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Professor Alex Lalejini's passion for mentorship and research earns NSF Award to empower the next generation
August 29, 2024
Dr. Alex Lalejini, Assistant Professor in the College of Computing at Grand Valley State University, is committed to mentoring students and providing them opportunities to grow professionally and personally. During his undergraduate studies at Mississippi State, Dr. Cindy Bethel sparked that passion in him. Under her guidance, Lalejini worked in a social robotics lab, where he learned the value of connecting ideas between biology and computing. His interest in how computing can help us study evolutionary biology and how evolutionary biology can inspire new ways of solving computing problems grew even more during his doctoral studies at Michigan State University.
Lalejini’s passion for research and teaching earned him a U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) award in June for foundations of emerging technologies through interdisciplinary research. NSF funds about 28% of the research proposals that are submitted to them. Alongside colleagues Dr. Anya Vostinar from Carleton College and Dr. Emily Dolson from Michigan State University, their grant focuses on studying how different types of symbiotic relationships between species can affect how those species evolve together. Vostinar, Dolson, and Lalejini will use computer models to investigate six types of symbiotic relationships and their impact on evolution in different kinds of environments.They will then use their findings to improve how we harness microbial evolution in labs and to design new evolutionary algorithms for solving difficult computer problems, such as guiding robots through complex spaces, automatically analyzing medical data, or designing new scientific tools. As part of the grant funding, they'll mentor students to help them become the next generation of scientists in computing and biology.
With this NSF grant, Lalejini plans to hire undergraduate student researchers for five semesters. He hopes students have the same chance he had to be mentored and work on research that helps humanity. Lalejini said he “loves research and science, but gets more joy out of working with students and seeing their confidence grow.” Additionally, the NSF grant provides students opportunities to network and learn by attending conferences, writing and publishing research papers, and presenting their work.
Learn more about NSF and its opportunities it provides.
Article written by Shelby Harrison.