Two students affiliated with the Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences recently were awarded the highly competitive National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Lyle Nelson, a graduate student with Prof. Emmy Smith, is a geologist working on understanding the transition between the early complex life forms of the Ediacaran period and those of the ensuing Cambrian period, during which we start to be able to differentiate the many lineages leading to modern animals. A graduate of Harvard University, Lyle joined the department in January of 2018. Junellie Gonzalez Quiles is a mineral physicist currently working as a research assistant in Prof. June Wicks’ lab. Junellie’s interests lie in understanding how minerals behave in the high-temperature, high-pressure conditions that can be found in planetary interiors. A graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park, Junellie will be deferring her fellowship for one year, starting at Johns Hopkins in the Fall of 2020. Congratulations to both Lyle and Junellie!