Testimonial on the Summer Faculty Fellows Program
Professor Christopher Nichols, CSU - Chico
"I spent the summer of 2002 at Florida State University courtesy of a SynCure Faculty Fellow grant, working in the laboratories of Dr. Marie Krafft. This opportunity provided by the SynCure Foundation provided an excellent boost to my career as a scientist. At a primarily undergraduate institution like CSU Chico, so much time is spent on teaching efforts that little can be accomplished in terms of original research. The opportunity to work at FSU, to interact with so many diverse graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and to take advantage of the facilities available there allowed me to make significant progress on a new project – and those preliminary results have already led to two successful grant applications.
My previous work at CSU Chico was based on experiments I performed as a graduate student, but I was eager to initiate a new program. At FSU, since I didn’t have to worry about supervising any undergraduates, I was able to put in the time required to try out many different approaches towards my new research target. Now, alongside a junior, and courtesy of funding from the Research Corporation, the project is continuing and progress continues to be made.
My summer in Tallahassee was a fantastic chance to re-immerse myself into the culture of research. It has allowed me to start a new program, and without it I don’t believe I would have been successful in obtaining external support. If you are invited to participate in this program, I encourage you to do so: for me it was the ideal “kick-start” back into research."
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