Brown graduate student Kevin Nguyen earned a competitive national fellowship from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to support his research aimed at building healthier and more equitable communities. Growing up a first-generation Vietnamese-American child of Vietnamese refugees, Kevin Nguyen says he interacted with the complexities of the U.S. health care system from a young age. From as early as his middle school years, he assisted his family, particularly his grandparents, with everything from scheduling doctor’s appointments to corresponding with insurance companies. Read more.

As part of Brain Week R.I., Brown students and faculty are bringing brain science to local high schools, planning the University’s annual Brain Fair and much more. That is Alastair Tulloch’s favorite brain fact. Tulloch is a doctoral candidate studying neuroscience at Brown University — and through the annual Brain Week Rhode Island celebration, he has worked for the past four years to make brain science insights like that one accessible to people across the state. Read more.

The fungus Candida albicans is found in the gastrointestinal tract of about half of healthy adults with little if any effect, yet it also causes an oft-fatal blood infection among patients with compromised immune systems, including those with HIV/AIDS. New research helps show how this fungus gets the flexibility to live in these vastly different environments. The researchers, including Shen-Huan Liang, a pathobiology Ph.D. student, found that patient samples of the fungus frequently lack one copy of a gene that serves as a vital master regulator. In the lab, these cells can regularly switch to having a different set of traits, or phenotype, by losing the other copy. Read more.

Students in a planetary science course at Brown (14 graduate and a few undergraduates) are helping a private space company plan a Moon mission, a collaborative effort that has caught the eyes of top NASA officials. In consultation with OrbitBeyond engineers and using the technical specs for ECA, the students spent last semester devising a design reference mission — a detailed template for what the real mission might ultimately look like. The group scoped out landing sites, planned possible rover traverses and delivered their recommendations to OrbitBeyond. “Being involved at this stage in our careers with an actual mission that’s going to fly is an experience I don't think we could get elsewhere,” said Ph.D. student Ashley Palumbo, one of the leaders of the project. “It’s just a great opportunity.” Read more.