Category: Awards

Every year, a single graduating senior from the UNF Biology Department is awarded the Outstanding Research Award. This year, our very own Raul Chavarria won the award. Congrats Raul!!

Raul has earned his B.S. in Biology! Congrats, Raul! UNF hosted a very safe graduation ceremony this weekend, which I know Raul’s family appreciated very much. Way to go, Raul!

Frank was recognized as a principal investigator who obtained research funding of $250,000 or more during fiscal year 2019-2020 at the 2021 Scholars Transforming Academic Research Symposium (STARS). The recognition came with some very nice prizes — a fancy travel bag and a research stipend!

Raul won a prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program award!! This award is highly competitive. It will fund him during his two years as a Master’s student in the Body Plan Lab, starting Fall 2021, and his first year in a Ph.D. program. Wow!! Congrats, Raul!!

The Smith Lab’s very first REU student, Paula Nolte, graduated from Hope college!! She plans to work in the field of Microbiology for a bit, before applying to graduate school to study Microbiology in more depth. Paula did an excellent job studying tardigrade embryos during her time in The Smith …

UNF hosted the Showcase of Osprey Advancements in Research and Scholarship conference remotely today. Great job to the faculty and staff that made this possible. Both Mandy and Raul presented their research remotely. Great job to both of them for their fine presentations. Mandy won a Staff Choice Award. She …

Ariana has been awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research with Faculty grant at UCONN. She will be working with Frank’s PhD advisor, Elizabeth Jockusch, which is super neat. Hopefully some research can still take place this summer, but either way, writing a funded grant proposal is an excellent award. Great job, …

This grant will fund Frank’s NSF proposal RUI: Investigating tardigrade development to unravel the evolution of animal body plans. It provides three years of funding. The funding will open up many research opportunities for undergraduate students at UNF, and undergrads that visit the Smith Lab over the summer through the REU …

It is always with mixed emotions that we congratulate Smith Lab students on graduating. On one hand, we are so proud of them. On the other hand, we are losing valuable members of the lab team. But, mostly we are just very excited about the future accomplishments of our lab …

Ariana won a Travel to Present research Award from the Office of Undergraduate Research at the University of Connecticut. This will help support her travel to the upcoming Society for Integrative Biology meeting in Austin, TX. She will be presenting research from her visit to the Smith Lab last summer. …

This award will help fund her trip to the 2020 SICB meeting in Austin, TX. Congrats, Mandy!!

Ariana and Raul won Charlotte Mangum Support Awards to help fund their trip to the 2020 SICB meeting in Austin. Excellent!!

Mandy and Raul were awarded Conference Grants from the Office of Undergraduate Research at UNF. This will help fund their trip to the 2020 SICB meeting in Austin. Great job!!