The Watkins fellowship seeks to increase the number of graduate students from underrepresented groups completing doctoral degrees in the microbiological sciences. The program is aimed at highly competitive students who are enrolled in a Ph.D. program and have completed their graduate coursework in the microbiological sciences. Fellows and their mentors are required to be members of ASM.
Fellows will be required to present at the ASM General Meeting annually if their abstract is accepted and attend the ASM Kadner Institute, formerly known as the ASM Graduate and Postdoctoral Summer Institute in Preparation for Careers in Microbiology one time during the three-year tenure of the fellowship.
This year, forty applications were received and five were awarded. Of the five awardees, four students were from doctoral/research universities-extensive institutions, and one student was from a doctoral/research universities-intensive institution. Among the five awardees, four additional students were recognized as Honorable Mentions.
Arash Komeili is Cueto's mentor. The title of the research is Identification of Magnetosome Cytoskeletal-Associated Proteins in Magnetospirillum magneticum sp. AMB-1.
The American Society for Microbiology (ASM), headquartered in Washington, D.C., is the oldest and largest single biological membership organization, with over 40,000 members worldwide. Please visit http://www.asm.org/Education/index.asp?bid=6278 for more information on this fellowship.