Pielak Alumnus Receives Hanna Gray Fellowship
A former undergraduate research, and recent Master's
student in the Pielak Group, Christopher Barnes, is one
of 15 recipients of a 2017 Hanna Gray Fellowship from
the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Christopher, who was a chemistry major and played
varsity football at UNC, was both an undergraduate and
a graduate student in the Pielak Lab. There, he helped
design a bioreactor for in-cell NMR, for which the group
was awarded a patent, and the connected papers made
the cover of the Journal of Magnetic Resonance. He also
used in-cell NMR to make seminal contributions to our
understanding the dynamics of protein in living cells.
Each fellow will receive up to $1.4 million in funding over
eight years, with mentoring and active involvement with-
in the HHMI community. In this two-phase program, fel-
lows will be supported from early postdoctoral training
through several years of a tenure-track fac ulty position.
Gerardo Perez-Goncalvez Caltech WAVE Fellow
We featured Gerardo Perez-Goncalvez in our previous
newsletter, congratulating him on catching the attention
of Caltech’s Professor Harry B. Gray, and subsequently
become a member of the Pielak Group. Well, it is time to
mention Gerardo’s continued success.
We now congratulate Gerardo Perez-Goncalvez, wo con-
tinues as an undergraduate researcher in the Pielak
Group, for having been accepted into Caltech’s WAVE
Fellowsprogram. This program aims to foster diversity
by increasing the participation of underrepresented stu-
dents in science and engineering Ph.D. programs and
making Caltech’s programs more visible and accessible
to students not traditionally exposed to the institution.
This Fellowship will be a fantastic way for Gerardo to in-
crease his research experience, build his academic and
professional network, and help him prepare for his con-
tinued academic path. The program will pay a weekly sti-
pend of $600 for the ten week fellowship, and will also
provide funds for travel.
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