Three graduate students—Abigail Berkebile, Edmarie Guzman-Velez, and Caitlin Hilliard—have each secured a 2012-13 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship to pursue graduate studies at the University of Iowa.

Berkebile joins the Ph.D. program in biosciences in 2012-13; Guzman-Velez and Hilliard are both Ph.D. candidates in psychology. Each of the scholars will receive three years of support from the NSF, including a $30,000 annual stipend and a $10,500 cost-of-education allowance.

Berkebile’s first rotation in the Biosciences Program will be with Wendy Maury, associate professor of microbiology. Berkebile was a double-major in biochemistry and Spanish at the University of Nebraska.

Guzman-Velez—also a UI Dean’s Graduate Research Fellow— is working with Daniel Tranel, director of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Neuroscience, to conduct memory and emotion research on individuals with Alzheimer’s disease using clips of happy and sad movies.

This research follows up on a 2010 UI study that found that patients with amnesia still feel emotions, despite memory loss. The current study is different in two ways—it focuses on Alzheimer’s patients and adds a neuroimaging component to see how emotion and memory correlate with brain structures.

Currently, Guzman-Velez has 10 patients in her study, nine of whom have consented to undergo MRIs. She is working to acquire a study sample of at least 15 patients. Guzman-Velez and her colleagues are analyzing the imaging data.

“The behavioral data is consistent with the findings from the 2010 study,” says Guzman-Velez, which means her study is an important step in confirming the earlier findings.

“I will not find a cure, but I might contribute something that improves the patients’ quality of life.”

Hilliard works with Professor Susan Wagner Cook. Hilliard studies how co-speech hand gestures serve as a communication channel, and how people use the information available in both speech and gesture to effectively convey messages.

“The outcome of this research will be informative for both classroom and therapeutic settings,” Hilliard says. “By understanding how people naturally alter their gesture and how others are sensitive to these alterations, we may be able to intentionally manipulate communication techniques in education.”

A competitive fellowship program, the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program supports outstanding Ph.D. students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. As the oldest graduate fellowship of its kind, the program has a long history of selecting recipients who achieve high levels of success in their future academic and professional careers. Graduate students selected as NSF Fellows are top scholars in their fields who bring both personal expertise and external funding to their academic institutions.

“Being a recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship will allow me the ultimate academic freedom to pursue my own research questions,” Hilliard said. “Not only has this award allowed me more time and flexibility as a research scientist, but it has also given me the confidence to attain my goals.”