Medina Adds Fulbright Award to List of Honors

Mónica Medina, a professor in the School of Natural Sciences at the University of California, Merced, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to conduct research at the Observatoire Océanologique de Banyuls research station in France during the 2012-13 academic year.

Medina’s award was presented by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board’s Franco-American Commission, which aims to develop understanding between France and the U.S. through educational and cultural exchanges.

The commission grants only about five such awards per year. The award will allow Medina to continue her studies into the evolution of symbiotic lifestyles in marine algae — that is, algae that share a codependent relationship with tropical coral reefs.

Medina also earned the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award in 2007, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2008, and the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011.