Monday, October 01, 2001

Wilmington, NC – Susanna Holst, daughter of Agnes and Barry Holst of 1488 Old Skippack Road, Harleysville, Penn. and a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, has been awarded a ‘Science to Achieve Results’ (STAR) Graduate Research Fellowship by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Prior to enrolling at UNCW, she received a Bachelor of Science in Marine Biology from James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, and worked at the National Undersea Research Center at Key Largo, Fla., which is administered by UNCW’s Center for Marine Science.

Ms. Holst is the first UNCW student to receive the prestigious STAR award. Her impressive two-year fellowship provides $12,000 for tuition, $5,000 for books and research, and a $17,000 stipend per year.

“I am very honored to receive this award and would like to thank the STAR program for their generous support of my thesis research,” she said.

Ms. Holst is pursuing a Master of Science degree at UNCW. Her research will examine the growth capacity of juvenile black sea bass and southern flounder, two species of fish that represent promising candidates for mariculture. “In collaboration with Dr. Tom Lankford, thesis advisor, and Dr. Wade Watanabe, coordinator for UNCW Mariculture Program, I will develop strategic feeding regimes designed to maximize the growth rate and yield of these species under mariculture conditions,” she said.

Ms. Holst will exploit an intriguing physiological phenomenon called ‘compensatory growth,’ which refers to the tendency or fishes and other organisms to accelerate their growth rate following periods of food deprivation.

“By manipulating ration, I hope to elicit compensatory growth responses that can be sustained for extended periods, thereby minimizing the time required to raise these fishes to marketable size,” she said.

The U.S. EPA awards STAR Graduate Fellowships annually to 100 students nationwide who are seeking masters or doctoral degrees in scientific fields.