Fellowships support student research on compostable cutlery, sustainable solutions, and shorebird conservation
Undergraduate fellowships in the College of Natural Resources and Environment allow students to design and pursue their own research projects.
For Brian Tea, research starts at the back of Dining Services' Southgate Center. Lifting the lid of a container of food waste already starting to spoil, Tea scoops out enough to feed the composting tumblers that he is using to conduct his project, supported by an Undergraduate Research Fellowship from the College of Natural Resource and Environment (CNRE).
“My research is on compostable cutlery,” said Tea, a junior majoring in sustainable biomaterials in the Department of Sustainable Biomaterials. “I’m interested in understanding the life cycle of single-use materials and how sustainable options can provide a circular solution to waste.”
Tea tested the ability to compost cutlery made from three materials: the biodegradable polymer cellulose diacetate; polylactic acid, which is a renewable bioplastic; and the commonplace polystyrene plastics readily available at fast food restaurants.
Working under the guidance of Associate Professor Maren Roman, Tea measured the degradation processes of the various materials using an at-home composter that grinded and heated the composted materials to determine how efficiently the cutlery was able to break down.
Tea was one of eight recipients of a CNRE fellowship this past academic year. The program aims to give undergraduates both the financial resources and instructional support to conduct hands-on research.
“The CNRE Undergraduate Research Fellowship program provides students with an incredible opportunity to work side by side with our faculty to address local, state, national, and global challenges,” said Associate Dean Keith Goyne, who supervises the program. “Our undergraduate research fellows are tackling a wide range of topics in social and natural sciences, and they truly are using the fellowships to understand and improve the world.”
Applicants are eligible to receive up to $2,500 to support a research project of their own design with the sponsorship of a faculty mentor. Funding for fellowships comes in part from the generous gifts of donors to the college, whose contributions allow students the opportunity to take their education in their own hands. These grants are part of Virginia Tech Advantage, the university’s commitment to providing transformational educational opportunities to all students, regardless of income.
From materials science to making a difference
The Department of Sustainable Biomaterials focuses on training students to take on careers utilizing natural and synthetic materials to better the world.
For junior Justin Brandt, that challenge meant using one of the oldest building materials – bamboo – to enhance the use of cross-laminated timber (CLT), an engineered wood product that has become an increasingly popular material for the construction of homes and buildings.
“I think CLT is a genius building idea. It’s feasible and easy to implement, and it really blows my mind that it still isn’t used very often,” said Brandt, who switched majors on the recommendation of his roommate, junior Sage Smith. “One of the major problems is that since it is such a solid material, it’s difficult to hide wiring or piping inside of it.”
Brandt’s solution is to incorporate hollow lengths of bamboo in the solid wood timbers to provide builders with a handy, strong, and environmentally sustainable solution for hiding the plumbing and wiring that designers would prefer to have out of sight.
Brandt, who likes the challenge of tackling projects on his own, said he’s grateful to have had the chance to conduct his own research.
“I reached out to Daniel Hindman and told him my idea, and we sat down and talked about it,” Brandt said of connecting with the associate professor. “The whole experience made me feel very heard, and having the chance to express my passions in such an experiential and scientific way has been a great opportunity for me.”
Junior Rosa Williams’s dive into the subject of materials science will focus on everyday items: the small plastic bottles that hold medicine and the safety caps that keep children – and sometimes the elderly – from accessing the medicines inside.
Williams, who did a summer internship learning how plastic closure design can impact day-to-day-lives, said her curiosity about how we determine standards for products started much earlier.
“As a kid growing up, I was always super curious about who the specific person was who could open every peanut butter jar,” said Williams, who is majoring in packaging systems and design. “Those kinds of questions led to me thinking about how we make decisions to standardize certain things.”
Williams – a recipient of the Geza Ifju Scholarship and a scholarship from the Virginia Forestry Educational Foundation – will be conducting research on how to better understand packaging challenges as they relate to children and the elderly so that designers can make choices that allow for more user-friendly packaging options.
“There are testing requirements for child-resistant packages to be elderly-friendly, but those requirements exclude people with certain disabilities, including arthritis, which is extremely common for people over the age of 60,” said Williams, who is minoring in disability studies. “I want to do an exploratory study that considers the experiences of children and seniors to better understand the physical capabilities of both groups.”
