Iowa State’s Plant Sciences Institute has awarded excellence fellowships to six graduate students in the basic and applied plant sciences. John Mayfield, associate dean of the graduate college, said the fellowship provides each student with a $20,000 stipend that comes from state-appropriated funds received by the Plant Sciences Institute. Tuition is included for all four years of study as well as a research supplement. “Graduate students had to go through a competitive process to be chosen for the fellowships,” Mayfield said. “They had to be nominated by their respective programs before they were even considered.” Mayfield said the first year the graduate students will receive their funding through the Plants Sciences Institute, but after that, the professors in charge of the program will have to fund most of the money. “Everything after the first year is covered by grant money,” said Shannon Schlueter, graduate of Texas A&M University. “It depends on the professor if they have extra grant money, or if graduate students come across a great rotation they can use for a grant write up.” Schlueter was one of six graduate students to receive the fellowship. He said he was interested mainly in studying bioinformatics and computational biology. “I looked into universities around the country that had good programs, and Iowa State seemed to be leading,” Schlueter said. “As far as my interest goes, the opportunity seems to be growing here.” Schlueter said one thing he likes about the program is the lack of guidelines in his research because he can choose which area to pursue. “Informatics as a whole is a new frontier in biology,” Schlueter said. “I think informatics is a tool to be improved upon and make sense of.” Mayfield said the fellowship opportunity will be offered again next year. “We plan to run the search the same way again next year,” he said. “Our goal is to get at least five qualified students every year. This year we were lucky and received six.”