UAB student Matthew Schultz was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Schultz is the fifth UAB student to receive the prestigious NSF-GRFP award since 2009. The win comes one year after Schultz was given honorable mention honors.
The NSF-GRFP benefits include a $30,000 annual stipend, a $12,000 annual cost of education allowance, international research and professional development opportunities and access to TeraGrid supercomputing facilities. Schultz, a second year graduate student in the Pathobiology and Molecular Medicine doctoral program, will have his next three years of research supported by this award. His focus is glycobiology and its role in cancer progression.
Schultz is interested in delving deeper into how expression of sugar structures on proteins change in different physiologic conditions and as we age. He wants his work to result in a greater understanding of how these structures alter cell behavior and in turn lead to new approaches to develop therapeutics for patients with cancer or autoimmune disease.