By: Tiffany Acosta
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Jessica Houston, a New Mexico State University Chemical and Materials Engineering associate professor, has received a Fulbright Faculty Fellowship award. The United States Department of State-sponsored award will fund a trip to Japan.
“Dr. Houston is well deserving of the Fulbright Faculty Fellowship,” said Lakshmi Reddi, College of Engineering dean. “She established her value as a faculty member early on with a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and continues to be one of our strongest faculty members. She contributes heavily to the college and her department as a teacher, instructor and leader.”
Houston’s research focuses on cytometry instrumentation development. She said she hopes to spend six months in Japan. Houston will visit Saitama University, located in a suburb of northern Tokyo, and work alongside Miho Suzuki, a biochemist. The pair has collaborated for several years, and Suzuki has even visited NMSU and worked with Houston and her students.
“My plan is to immerse myself in the university environment and work with Miho and go into the labs and interact with students and understand what research is happening there and to also explore the surrounding community and maybe travel throughout Japan,” said Houston, who is planning on her husband, Kevin Houston, a chemistry and biochemistry associate professor, and their three children accompanying her.
“Japan is an interesting place for me to visit, from my research prospective because, that’s where a lot of new technologies in flow cytometry emerge,” she said. “There’s a lot of technology that comes out of Japan especially in imaging.”
Houston hasn’t determined her dates of travel yet, but the award has a start date between July 1, 2018 through July 1, 2019.
