Sam Herr

Sam graduated in 2022 with Honors as a Biology and Mathematics double major and a Statistics minor. His NSF fellowship will cover four years of graduate study at Cornell totaling $130,000. In Nottingham, he plans to study maize altruism in root structure (along with squash and beans) and create software that he will publicly publish to increase awareness and ease of research. This research could potentially affect a “significant leap in crop productivity” by helping make staple foods like maize more hardy and drought resistant. With his research, he will achieve a Masters of Research in Biosciences and provide a strong foundation for a Ph.D. in bioinformatics with a focus on plant breeding. Sam’s paper “PETRA: Drug Engineering via Rigidity Analysis” is published in the journal “Molecules,” and he also won first place at UCLA’s B.I.G. “Hackathon” in 2021, in addition to winning a four-year WA State Opportunity Scholarship.