Doctoral student Carmen Vallin (Life Sciences) was awarded the American Society for Microbiology Robert D. Watkins Graduate Research Fellowship. The program provides a total stipend of $63,000 ($21,000 a year) for a three-year period and is aimed at highly competitive graduate students. Vallin was awarded this fellowship to study how nongrowing bacterial cells accumulate mutations. She and her mentor, Eduardo Robleto (Life Sciences), seek to understand how mutations that confer antibiotic resistance in disease-causing bacteria occur. Vallin was also the recipient of a $144,000 NSF award in 2013, which supported the first three years of her graduate studies on how mutations form in the Robleto lab.