Cornell welcomed 10 new graduate students, who were selected as this year's Presidential Life Sciences Fellows, at a reception in Weill Hall on Aug. 26.

Now in its eighth year, the program selects fellows on their potential to bridge disciplines and help form new integrative disciplines of life sciences that are expected to emerge in the next decade.

The program provides first-year funding for new graduate students and exposes them to a broad range of disciplines in the life sciences through presentations by faculty and rotations in various laboratories across campus. At the end of the year, the fellows will choose whether to remain in their initial graduate field or to pursue a different one.

"These fellowships are wonderful examples of the kind of learning opportunity we would like to be able to offer to many of our incoming graduate students to better prepare them for the challenges that face life scientists in the 21st century," said Andrew Bass, associate vice provost for research.

The new fellows are: David Ackerman (biophysics), Crystal Davenport (nutrition), Laura Desrochers (biochemistry, molecular and cell biology), Yu (Amanda) Guo (genetics and development), Virginia Howick (entomology), Ezra Lencer (ecology and evolutionary biology), Adrian Powell (plant biology), Jennifer Spindel (plant breeding), Taylor Stevenson (biomedical engineering) and Zhen Tong (biochemistry, molecular and cell biology).

The Presidential Life Sciences Fellows program is part of the New Life Sciences Initiative, a universitywide collaboration aimed at enhancing and supporting life sciences research and education.