WSU Honors Student Scientists Brewer and Grandi Win National Goldwater Awards
PULLMAN, Wash.—Washington State University Honors College undergraduates Sarah Brewer and Fiorella Grandi are scientists who want to make the world a better place. To help with their education, the two have received national awards from the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program.
A third WSU student, Nick Negretti, also received a Goldwater award. He is not part of the Honors College.
“Sarah, Fiorella, and Nick were outstanding candidates for the Goldwater this year, and the fact that they won these scholarships is a strong testament to their excellence and the excellence of the WSU programs of which they are a part,” says Mary Sanchez Lanier, Goldwater faculty representative. She leads the team that reviews student applications and recommends up to four to be nominated by WSU to the Goldwater foundation. Assistant vice provost, associate dean of the University College, and clinical associate professor in SMB, she also serves on the panel that reviews Goldwater Scholar applications nationally.
Honors’ Goldwater recipients share many academic similarities. Both: were inspired by mentoring high school teachers to conduct scientific research; knew they wanted to study at WSU; have made presentations about their research at scientific conferences or to lay audiences; will graduate in May 2014 and head to graduate school; and have won various awards for their research. Beyond these, their paths have followed their individual pursuits.
Brewer: Developing drought–resistant plants to feed future generations
Brewer describes herself as a “plant-oholic” who first got her hands dirty in their backyard greenhouse where she and her stepfather grew 16 varieties of tomatoes. A favorite high school teacher, Ed Bassett, ignited her interest in biology and inspired a curiosity for how plants work on a fundamental level; he also introduced her to WSU Regents Professor Norman Lewis, professor of molecular plant sciences and chemistry and director of the Institute of Biological Chemistry (IBS). Funded by a National Science Foundation grant, she was selected to be a high school intern in Lewis’s lab the summer between her junior and senior years; she returned to the lab her first day on campus as a WSU freshman and has been there ever since working as part of the $40 million Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance that Lewis conceived and led. Her work has resulted in conference presentations, and a publication is being finalized.
A junior, she has two majors: one in agricultural biotechnology in College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences’s Integrated Plant Sciences Program that focuses on the science of plant life from molecule to market; and another in biochemistry in College of Veterinary Medicine’s School of Molecular Biosciences (SMB), which specializes in the study of life at the molecular level.
Both align with her career goal to earn a Ph.D. in plant biology, become a university professor teaching undergraduates and inspiring them to pursue science careers, and interdisciplinary research in molecular plant sciences.
“Plants are important to food, medicine, and fibers so there are many directions my work could go. It’s difficult to know how to make oneself most useful as a plant scientist. I think about societies facing food shortages and challenges in coming years, plus how climate change is impacting the entire world. I think I’d like to create new cultivars of plants for the future that would be drought resistant.”
In her Goldwater application, Brewer describes proposed research in the Lewis lab that could help lead to a new protein-rich human and animal consumable: cotton seeds. While they are 22 percent protein, some gossypol molecules in them are toxic to non-ruminant animals. Her experimental approach could involve protein-encoding genes used to discover how cotton plants produce gossypol in terms of establishing the biochemical/molecular reasons for formation of the non-toxic enantiomer. Conducted over the coming year, the project will be also used for her Honors College thesis.
She applied for the Goldwater after hearing Honors College presentations on various distinguished scholarships. She hopes to qualify next for a Marshall Scholarship that would allow her to study in the United Kingdom.
(You can also read about Brewer on the CAHNRS website)
Grandi: Changing the Way People Look At and Talk About Science
Junior Fiorella Grandi, 20, will travel to Yale University for 11 weeks this summer to participate in the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Exceptional Research Opportunities Program (EXROP). She will study and research with Joan Steitz, a world-renowned molecular biologist and the first female scientist to work in the laboratory of James Watson, Nobel Prize winner and co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.
Grandi, whose parents live in Idaho Falls, Idaho, says her scientific interests are in epigenetics—how a cell changes its identity from, say, a normal cell of a given type to a diseased or even cancerous cell. At Yale, she will help look at how things like viruses coerce cells into allowing the virus to come in and cause an infection.
The double major in biochemistry and genetics is a member SMB’s STARS program. She has already published a first-author manuscript in Molecular Biology and Evolution from her work in WSU Assistant Professor Wenfeng An’s laboratory. And in summer 2012 she attended the highly competitive Jackson Laboratories Summer Research Program in Bar Harbor, Maine.
For her Honors College thesis project on bioinformatics, she plans to investigate chemical modification of DNA. All the cells in your body, she says, have the same DNA. But they function differently based, say, on which organ they are part of. DNA modification plays a role in determining that function.
She credits two people with helping her toward a career. Idaho Falls High School history teacher James Francis helped her understand how to dissect problems and apply critical thinking. And though she first wanted to be an attorney “to work for social justice; something I am still very passionate about,” she says it was her father who urged her to take a cell biology class in high school.
“I was hooked. I realized right then I wanted to be a scientist and teach and conduct research for the rest of my life.
“My ideal job (would be) at a state institution like WSU in part because of the funding challenges science faces and knowing I can reach so many more people in an environment like this.”
She adds, “I want to change the way people look at and talk about science. I’d love to teach a class like, ‘Science for Non-Scientists,’ so people no longer fear science or scientists and what we do.”
CONTACT: Mary Sanchez Lanier, Assistant Vice Provost and Associate Dean of the University College at WSU, 509-335-2320, sanchez@wsu.edu
MEDIA; Beverly Makhani, Director of Communications, University College and Honors College at WSU, 509-335-6679, Makhani@wsu.edu