KINGSTON, R.I. – Could 14, 2025 – College of Rhode Island graduating senior Lindsey Reimels, a marine biology main and whale researcher, has been awarded a prestigious Nationwide Science Basis (NSF) Graduate Analysis Fellowship for 2025.
The NSF’s Graduate Analysis Fellowship Program acknowledges and helps excellent college students in science, know-how, engineering, and arithmetic disciplines pursuing research-based superior levels in the USA. Fellows obtain an annual stipend, and funding for tuition and charges, value $159,000 over three years.
The Nationwide Science Basis instituted the Graduate Analysis Fellowship in 1952, with the aim of encouraging scientific analysis and making certain complete analysis applications for college students within the U.S. Since then, the NSF has funded greater than 46,500 fellowships. Many former graduate fellows have gone on to change into Nobel laureates and members of the Nationwide Academy of Sciences.
Reimels plans to make use of her Nationwide Science Basis fellowship at Previous Dominion College in Virginia to pursue a Ph.D. in ecological sciences beginning this fall. Particularly, she plans to dive deeper into the connection between baleen whales and microplastics—a subject she has spent her final two years finding out at URI.
Discovered the world over, baleen whales embrace a number of well-known species of whale, together with the epic blue whale, the most important identified animal to have ever existed. A number of, equivalent to humpbacks and the North Atlantic proper whale, additionally swim in New England waters.
Submit-mortem examinations of baleen whales point out that whales are ingesting microplastics. With this fellowship, Reimels hopes to check what they’re ingesting, the affect, and the way consumption is going down throughout species.
“The hope is that these discoveries may help assist marine mammal safety and plastic air pollution mitigation,” she says.
Ocean State begin
Rising up within the Ocean State and spending her summers on the seaside influenced her alternative of examine, Reimels says.
“I used to be uncovered to plastic air pollution at a really younger age and have all the time discovered it regarding,” she says. However for the Tiverton resident, going to URI was a straightforward alternative.
“As quickly as I obtained my acceptance letter to URI, I knew I needed to go,” she recollects. “As a local Rhode Islander, I knew that URI had standout attributes such because the Narragansett Bay Campus and the R/V Endeavor, Professor Robert Ballard (who found the Titanic), and ties to sustainable aquaculture with Matunuck Oyster Bar. I had no thought the place the marine bio program would take me, however I used to be excited to seek out out.”
At URI, Reimels, suggested by marine biologist Professor Andrew Davies, started her examine of the ocean in earnest. In her sophomore yr, Reimels discovered Affiliate Professor Coleen Suckling’s “Echinonerd” Lab and began working with then-graduate pupil Sarah Davis Ph.D. ’24, on analysis funded by Rhode Island Sea Grant, analyzing the impacts of microplastic air pollution on Rhode Island waterways, specializing in the switch of microplastics to Japanese oysters and Jonah crabs, which ingest them whereas feeding within the bay. A paper they wrote collectively is now in course of and Reimels shall be listed as second writer.
“I actually loved the tediousness and detail-oriented nature of working in a microplastics lab, and cherished working with dwell animals,” Reimels feedback. “The extra I realized about microplastics, the extra questions I developed.”
This ultimately led her to engaged on her personal unbiased analysis venture finding out the connection between microplastics and baleen whales.
Along with her research, Reimels additionally performed membership area hockey and has been lively as a mentor at URI. This previous yr, she labored carefully with Affiliate Instructing Professor Niels-Viggo Hobbs because the marine biology program mentor, describing it as one among her favourite experiences at URI. She loved supporting undergraduate college students within the marine biology program, serving to them use URI’s assets to realize their objectives and put together for his or her future careers.
“It’s really rewarding to assist in giving again to this unimaginable program that has given me so many alternatives and put me on monitor to attaining my objectives,” she says. “With out these alternatives and my mentor’s assist, this might not have been attainable. Having the ability to learn to conduct analysis and work via the trials and tribulations that include it as an undergraduate has been invaluable. It was a key consider deciding I needed to use for the Nationwide Science Basis’s GRFP and proceed to do analysis in graduate college.”
As she advances to the following step in her profession, she’ll miss Rhode Island however is wanting ahead to seeing the place her educational profession now takes her.
“I need to use my analysis to contribute to plastic air pollution mitigation and marine mammal conservation,” Reimels says. “Each causes are vital to me, and with the ability to proceed finding out them is a dream come true.”
Three URI college students additionally obtained Graduate Analysis Fellowship Program Honorable Mentions this yr: senior Elise VanLuinen, who has began a place with the Dana Farber Most cancers Institute conducting melanoma remedy analysis, and graduate college students Reese Kober within the Graduate Faculty of Oceanography and Benjamin Charo in URI’s organic and environmental sciences Ph.D. program.
For extra details about the NSF Graduate Analysis Fellowship Program, or different fellowship alternatives or purposes, go to or contact URI’s Office of National Fellowships & Academic Opportunities.
