Three student-adviser pairs from Stanford will be named to the 2024 Gilliam Fellowship cohort, an achievement that highlights the university’s efforts to promote inclusion in science and elevate strong adviser-advisee relationships. 

The Gilliam Fellowships, which are awarded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, recognize PhD students in the biomedical and life sciences and their faculty advisers for outstanding research and a commitment to advancing equity and inclusion in science. Each fellowship comes with $53,000 per year for up to three years and includes a year of mentorship training for faculty and funding for community engagement projects.

Stanford’s winning researchers are María H. T. Nguyễn, biology, and Florentine Rutaganira, assistant professor of biochemistry and of developmental biology; Azalia Martínez Jaimes, developmental biology, and Kristy Red-Horse, professor of biology; and Adonis Rubio, immunology, and Christopher O. Barnes, assistant professor of biology. 

“I’m so happy to see these three accomplished pairs honored with this prestigious award,” said Stacey F. Bent, vice provost for graduate education and postdoctoral affairs. “It embodies the values that we hold dear at Stanford with its emphasis not only on fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion in science but also the critical importance of mentoring in accomplishing that goal. The training provided for faculty mentors [by the fellowship] recognizes that even the most committed and accomplished faculty always have more to learn about this all-important topic.”

According to recipient Barnes, having three research pairs from one institution win Gilliam Fellowships is unusual. 

“It points to Stanford’s academic and research excellence, but also the recruitment of individuals that care about these types of relationships and try to promote equitable and inclusive environments in our labs,” he said. 

Joining an uplifting community 

Stanford’s fellows said they appreciated the community aspect of the fellowship and the program’s focus on equity and inclusion. 

“What drew me is this community: being surrounded by other like-minded individuals, people – primarily people of color – who have had similar experiences,” said Rubio, whose research focuses on ways to advance antiviral therapeutics and vaccine platforms.

Nguyễn, whose research seeks to understand the molecular foundations that underlie multicellular biology added, “A lot of effort has been put into the recruitment of students in science, but a lot less emphasis has been put into the retention of scientists in research. That involves making sure that the environment that scientists do their research in is inclusive, equitable, and diverse – because I think that’s what’s required to do good science.” 

Faculty mentoring 

The fellows’ advisers also join a community, participating in a year-long course on mentoring skills. 

“A nice aspect of this award will be creating faculty networks to discuss the approaches that we’re learning in the mentorship development course,” Rutaganira said. 

Strengthening adviser-advisee relationships is always important – but it is especially so for students from marginalized communities, Red-Horse said. “I think the greatest thing is going to be having a community of everyone dealing with the same type of issues to help us all do a better job.” 

Strengthening relationships 

PhD students and their advisers fill out a joint application for the Gilliam Fellowship, underscoring the importance of their partnership. And Stanford’s fellows said they had seen this dedication to mentorship and open communication from their advisers even before receiving the fellowship.

“There are sections that talk about how we deal with communication, and if there are any issues, what plan do we have in place to address them? So we had to discuss – which was good and probably also part of their intention with this question – how do you deal with conflict?” Martínez Jaimes said.

For Rubio, supportive mentoring was one of the keys to choosing Barnes as his adviser. 

“I could see myself thriving in his lab,” Rubio said. “I ended up going to him first because of his research interests, which aligned with what I wanted to do. But I stayed with him because of his mentorship style. So I think it’s great that was recognized when we got awarded this fellowship.” 

Community engagement 

One distinctive element of the Gilliam Fellowship is money to support a community engagement project. Projects under consideration by Stanford’s adviser-advisee pairs include outreach to local schools, working with Stanford’s Graduate School of Education on inclusive curriculum development, supporting Stanford’s Indigenous Scientist Lunch Club, and creating a community for Latin American women in STEM.

Martínez Jaimes said her primary goal for the funding is to work with undocumented students at Stanford.

“I’m undocumented myself, and when I came here, I thought there were very few of us,” Martínez Jaimes said. “I want us to have a space where we can share resources and have community.”

Barnes said this funding is important not just because of the practical impact of the money, but because of the message it sends to those doing this work. 

“I really appreciate the Gilliam Fellowship because it provides a way to help support people who are actively trying to make spaces of belonging and inclusion on their campuses,” Barnes said.