“I am flooded with gratitude to have Fulbright support me in this opportunity to do something I love so much,” said Freibott, who received a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant award.
I’m lucky to get this opportunity and have a platform to show my work and contribute more.” Lu conducts research into computational mathematical biology with mentor Nikos Voulgarakis.
Freibott said she cultivated a love of language and learning from childhood years spent in her parents’ bookstore.
“I found my own voice by studying English, and I want to help others find theirs,” said the Honors College alumna.
With Hungarian ties from her maternal great-grandmother, Freibott will take her own family on her Fulbright adventure.
With her Fulbright, she said, she will be able to explore the sampling side of those algorithms as well as the Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods working with faculty mentor Istvan Mikos at Budapest’s Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics.
She could apply her findings to genome rearrangements that result in large-scale mutations including gene loss, duplications, or acquisitions which can help explain evolutionary processes.
In addition to her math major and physics minor, she will also graduate with a minor in music.
Lu has two publications in process related to her research with Voulgarakis—first author on one, second on the other.
As part of their preparation to apply for the Fulbright, said Seehafer, both Freibott and Lu received funding from the WSU Distinguished Scholarship Opportunity Fund.