SOT is pleased to announce the five recipients of the 2024 Diversity Initiatives Endowment Career Development Award: Chamia Chatman, Endia Fletcher, Idoia Meaza, Samantha Serna, and Madeline Vera-Colón. The Diversity Initiatives Endowment Career Development Award enables undergraduate and graduate students to engage in education and career development opportunities with the aim of facilitating successful entry into advanced degree programs and transition into the modern toxicology workforce. This award supports activities that are outside of a student’s current program or institution. The SOT Diversity Initiatives Endowment Fund supports this award. Created in 2009, the goal of the fund is to increase and retain individuals from groups underrepresented in the biomedical sciences.
Chamia Chatman
Chamia Chatman is a fourth year PhD student in the Molecular & Environmental Toxicology program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her thesis work is focused on understanding how environmental contaminants, specifically agricultural chemicals in groundwater, can affect the health of humans and animals. She is using this award toward attending and presenting a poster at the 19th International Society for Microbial Ecology (ISME19) symposium, which is one of the largest nonprofit international meetings in the microbial ecology field. ISME19 is being held in Cape Town, South Africa.
“I am honored to have been selected to receive this award. Attending ISME19 will provide research development opportunities and global perspectives on my research that I have not previously experienced. As a result, I will learn additional microbial ecology methods and concepts that can improve my thesis research.”
Endia Fletcher
Endia Fletcher is a fourth year PhD candidate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her doctoral dissertation focuses on understanding reproductive- and immune-associated outcomes of phthalate mixture exposure. She plans to become a regulatory toxicologist, and she received this award to attend the TERA Dose Response Boot Camp.
“I am very blessed to have the opportunity to receive this award. This award will help me pursue my career goal of becoming a regulatory toxicologist and gaining practical experience necessary to be a competitive applicant when applying to jobs.”
Idoia Meaza
Idoia Meaza is a PhD graduate student at the University of Louisville. Her research investigates the mechanisms of metal carcinogenesis. With her research, she hopes to provide some insight in the mechanism of carcinogenesis that could help develop biomarkers of exposure or therapeutic targets, and her long-term career goal is to become an independent scientist in the field of metal toxicology and carcinogenesis. She is using this award toward attending the annual meeting of the International Society of Trace Element Research in Humans, which is taking place in Murcia, Spain, this October, where she will present the results from her innovative bioinformatic analyses on genomic RNA and micro-RNA analyses.
“Receiving this award was an absolute delight. Thanks to this prestigious award, I will have the opportunity to attend the annual meeting of the International Society of Trace Element Research in Humans in Murcia, Spain, this October. This society brings together scientists specializing in trace elements and metal toxicities from various parts of the globe. Consequently, this conference presents an excellent chance for me, as a young scientist, to connect with potential future collaborators in the field. Given that my ultimate career aspiration is to establish my own laboratory as a metal toxicologist, this event holds immense significance for me.”
Samantha Serna
Samantha Serna is a PhD graduate student at the University of Utah. Her overall research studies how to reduce cell damage or cell death by mediating endoplasmic reticulum stress during lung epithelium exposure to cigarette and wood smoke particulate matter. Her future career goals are to continue in the academic route as a postdoc and, one day, lead her own research group. She is using the award to attend the Bio-Trac R for Research Scientists Workshop at the Montgomery College Bioscience Education Center in Germantown, Maryland.
“Upon learning that I had received this award, I was ecstatic. … Programming in R has become a vital tool for research scientists; however, much of my PhD training has consisted of working at a bench. Receiving this award will allow me to attend a two-day Bio-Trac R programming intensive workshop tailored specifically for bench research scientists. As my research has shifted toward working with large ’omics datasets, analyzing this data and presenting it effectively has become a challenge. Knowing how to independently code in R will undoubtedly help me become a better scientist, a more competitive candidate in the job market, and ultimately provide me with tools to teach essential skills to the next generation of scientists and underrepresented groups that I hope to mentor in the scientific field.”
Madeline Vera-Colón
Madeline Vera-Colón is a PhD graduate student at the University of California Irvine. Her research, within the laboratory of SOT member Nicole Sparks, addresses pregnant people’s exposure to air pollutants and the impacts it carries on embryonic skeletal development. Her career goals include establishing her own laboratory as a tenured research professor at a university with a diverse student body. She is using the award to attend and present at an Air Quality and Health Conference in October sponsored by the San Joaquin Valley Center for Community Air Assessment and Injustice Reduction.
“Undoubtedly, I am very excited and humbled to receive this award. Beyond the monetary component, which will help tremendously, I am most satisfied knowing the award application reviewers believed in my pursuit to break into a new research field. The award will help fund my travel costs and provide relief from the unnecessary burden associated with attending different types of conferences that are not currently built into grant budgets. Now, I will be able to attend and present novel work that I have been conducting as a supplement to my dissertation project without fear of cost burden.”
SOT congratulates the 2024 Diversity Initiatives Endowment Career Development Award recipients. Throughout the year, the awardees will share their career development experiences through the SOT blog.
For eligibility requirements and details on how to apply to the SOT Diversity Initiatives Endowment Career Development Award, please visit the award’s web page.
If you wish to contribute to the SOT Endowment Fund, please visit the SOT website for information.
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