The Undergraduate Research Mentor of the Year award honors a faculty member who has shown outstanding commitment to mentoring undergraduate research students.
Gladys Alexandre
Gladys Alexandre, professor and associate head of the Department of Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology, is passionate about helping students build research careers. In her 12 years at UT she has mentored 52 undergraduates, giving them opportunities to be listed in peer-reviewed publications and sponsoring summer research fellowships and honors research grants. These students have gone on to receive MS degrees in microbiology and enter medical schools. Since 2014, she has been the principal investigator and director for the National Institutes of Health–funded Program for Excellence and Equity in Research, which seeks to increase the number of underrepresented students receiving PhDs in biomedical and behavioral sciences. She is a prolific writer and presenter whose work is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Science Alliance.