UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Ten Penn State students, including nine associated with the College of Agricultural Sciences, have been awarded predoctoral fellowships by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA), securing over $1.4 million in total funding.
Penn State is tied for first place nationally with Cornell University for the highest number of USDA-NIFA predoctoral fellowships awarded since 2011, totaling 75 fellowships.
“In the past five years, we have either received or tied for the most awards received by an institution annually,” said Beth Gugino, assistant dean for graduate education. “In 2023-24, we tied the University of California system with 11 awards.”
The predoctoral fellowship program, part of USDA-NIFA’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, helps new scientists and professionals enter food and agricultural sciences research, education and extension fields in the private sector, government or academia. The fellowships aim to support future leaders working to solve current agricultural challenges.
The initiative is the nation’s chief competitive grant program for food and agricultural sciences. In 2024, USDA-NIFA invested $10.6 million to support the training of doctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars.
The following are the Penn State recipients and their research projects:
- Tyler Chandross-Cohen, food science: “Assessing the role of hemolysin Bl in cytotoxicity and fitness of B. cereus in food systems.”
- Emma Chiaroni, a dual-title doctorate in rural sociology and human dimensions of natural resources and the environment: “A case study of the development of a collaborative governance relationship for the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary.”
- Morgan Failla, a dual-title doctorate in food science and international agriculture and development: “Consumers as co-developers in cell-cultured meat innovation.”
- Marali Kalra, water resources engineering: “Modeling agricultural ecosystem services to evaluate the benefits of cover cropping under climate and land use change.”
- Melinda Marsh, soil science and biogeochemistry: “Scaling up and reaching out: The fate and future of agricultural nitrogen pollution in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.”
- Sims Lawson, forest resources studying ethnobotany: “Indigenous Caribbean zanthoxylum as novel agroforestry species.”
- Stiphany Tieu, material sciences: “A machine learning approach to elucidate interactions of food constituents with novel can coatings to predict product safety and shelf life.”
- Ezekeil Warren, food science: “Evaluation of exogenous acetaldehyde additions in beverage matrixes.”
- Robert Witkowski, plant biology: “A multi-pronged study of cruciferous vegetable crop defenses against an emergent gall insect pest.”
- David Yu, biology: “Defining the roles of the RNA modification pseudouridine in plant abiotic stress response.”