PhD candidate Mariangel Correa-Orellana was just awarded a prestigious HHMI Gilliam Fellowship! This is a very competitive award (>800 applicants this year and only 30 fellows) designed to launch promising young scientists into a scientific career. In addition to 3 years of fellowship support, Mariangel receives a yearly allowance for travel and professional development. This is also the first time anyone from UT has received this award.
This award also provides a great opportunity to get connected with the HHMI community through yearly conferences and meetings with other HHMI fellows.
Finally, as her adviser, I also get to benefit from this award as it includes a serious mentorship development component. I get to attend monthly online mentorship meetings as well as an in-person workshop to enhance my mentorship next Spring.
Mariangel’s dissertation focuses on microbial ecology of anchialine habitats in Hawaii. She’s interested in what these microbes are doing and will be applying metagenomics to ask what metabolic functions different members of these communities are performing, as well as whether these functions are different across different habitat types (for example, habitats with a distinct orange crust community vs. those with mud substrates or green algal mats). She’s also interested in animal-microbe interactions in these habitats and will be taking a deep dive into the gut microbiomes of the main shrimp species that is endemic to these habitats (opae ula, Halocaridina rubra).