PMPB News
Elizabeth Castelbaum - NSF Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation
Elizabeth Castelbaum, M.S. student in Soil and Crop Sciences, was awarded a NSF Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation/Bridge to the Doctorate Fellowship for two years. Elizabeth will work on drought tolerance in wheat in Pat Byrne's program.

Jacob Snelling - Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship
Jacob Snelling
Each year, the American Society of Plant Biologists (http://www.asbp.org) awards selected applicants a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF). The program is designed to allow aspiring plant biologists the opportunity to conduct meaningful research projects early in their academic careers. Under the tutelage of a mentor, the student is allowed to conduct their proposed research full-time over the summer. The fellowship awards $500 dollars to research supply costs, as well as a $3,000 stipend. The following summer, the awarded is then required to present the data obtained from the experiment at the annual ASBP meeting. In providing such opportunities, the ASBP hopes to encourage careers and advanced degrees in plant biology.

This year, Jacob Snelling, an undergraduate working in the Leach lab, was selected to receive this prestigious award for a proposal he wrote to examine the production of the defense response enzyme oxalate oxidase in rice. Under the tutelage of PhD candidate Rebecca Davidson, Jacob will be performing a series of biochemical and histological assays to localize and quantify the production of oxalate oxidase in rice leaf tissue. The results of these assays will be correlated with the molecular characterization of the involvement of the enzyme family in quantitative disease resistance done by PhD candidates Patty Manosalva and Rebecca Davidson. Jan Leach is the ASBP member and PI responsible for support and research guidance for this project. Jacob is looking forward to this new direction in his research career, as the experience will be invaluable to his understanding of molecular defense responses in plants.