Using a hand dynamometer, which measures grip strength, and a torquemeter, to measure wrist twisting capabilities, Williams will compare the grip strengths of volunteer children and seniors against existing data to better understand the specific capacities of these two populations underrepresented in safety and accessibility measures for plastic bottles.
“My long-term career goal is to design packaging with an understanding of disabilities,” said Williams. “Improvements to plastic closures, with their vast uses across the food, beverage, and pharmaceutical industries, can make the world a more user-friendly place.”
Conservationists of a feather conference together
When Desraeli McBride showed up to present at the Wildlife Society’s annual conference in Louisville, Kentucky, this past fall, she could count on at least one familiar face: She and Max Nootbaar, both seniors majoring in wildlife conservation in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, were on hand to present research posters at the conference.
“The poster session was only two hours,” said McBride, who presented on her work with oystercatchers, a threatened bird species found along the barrier islands of Virginia. “But getting to stand there and feel like an expert with so many people coming by to ask about the research I was doing was honestly so much fun.”
McBride, a first-generation college student who graduated in December with degrees in wildlife conservation and biology, received a CNRE research fellowship to conduct her study on oystercatchers under the guidance of Professor Sarah Karpanty.
“I conducted research on Fisherman Island, which is one of the 14 barrier islands we have in Virginia,” said McBride. “I worked with American oystercatchers, which I think are the best birds in the world. For my project, I helped monitor nests and broods to determine the survival of chicks and investigate the overall habitat and cover selections of these birds.”
McBride, who aspires to be a wildlife field biologist, was the recipient of the Camp-Younts Foundation Scholarship in Wildlife. Funded by the Atkinson family, this scholarship supports the education of students studying animal conservation.
“I’ve been very supported in my time at the college, from the scholarships I’ve received, to the advising that is amazing here, to the general support from professors and students,” said McBride. “All of that has definitely made this place feel like home.”
For Nootbaar, an interest in piping plovers – those small shorebirds that race along ebbing waves hunting for food – started when he noted a small, numbered band on a bird he was watching.
“I wrote down the band number and reported the sighting, and I received a response that this individual hatched in Round Bay, Nova Scotia, in 2017,” said Nootbaar, a Charlottesville native who is graduating this spring. “I was thrilled by my small contribution to the research of this threatened species.”
That experience – and the encouragement of Logan Anderson ’22 – led Nootbaar to the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, where he received an Undergraduate Student Research Fellowship to use breeding data to assess the demographic rates and population shifts of plovers, as part of a broader effort to model the species population dynamics along the Atlantic coast.
“I’m working with a data set from a banding study that was conducted on the Virginia barrier islands in 2018 and 2019,” said Nootbaar, who is also sponsored by Karpanty. “The program banded 111 adult and chicks, and several conservation organizations and wildlife agencies have been monitoring where those birds have ended up breeding over the past several years. I’m using that data to see how the Virginia population is connected to other populations in the mid-Atlantic region.”
Nootbaar, who was recently selected as the recipient of the college's David William Smith Leadership Award, also received a Dean’s International Study Abroad scholarship to travel to the Galápagos Islands for the spring semester study abroad course Darwin’s Galápagos: Evolution in the Anthropocene. He said his experiences in the college have motivated him to pursue a career in conservation research.
“My involvement in the Virginia Tech Shorebird Program has exposed me to the plight of shorebirds affected by climate change, habitat loss, and other anthropogenic drivers,” said Nootbaar. “Learning about these threats has strengthened my desire to conduct research relevant to the conservation and management of threatened species.”
From hands-on learners to future scientists
From improving everyday materials such as disposable cutlery and plastic pill bottles, to conserving species or designing new ways to imagine the future of housing, research fellowships are providing undergraduate students in the college with the chance to take the lead in directing their educational journeys.
“The experiential learning gained by our undergraduate research fellows is invaluable for their development as scientists,” said Goyne. “The opportunity to choose and craft their projects under the mentorship of globally-recognized experts provides students with great motivation to engage in the research and to complete the research with precision and accuracy.”
The application window for CNRE Undergraduate Research Fellowships for the 2024-25 academic year is open, and interested students in the college can learn more about the program and how to apply by visiting the undergraduate student research page. The deadline for applications is May 1.
