NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program

Because you're now having to think, if I own this process, if this is my work, how do I answer this question? How do I set up this experiment? How do I understand if I've tested the hypothesis correctly? And so I encourage all of my students to do it.

And most of my students who have done it Their thesis is literally the question that they wrote in their GRFP application.

And so I think it's amazing.

And thinking about those fundamental questions, this has continued and it shows the timescale that it takes to answer these when you're still working on the same area or the similar area as time has gone on.

It doesn't have to be.

Because NSF GRFP is for any research discipline, really, right? So you can do this in physics, chemistry, biology, geology, computer science.

It doesn't really matter.

I believe they even fund education research, right?

So, you know, like I'm not saying I'm not trying to take credit for her success here, but just the fact that you're trying it out as a student, you're giving a crack at this type of real writing assignment that could prove dividends down the line, whether you write the real thing or you end up writing other proposals or something else.

Another thing I thought about, I haven't pulled the trigger on this one, but is having, and I was going to do this anatomy and physiology, but have students write basically a cover page, a one-page cover page for an RL1, an NIH proposal, where they have to come up with two specific aims.

They have to make a figure that summarizes what their entire project is, right? So another kind of form of that authentic assessment, which would be super, I think, even more challenging than the NSF GRFP, but it could be another fun idea for an authentic assessment like that.

Absolutely.

excitingConsidering antibiotics may only cure about 50%, the phage treatment is so promising we have submitted a patent for the treatment, and we are pursuing FDA approval.

Brian actually received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

It's actually really amazing for a entering PhD student to get this type of a fellowship.

To discover something and take it immediately to market is quite a rare opportunity, and it's something that BYU really has helped the students in the Phage Hunters program be able to do.