Adapted from North Carolina Sea Grant News Releases
UNCG PhD student Austin Gray is one of five graduate students to receive a fellowship funded by the North Carolina Sea Grant and the Water Resources Research Institute of the University of North Carolina system. The students are beginning research projects that focus on current water resources and coastal issues in North Carolina.
Gray, a doctoral student in environmental health science, will study the presence of antibiotics in rural North Carolina streams and wells. His advisor is biology professor Anne Hershey.
The presence of antibiotics in drinking water and streams can have negative effects on human health and the ecosystem. This is especially a concern in the rural environment where surface water and groundwater may not be treated prior to consumption.
The research call was designed to reach new and diverse audiences, and applicants were strongly encouraged to collaborate with Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority Serving Institutions.
“We recognized that there are groups of faculty and students, as well as communities in our state, who have been underserved and underrepresented in terms of water-related research,” notes Nicole Wilkinson, WRRI coordinator for research and outreach. “We wanted to target our funding in such a way that it created opportunities to address some of those gaps.”
The competitive funding opportunity was open to graduate students across the state. The 2017 fellows are from East Carolina University, North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UNC-Greensboro.
North Carolina Sea Grant is a federal/state partnership, with funding through National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the U.S. Department of Commerce. The Water Resources Research Institute of the University of North Carolina system is a federal/state partnership with funding through the U.S. Geological Survey in the U.S. Department of the Interior.
More information about this and other funding opportunities is available at https://ncseagrant.ncsu.edu/funding-opportunities/ and https://wrri.ncsu.edu/research/funding/.
