Furman University student, alumnus receive prestigious fellowships from National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded grants through the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) to a Furman University student and a Furman alumnus.

The recipients are Furman senior chemistry major Daniela Mesa Sanchez of Greer, S.C., and Matthew (Matt) Whitmire, a 2015 Furman neuroscience graduate and current Ph.D. candidate at University of Texas at Austin.

Selected through the NSF peer review process, they are among 2,000 awardees who participated in a national competition, which this year drew 13,000 applicants.

GRFP provides three years of financial support within a five-year fellowship period ($34,000 annual stipend and $12,000 cost-of-education allowance to the graduate institution). The financial support is earmarked for graduate study that leads to a research-based master’s or doctoral degree in science and engineering.

Awardees represent a wide range of scientific disciplines and come from all states, as well as the District of Columbia, and U.S. commonwealths and territories. Hailing from 449 baccalaureate institutions, the group of recipients is diverse, representing undergraduate seniors, students enrolled in graduate study, women, minority groups, those with disabilities, and veterans.

Daniela Mesa Sanchez participated as a Furman Bridges to a Brighter Future student through high school, and was recruited under Furman’s NSF S-STEM Scholarship program through the Office of Integrative Research in the Sciences (OIRS).

Mesa Sanchez, a chemistry and information technology (IT) double major, began her research with Professor Karen Buchmueller in 2014, supported by funding from a National Institutes of Health-IDeA Network for Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) award—work that has continued throughout her time at Furman. Under Buchmueller, Mesa Sanchez contributed to the development of a new research tool to biochemically characterize a protein linked to cancer metastasis.

Matthew (Matt) Whitmire was initially supported by a Howard Hughes Medical Institute program through OIRS to work with former psychology faculty member Judy Grisel in 2012. Later, Whitmire received Furman support to work with Marta Kutas at University of California San Diego on semantic language development. In the summer following his junior year, he received Furman aid to work at Monell Chemical Senses Center (Philadelphia) with Alexander Bachmanov to study salt taste genomics.

At UT Austin, Whitmire works with Eyal Seidemann to study how visual encoding and computation mechanisms in the primary visual cortex mediate visual perception. After earning his Ph.D., Whitmire plans to pursue a competitive postdoc, then enter academia as a principle investigator and professor.