Newsletter (Dec 2024): Apply for 2025 Alumni Grants and Awards!
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SSMN Quarterly Newsletter | December 2024
In this quarter’s newsletter:
- Announcing 2025 SSMN Grants & Awards opportunities! 🏆
- Upcoming Events
- SSMN Grantee Spotlights: Dr. Moses Leavens & Dr. Diana Sanchez Rivera 🔎
- Career Opportunities
- SSMN’s Year in Focus: A Look Back at 2024 ⏮️
- Sloan Scholar Highlights 🌟
Announcing the 2025 SSMN Grants & Awards Opportunities!
The SSMN is pleased to open the application period for 2025 Grants and Awards. Read on to learn about these two annual programs, and note their distinct application deadlines and requirements.
SSMN Grants
Applications accepted through March 14, 2025
The SSMN's annual grants program is designed to support the research, career, and professional development of all Sloan Scholar Legacy, UCEM, and SIGP graduates across career fields.
SSMN Grants are once again available in three categories:
- Research Seed Grant (up to $10,000)
- Career Development Grant (up to $5,000)
- Conference Travel Grant (up to $2,500)
All Sloan Scholar alumni, including Legacy, UCEM, and SIGP graduates (M.S. and PhD), are eligible to apply. Applicants do not need to hold an academic position. Find complete guidance and application instructions on the Grants page of our website.
SSMN Awards
Applications accepted through April 13, 2025
The SSMN Awards recognize the dedication, impact, and accomplishments of exemplary Sloan Scholar alumni in five categories:
- Professional of the Year
- Higher Education Professional of the Year
- Early Career Excellence Award
- Excellence in Community Engagement Award
- Outstanding Mentor Award
Read more about each award category on our website.
All Sloan Scholar alumni, including Legacy, UCEM, and SIGP graduates (M.S. and PhD), are eligible and encouraged to apply for awards. You can also nominate fellow Sloan Scholar alumni until March 14, 2025, by writing to Veronica Zepeda, SSMN Program Director, at [email protected].
Upcoming Events
💻 SSMN Grants Informational Webinar — Register here!
Thursday, January 30, 2025, 3:00–4:15 p.m. EST on Zoom
If you’re interested in learning more about SSMN Grants, bring your questions and join us for an informational webinar on Thursday, January 30. We'll go over what makes a strong application, what to expect if your application is successful, and how recent SSMN Grantees have utilized the grants program to bolster their careers and service goals. Register here to attend.
Pilot Program: Alumni-Scholar Matching
In 2025, the SSMN will develop a pilot design for an alumni-scholar matching program, pairing current and graduated Sloan Scholars for one-on-one informational interviews. The SSMN will seek a handful of alumni volunteers to help us pilot this program later this year and provide feedback. If you'd like to express interest in being part of the pilot, send us an email at [email protected]!
SSMN Evaluation Update: Look out for the Alumni Questionnaire
As some of you know, the SSMN is pleased to be working with researchers from Higher Ed Insight (HEI) in 2024 and 2025 to develop a comprehensive review and analysis of the SSMN program: what we currently offer, how it aligns with the needs and expectations of alumni, and where the SSMN should focus its resources in the future.
Gathering insights directly from you is a key component of this exciting project. In the new year, we’ll be distributing a questionnaire to Sloan Scholar graduates (all 1,800 of you!) to better understand how you value and engage with SSMN programming. Look out for that in early 2025! We hope you'll participate.
SSMN Grantee Spotlights:
Dr. Moses Leavens and Dr. Diana Sanchez Rivera
Dr. Moses Leavens is an assistant professor at the McLaughlin Research Institute, in his home city of Great Falls, MT. He earned his M.S. and PhD from the University of Montana as a Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership (SIGP) Scholar. In our Grantee Spotlight, Dr. Leavens talks about his path after college, his current research, and why the SSMN Seed Grant was an important milestone for his lab. Continue reading >>
Dr. Diana Sanchez Rivera is an applied chemist and teaching professional at the University of Puerto Rico, Ponce. She earned her PhD from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, as a Sloan Scholar. In our grantee spotlight, she describes how her SSMN Seed Grant helped her retain students, expand research capacity, and collaborate with colleagues. Continue reading >>
Career Opportunities
Postdoc positions in STEM education research: Cornell University is accepting applications for three Cornell InterDisciplinary Education Research (CIDER) postdoc positions in discipline-based education research. CIDER postdocs will work with at least two research mentors who span disciplines; have the opportunity to conduct their research in multiple contexts to strengthen findings and impact; and engage in professional development programs. Applicants may be PhD-holders in any STEM field. Application reviews will start in January 2025 and positions will begin in summer 2025. Read the full job description and apply here. Find FAQs and examples of potential research questions here.
