2 Worcester College Students Earn Awards For Research In Brazil, Poland

WORCESTER, MA — Two Worcester students who will receive degrees this month have earned prestigious Fulbright Awards to support international research projects in Brazil and Poland.

Clark University Master's student Rowan Compton and undergraduate student Kaya Banka were selected for the nationally competitive program, which funds research, study and cultural exchange opportunities abroad.

Compton received a Fulbright award to conduct cultural and geospatial research focused on large-scale agricultural expansion in Northeastern Brazil during the 2026–2027 academic year.

At Clark, Compton worked on a NASA-funded research project led by geography professors Gustavo Oliveira and Robert Gil Pontius Jr. examining irrigation expansion in Brazil’s Cerrado biome, a tropical savanna region in Western Bahia. He also spent time at the Federal University of Goias in Brazil, where he worked with the university’s Image and Geoprocessing Laboratory mapping pastures and Cerrado landscapes.

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In 2024, Compton earned funding through the Steinbrecher Fellowship Program to study land use and water scarcity in the Cerrado at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute. He also collaborated with the Brazilian GIS network MapBiomas, an open-science initiative focused on land-change mapping.

Compton said his interest in Brazil grew out of time spent living in Portugal during high school and a lifelong interest in maps and environmental research.

Since earning his bachelor’s degree in geography in 2025, Compton has continued at Clark through the university’s 4+1 Accelerated Master’s Degree program in geographic information science.

“I could not be happier with my time at Clark,” Compton wrote in a LinkedIn post. “This is my absolute dream school and one of the top schools in the world in the field.”

After completing his Fulbright research, Compton plans to pursue a Ph.D. in geography at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Banka received a Fulbright award to Poland for her research project, “Immune health assessment in female mice following pregnancies obtained by embryo transfer.”

Her work will examine how embryo transfer procedures affect surrogate mothers, particularly the immune responses triggered by non-self embryos.

Banka will conduct research at the Ptak Lab at Jagiellonian University in Krakow under the supervision of Dr. Grazyna Ewa Ptak and doctoral student Richard Musson. She also plans to volunteer at Jagiellonian University Hospital and participate in cultural activities while abroad.

“I am very excited to contribute to research in an understudied field, while also engaging in meaningful cross-cultural exchange between Poland and the United States,” Banka said.

At Clark, Banka worked as an undergraduate research assistant in the Meyer Lab studying developmental biology. She also completed an internship at the Andalusian Center for Developmental Biology in Seville, Spain, where she researched zebrafish development.

Her research and internship experiences were supported through programs including a ClarkCONNECT summer internship, a Plave Family Research Fellowship and the Dr. Kenneth A. Senter ’43 Endowed Award for Premed Undergraduates.

Banka, who majors in biochemistry and molecular biology with a minor in environmental science, plans to return to the United States and work as a physician supporting Polish immigrant communities.

“The Fulbright Program is among the most prestigious postgraduate awards that a student can win,” said Steven Moon, Clark’s director of special academic opportunities. “Rowan and Kaya embody the excellence that this fellowship demands and show that Clark graduates are among the very best in the country.”

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