Montana State’s Pilar Santos earns one of the nation’s top graduate student fellowships

BOZEMAN - A recent graduate of Montana State University's Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology will continue environmental research begun during her undergraduate career with the support of a prestigious fellowship from the National Science Foundation.

Pilar Santos received an award through the NSF's Graduate Research Fellowship Program, which is designed to support graduate students in broad array of scientific programs. Founded in 1951, it is one of the oldest graduate fellowship programs in the nation.

Santos, who is originally from Helena, finished her undergraduate studies in environmental health in December 2023, graduating a semester early. She was encouraged to apply for the GRFP by her adviser, Mari Eggers, an associate research professor in the College of Agriculture's Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology.

"Getting this fellowship helped a lot with getting to choose where I wanted to go to graduate school," said Santos, who will continue her studies at the University of Washington. "I was struggling to find funding, and this gave me an extra push and opened up a lot of new opportunities."

The NSF fellowship provides $16,000 in tuition assistance for each of the next three years, along with an annual stipend of $37,000 to support Santos' research. She said the fellowship has not only allowed her to broaden her view of where to study but also opened the possibility of pursuing a doctorate rather than her initial plan of a master's degree.

Her graduate work will perpetuate the research experience Santos began during her second year at MSU. Having never considered research, she took Eggers' environmental health course and a spark ignited.

"I realized this is what I want to do," she recalled. "I started research in that first class I took, looking at watershed contamination. I really liked that, so I got into her lab."

Her first research project explored water contamination in Montana with a focus on heavy metals and contaminants associated with mining, work that earned her first place in a national student research competition held by the National Environmental Health Association. She went on to present that project at the NEHA annual conference, and the following year received one of the organization's two major undergraduate scholarships.

Drawn by a later class she took in toxicology, Santos continued conducting research with associate professor Deborah Keil, associate professor Frank Stewart, assistant research professor Zoe Pratte and doctoral student Maria Rodriguez. She continued exploring water quality, looking at how pharmaceuticals end up in waterways and impacts on surrounding fish populations. Her breadth of inquiry and dedication to undergraduate research earned her the College of Agriculture's outstanding undergraduate award for research during the Fall 2023 semester.

"Pilar consistently does stellar work and is an independent thinker, thoughtful and insightful," said Eggers. "She is brilliant and hardworking, curious about and committed to environmental health and toxicology, an excellent writer and a thoughtful and personable team player. She will undoubtedly go on to make a difference in the field of environmental health."

Santos said environmental health enticed her because of its direct applications and implications for human health in local communities. In 2022, she experienced some of those applications firsthand through an internship with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, exploring how underground storage tanks prevent dangerous substances from leaching into surrounding soil and water.

Ultimately, she said, she hopes to continue working on water-related research. But - as she's already experienced - she's prepared to be swayed by the possibilities afforded through the NSF fellowship.

"I'm hoping I can continue with water research but with a shift toward how it affects other ecosystems," she said. "I love environmental toxicology as a field. I really want to get into that. Right now, I'm along for the ride and seeing where it takes me."

Santos said one of the things that initially drew her to MSU was its proximity to Helena. She said she's looking forward to going farther afield to continue her studies but said the network she has built at MSU has been the highlight of her undergraduate experience in her home state. Conducting scientific research contributed to a large portion of that web.

"Getting into research just kind of happened. And then I got into it and it was so much fun," she said. "You're able to do a lot and feel like you've contributed to something larger. Building connections with these professors who have larger connections of their own, you're really building a community."