Nardine Abadeer is one of three University of Illinois doctoral students who won Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide awards from the National Science Foundation. The other two are Evgueni Filipov and Andrew Mock, civil engineering, all of whom also are fellows in the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship program.

The GROW program, which began this year, is a partnership between NSF and select international funding agencies that allows current NSF fellows to conduct extended research overseas. Participating countries are Denmark, Finland, France, Japan, Korea, Norway, Singapore and Sweden. GROW provides recipients $5,000 to cover travel and research costs; host countries contribute allowances for living expenses.

Abadeer, of Wausau, Wis., will spend four months in Gothenborg, Sweden, working with professor Mikael Kall in the department of applied physics at the Chalmers University of Technology. Abadeer’s project explores the use of nanotechnology to disable certain pathogenic bacteria. She hopes to develop a novel strategy for targeting and destroying bacterial biofilms, which are communities of bacteria known to be highly antibiotic resistant. Because biofilms are difficult to target, Abadeer will use specialized technologies developed by Kall to determine how to target gold nanorods to bacterial cells. If the targeted gold nanorods succeed in destroying the cells’ biofilms, Abadeer’s research will contribute to the development of the next generation of antibacterial treatments.

Ken Vickery, the director of external fellowships in the U. of I. Graduate College, said: “An international experience can add a vital facet to a student’s graduate education, so it’s great that NSF is fostering these overseas research opportunities through the GROW program. With science becoming increasingly borderless, it’s important for graduate students to cultivate a global sensibility and start building their own international networks, and GROW is helping students do just that.”

Reposted from the U. of I. News Bureau.

Adapted from Grad College website; full information available by clicking here