Anna Seminara, a graduate student in the Yale Biological and Biomedical Sciences (Class of 2025) and member of the Microbial Sciences Institute and Hatzios lab, has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) fellowship.
The NSF GRFP fellowship “recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported STEM disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees”. The fellowship provides five years of support, including a $34,000 annual stipend for three years and $12,000 to the institution.
With the award, Seminara will investigate how redox-active small molecules influence bacterial survival and physiology in the context of the gastrointestinal tract. Using the gastric symbiont Helicobacter pylori as a model, Anna is employing biochemical, structural, and genetic techniques to understand more about how the microbe maintains redox balance in the harsh stomach environment. Findings from her work may expand our understanding of not only H. pylori, but also broader microbial redox biology and host-microbe resource competition.
Seminara graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park, with a B.S. in Biological Sciences with a concentration in Microbiology and high honors in Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics. While at UMD, she studied how second messenger signaling nucleotides like cyclic-di-GMP interact with proteins in the lab of Dr. Vincent Lee. Beyond the lab, Seminara has also served as a mentor for the Yale Graduate-Undergraduate Mentorship Initiative and as a reviewing editor for the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine.
Further details about the fellowship are available on the NSF website.