Iowa State’s biotechnology program has granted fellowships to five incoming graduate students who are preparing for careers in biotechnology research.

Fellowship award recipients include graduate students Tian Xia and Xiao Yang, both in bioinformatics and computational biology; Xiaowen Fang, chemistry; Megan Harvey, interdisciplinary genetics; and Fan Tong, toxicology.

Glenda Webber, coordinator of the biotechnology program, said the office has awarded 185 graduate fellowships since 1994 to outstanding students planning to continue their biotechnology educations. She said more than $11.9 million has been provided to more than 100 new faculty members to help begin research programs.

Teresa Peterson, administrative specialist for the office of biotechnology, said more than $50,000 is being awarded to the recipients this year.

Webber said students are nominated for the fellowships by 28 academic departments or programs involving biotechnology. Applicants are then rated on factors such as grade point average, graduate record exam scores, letters of recommendation, scientific background and scholarly research experiences.

Walter Fehr, director of agronomy, said approximately 30 applications for the fellowships are sent to the biotechnology office where he scans them before being reviewed by the biotechnology council for final decisions each year.

“It was started to attract the best possible graduate students to Iowa State,” he said. “With [the fellowship program] we’re being competitive with other universities.”

Harvey, who completed her undergraduate work at Clemson University in South Carolina, said she agreed.

“Iowa State has one of the top [genetics] programs in the country,” she said. “The fellowship was one of the reasons I got to come here.”

Harvey is in her first of two lab rotations working with gene sequences of corn.

Other fellowship recipients could not be reached for comment.