Sponsored by the Office of the Vice President for Research, the SPARC Graduate Research Grant is a merit-based award designed to ignite research and creative excellence across all disciplines at UofSC. The overall objective of the SPARC Graduate Research Grant is to provide support and to encourage outstanding students to pursue exciting research directions during their graduate career at the University of South Carolina.

Louis Berrios (Ely lab) was awarded a SPARC grant for his project entitled "Investigating the genetic factors required for Caulobacter-mediated plant growth enhancement." Allison Culver (Davis lab) was awarded a SPARC grant for her project aiming at "Elucidating the role Fgf8 and Fgf10 in the development of human pituitary progenitors". Logan Schuck (Stewart lab) was awarded a SPARC grant for his project focused on"Elucidating the Binding Affinities Between CST and RPA on G-quadruplexes". Finally, Chad Simmons (Armstrong lab) was awarded a SPARC grant for his project entitled "Developmental Adipokines and their Role in Adipocyte Morphology and Stem Cell Signaling Pathways in Adult Drosophila melanogaster". Congrats to all of them!