japan will begin with a week-long orientation session where participants will familiarize themselves with Japanese language and culture, then enjoy a two-day home stay with a Japanese family before reporting to their research assignments.
She’s trying to get a head start on the language. One of her peers in Karlson’s lab, post-doctoral researcher Kentaro Nakaminami, is from Sapporo, Japan, and has been working with her.
For additional information on the NSF ’s fellowship program, visithttp://www.nsf.gov/eapsi.