Doctoral student awarded prestigious NSF fellowship

Madeleine Getz, an ASU School of Human Evolution and Social Change doctoral student was recently named a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program awardee. The program awards outstanding graduate students three years of financial support to conduct research. Getz was one of seven ASU students to receive the award and among 1,000 awardee’s nationwide.

Getz’s research broadly focuses on menopause and chronic disease risk. However, her particular passion is for researching the human aging process.

“As humans, we're kind of operating outside of our guaranteed warranty,” said Getz. “Many of us in the United States are living in these really industrialized environments, but we're operating with these stone age bodies. I think that as a broad framework, it’s such an interesting way of thinking of health and behavior and how everything is interconnected.”

After reading research about the Tsimane (pronounced “chee-mahn-eh") people conducted by Ben Trumble, an associate professor in ASU’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change and researcher in the Institute of Human Origins, Getz knew she wanted to pursue her doctoral degree at ASU.

“I read about the Tsimane Health and Life History Project and thought they did really great science and had a bunch of great people working on their project. Getting to work with Ben Trumble on this kind of project was huge in my decision to come to ASU,” said Getz.

The Tsimane are one of the last peoples on the planet to live a fully subsistence lifestyle of hunting, foraging and farming. They also have the healthiest arteries ever studied, and their brains age more slowly than those of people in North America and Europe according to research from Trumble.

“What’s great about doing research with the Tsimane people is that we are looking at health from a different perspective, not just from the perspective of an industrialized society,” said Getz.

The Tsimane are not the only thing unique about Getz’s research.

“Madeleine’s research focuses on the critical and yet understudied topic of menopause. If you do a Google Scholar search, you will find nearly four times as many scientific articles about coffee as there are about menopause. Despite being a lifestage that half the world's population will experience, there is not nearly enough research on the physiology and health impacts of menopause. Madeleine's research is going to help fill that research gap,” said Trumble.

In just eight months since joining Trumble’s research team, Getz has already published a peer reviewed scientific article, submitted a second article for review and presented at a scientific conference.

“She is on a stellar trajectory, and is going to be a bright start in the research world,” said Trumble.

Despite Trumble’s praise, Getz insists that her success is largely attributed to her support network.

“There are many people at ASU who are really invested in my success and my learning. It felt amazing to have this team behind me when applying for the GRFP. I feel very honored and also very privileged to be able to use that to grow science while exploring these great scientific questions about aging,” said Getz.