CSUSM BIOLOGY PROFESSOR WINS $544,000 RESEARCH GRANT
Cal State San Marcos biology professor Diego Sustaita has received a $544,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, which he will use to study how an endangered mouse native to the San Francisco Bay area has adapted to survive in its wetlands environment.
The prestigious, five-year NSF grant is an Early Career Development (CAREER) award that is usually given to “early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.” The NSF hands out about 500 CAREER awards each year.
Sustaita, who joined the CSUSM faculty in 2016, is believed to be the university’s third biology professor to receive the CAREER award. Last year’s recipient was Arun Sethuraman, who has since left CSUSM to teach at San Diego State University. CSUSM biology professor George Vourlitis also earned the award in 2002.
“In my field, this is a unicorn award that nobody feels like they will ever receive, let alone deserve,” Sustaita said, in a statement. “I was extremely fortunate to receive it, and it means the world to me because it provides a sense of validation that maybe my crazy ideas aren’t so crazy after all.”
For his CAREER research project, Sustaita will study how the salt marsh harvest mouse has adapted to its environment in the San Francisco Bay estuary. He will also develop a new field research course for students over the five summers of the grant that will be centered on the ecology of the Suisun Marsh in Northern California. The students will learn marketable field and quantitative skills.
Sustaita said the research project will examine how the mice perform functions such as biting, climbing and swimming as they forage and move through their marsh habitat.
“For my research, I will have the means to ask and answer some burning questions about the ecology of this enigmatic little endangered rodent, as well as more fundamental questions about how organisms are built to do what they do in nature,” Sustaita said in the statement. “But what I’m most excited about is the ability to fund undergraduate and graduate students to participate in all aspects of the research.”
Sustaita has already begun initial work on the project. He and three CSUSM students recently returned from the Grizzly Island Wildlife Area in the Suisun Marsh, where they marked and measured three different species and used high-speed video cameras and other equipment to record species movement and behavior.