SSMN’s Year in Focus: A Look Back at 2024 ⏮️
2024 was a full year for the SSMN program, one marked by community, connections, and collaboration as we continue to support our growing network of Sloan Scholars and advance equity in STEM. Here are a few of our favorite events and milestones from this year:
Scholars and alumni gathered in Tucson for the first-ever SIGP Symposium, under the theme of "Weaving Together STEM, Community and Culture." Thanks to its success and all the interest from SIGP Scholars, plans are underway for the next biennial SIGP Symposium in 2026!
On the SSMN Career Panel at the Illinois Sloan UCEM Conference, alumni panelists Alexzandria Tiffany, Michael Santiago, Chris Dancy, and Dorcas Kaweesa spoke to current UIUC Sloan Scholars about their respective career paths in academic administration, small business, and university and government research.
22 alumni participated in the reimagined SSMN Boot Camp, meeting and building community over several weeks this fall before gathering in New Orleans for a full day of pre-conference programs at the Institute on Teaching and Mentoring.
Also at the Institute this year, we had the honor of officially recognizing the 2024 SSMN Award recipients before an audience of Sloan Scholar peers. If you haven’t already read about the six outstanding awardees, check them out and consider submitting your own application for the 2025 SSMN Awards.
In the spring and fall, we connected with scholars and alumni for networking events in Atlanta (at NSBE), Boston, and San Antonio (at AISES). Folks also represented the Sloan Scholar community at SACNAS, ACS, AGU, Wildlife and Fisheries, and beyond!
In between these events were countless wonderful connections with scholars, alumni, and colleagues that continually remind us how special this community is. Much more has been cooking behind the scenes, and we can't wait to kick off 2025!
Scholar Highlights
Olukemi Akintewe (USF '15), a 2022 SSMN Career Development Grant recipient, was awarded an NSF Research Initiation in Engineering Formation (PFE: RIEF) grant to investigate the impact of mentorship structures on women’s persistence in engineering. She was also selected for the American Institute for Medical and Biomedical Engineering’s (AIMBE) inaugural class of Emerging Leaders.
David Brown (Georgia Tech ’19) started as an assistant professor at the University of Virginia this fall.
Steven Ceron (Cornell ’22) will join the University of Michigan as an assistant professor of robotics in January of 2025.
Karla Fuller (Purdue ’06) was promoted to Interim Dean of Faculty and Academic Affairs at the City University of New York’s Guttman Community College. She also received an NIH grant to broaden access to computational genomic data science at her institution.
Cody Gonzalez (Penn State ’21) and students in his Design of Actuators Robotics & Transducers (DART) Lab at UT San Antonio recently won a $449,000 grant to develop a new type of actuator that will power itself. Cody is a 2024 SSMN Research Seed Grant recipient and received SSMN Grants for career development and conference travel in 2023.
Korie Grayson (Cornell ’20) was selected for the inaugural cohort of Science for Development Fellows at USAID.
Illya Hicks (Rice ’00) was awarded the NSF-sponsored Blackwell-Tapia Prize, recognizing his contributions to applied mathematics, particularly in combinatorial optimization, and for promoting diversity in STEM through outreach and mentorship efforts.
Chandra Jack (Rice ’12) was featured on the Clark University podcast speaking about her lab's research on the impacts of microbial interactions on plant health.
Melanie McReynolds (Penn State ’17) and her team recently published research in Science on the use of IDO1 inhibitors to modulate glucose metabolism, with promising implications for restoring cognition in subjects with neurodegenerative disorders.
Joscelyn Mejias (Georgia Tech ’19) will join Georgia Tech as an assistant professor of biomedical engineering in April of 2025.
Edikan Ogunnaike (USF ’15), a 2019 SSMN Career Development Grantee, started as an assistant professor at Georgia Tech this fall in the department of biomedical engineering.
Daniel Oropeza (MIT ’21) will receive the 2025 Global Young Investigator Award from ACerS and was selected as the 2024 recipient of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Early Career UC Faculty Initiative grant to advance his lab's work on metal powder atomization. Dan received an SSMN Research Seed Grant in 2023 and Conference Travel Grant in 2024.
Erica Pratt (Cornell ’15) was named a 2024 Rita Allen Foundation Scholar and awarded a five-year grant to support her work to develop enabling technologies for ultra-sensitive multiplexed profiling of liquid biopsies for cancer monitoring and precision medicine.
Kamuela Yong (U of Iowa ’12) was featured on the Ancestral Science podcast, where he discusses Traditional Pacific Wayfinding (or voyaging) through relational trigonometry of stars, swells, and spirits.
If you enjoy reading these highlights, your fellow Sloan Scholars want to read about you, too! Send us a note at [email protected] when you have news, or tag us in your LinkedIn and Twitter posts.