Mount Alumni and Students Receive NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Honors

from Mount Magazine summer 2022

Landmark Statue to Return This Summer

NICHOLAS STARVAGGI, C’21, a Ph.D. student at Texas A&M University, recently became the third alumnus in four years to receive the highly competitive and prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship. He joins Dylan Holden, C’18, and Sarah Bonson Krueger, C’17, as fellowship recipients.

The NSF fellowship recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported STEM disciplines pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited U.S. institutions. The fellowship includes three years of research stipends and tuition reimbursements totaling $138,000. Previous fellows include 42 Nobel laureates and more than 450 members of the National Academy of Sciences.

“This level of success is only possible through the ongoing, substantial efforts of the faculty to mentor students both day-to-day in the laboratories and through these intensive application processes," said Dean of the School of Natural Science and Mathematics Christine McCauslin, Ph.D. “It’s a labor of love and speaks to the kind of investment Mount students get from their faculty to promote their personal and professional success."

As part of the Pentzer Group at Texas A&M, Starvaggi is focusing on the development and modification of colloidal particles for the stabilization of fluid-fluid interfaces. The Pentzer Group uses fundamental organic synthesis to develop carbon-based materials with tailored, novel properties for specific applications in the areas of energy harvesting and storage.

Krueger’s fellowship in 2018 allowed her to complete her Ph.D. at University of Illinois, where she worked to develop molecular therapeutics for Myotonic Dystrophy Type 1 (DM1), a form of muscular dystrophy. In the group of Steven C. Zimmerman, Ph.D., she synthesized and tested novel nucleic acid-targeting agents for the treatment of this disease. She is returning to the Mount in the fall to join the science faculty.

At Purdue, Holden, a 2021 fellow, conducts groundbreaking research in the Aston Laboratories for Mass Spectrometry under principal investigator R. Graham Cooks. The Mount’s Associate Professor of Chemistry Garth Patterson, Ph.D., also worked in Cooks’ lab as a doctoral student at Purdue.

Mount senior Mary Yenca, C’22, and alumna Julia Baer, C’21, received honorable mention awards in 2022. Yenca will be pursuing a Ph.D. at Texas A&M University in organic chemistry, focusing on sustainable polymer synthesis. Baer is in the process of earning a doctorate in ocean sciences at the University of California Santa Cruz.