The nation’s top graduate school applicants in the life sciences have a new funding opportunity thanks to a recent grant awarded to one of the University’s graduate programs. Last month, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced $1.75 million in funding for graduate student education in the Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology (EECB) program.
“This is a life-changing grant,” Jenny Ouyang, EECB graduate program director and principal investigator on the grant, said.
The award will fund 11 three-year fellowships for EECB doctoral students who applied and were named honorable mentions for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Despite not being awarded the GRFP, being an honorable mention indicates strong research potential. By awarding students who are honorable mentions, EECB can recruit top students. The grant will also help retain those students as they can focus on their research and progress further into their programs without financial stress.
For Ouyang, being able to provide this support to graduate students was a full-circle moment. She received the NSF GRFP and credits the award with allowing her to focus on her research and publish more papers, making her a stand-out candidate when she began applying for jobs at universities.
The NSF has identified several states, including Nevada, for funding to build research capacity through the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). Nevada’s status as an EPSCoR state made the EECB program eligible to apply to the EPSCoR Graduate Fellowship Program (EGFP).
Ouyang worked with co-principal investigators Annie Leonard (chair of the Department of Biology), Loren Pietsch (director of postdoctoral affairs, graduate recruitment and diversity initiatives) and Markus Kemmelmeier (vice provost for graduate education and dean of the Graduate School) to submit the grant application to the NSF. In preparing the proposal for the training grant, the team utilized the proposal planning and review services provided by Research & Proposal Development Services, part of Research & Innovation.
"We are inspired by the altruistic efforts of our faculty to do the work required to submit training grants that support their students and attract top students to their programs,” Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation Mridul Gautam, said. “We will do everything we can to support them and share the workload in putting these grant proposals together."
The establishment of an EGFP in a challenging funding environment is transformative for the program and for the region, but the road to funding was long and uncertain. Ouyang and Leonard applied for the grant two years ago but weren’t awarded funding. They reapplied in June 2025 and were notified that the application was recommended for funding in April. They began to lose hope when they didn’t hear anything for several months. Finally, they were notified in August that their EGFP application was successful.
“There has never been a better time to invest in training scientists who focus on ecological resiliency,” Leonard said. “This award is a real feather in the cap for a graduate program full of excellent graduate students and world-class researchers.”
The EECB graduate program has been a research powerhouse at the University. Faculty are leaders in their fields, with two American Association for the Advancement of Science fellows, five NSF CAREER Award recipients and five Fulbright Scholars. Data from the program shows that 99% of EECB graduates move on to STEM careers. The EECB program is home to about 43% of the University’s NSF GRFP awards and honorable mentions and roughly a third of those awards statewide. Interdisciplinary research is regularly published in high-impact journals, and 90% of student and faculty respondents in an internal program survey said they felt “extremely empowered” to develop initiatives including committees, classes and outreach programs.
“High-powered graduate programs such as EECB are the pride and joy of this University,” said Markus Kemmelmeier, vice provost for graduate education and dean of the Graduate School. “When generating first-rate science, they are demonstrating what’s possible in Nevada.”
“How do we fund the next generation of scientists?” Ouyang asked. “How do we mentor them? How do we give them the best toolkit so they can be successful for the future because they’re going to mentor other students? This is why I do academia.”
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