FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The Institute of International Education has awarded a Fulbright Scholars grant to Sittie Aisha Macabago, a graduate student at the University of Arkansas.

Macabago, a doctoral student in the Department of Biological Sciences in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, will use the $2,000 award to travel to Spain to study slime molds in the laboratory of Carlos Lado, a research scientist at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Madrid.

The supplemental grant recognizes outstanding Fulbright Scholars from Southeast Asia who have completed at least one year of study in the United States.

Macabago has conducted field research for three consecutive summers in her native Philippines to collect a certain group of slime molds known as myxomycetes. This year she collected myxomycetes on sites in the Calayan group of islands. Her project will fill in the gaps on the biodiversity studies of myxomycetes in the Philippines, lead to better understanding of their ecological distribution and strengthen their molecular phylogeny.

Lado is a longtime collaborator of Steve Stephenson, a research professor of biological sciences and Macabago’s dissertation adviser.

“I will immerse myself in the taxonomy of myxomycetes in Dr. Lado’s lab,” Macabago said. “I am extremely grateful that I was chosen for this award for the second consecutive year.”

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program in the U.S. Department of State is the federal government’s flagship international educational exchange program, offering opportunities for students, scholars and teachers to undertake international graduate study, advanced research, university teaching, and primary and secondary school teaching worldwide.

The Fulbright Program is named for J. William Fulbright, former U of A president and longtime U.S. senator who wrote the bill that created the program for the “promotion of international good will through the exchange of students in the fields of education, culture and science.”