Projects include research on GIS in Northeastern Brazil and maternal immune regulation in Poland
Two Clark students who will receive degrees at the May 18 Commencement exercises have been recognized with Fulbright Awards to support their research and travel abroad.
Rowan Compton ’25, M.S. ’26, has been awarded a Fulbright to conduct cultural and geospatial research examining large-scale agricultural expansion in Northeastern Brazil, and Kaya Banka ’26 received a Fulbright to research how pregnancy surrogates are affected by the embryo transfer process.
Compton will travel to Brazil and conduct fieldwork during the 2026–2027 academic year.
Throughout his years at Clark, he worked on a NASA-funded research project, led by geography professors Gustavo Oliveira and Robert Gil Pontius Jr., that examined irrigation expansion and pivots in the Cerrado biome, a Brazilian savanna in Western Bahia, about nine hours from Goiânia. Compton spent a portion of his time in Goiânia with the Image and Geoprocessing Laboratory (Labratório de Processamento de Imagens e Geoprocessamento, or LAPIG) at the Federal University of Goiás, Brazil, mapping pastures and the Cerrado under Ana Paula Matos, a post-doctorate researcher at LAPIG.
The Graduate School of Geography is part of Clark’s School of Climate, Environment, and Society.
In 2024, Compton received funding from the Steinbrecher Fellowship Program to study land use and water scarcity in the Cerrado at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute. He also worked with the Brazilian GIS network MapBiomas, the world’s largest open-science collaboration making land-change maps, as well as with local English teachers.
Compton’s desire to study in Brazil stemmed from his experience living in Portugal while in high school. His career plans are steered by a life-long passion for maps and the environment.
Since receiving his bachelor’s degree in geography in May 2025, Compton has been working toward his master’s in geographic information science (GIS) through Clark’s 4+1 Accelerated Master’s Degree program. He plans to pursue his Ph.D. in geography at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“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. I cannot wait to begin this next journey and am very grateful to everyone who has helped me get to this point.”
Banka received a Fulbright award to Poland to fund her research, “Immune health assessment in female mice following pregnancies obtained by embryo transfer.” The project studies the effect of non-self-embryo (the embryo taken from another female) on the health of the surrogate mother, particularly the immune response caused by this medical intervention.
Banka will carry out her research at the Ptak Lab at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, under the supervision of Dr. Grazyna Ewa Ptak and Ph.D. student Richard Musson. She also plans to volunteer at the Jagiellonian University Hospital to expand her fluency in medical terminology and to learn about the culture through dance.
“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,” she said. “My work will also advance knowledge in reproductive technologies and life-long health, which is crucial to public health priorities in both the U.S. and Poland and can help improve healthcare practices in both countries.”
During her time at Clark, Banka has worked as an undergraduate research assistant in the Meyer Lab, studying the development of the ventral midline in the annelid Capitella teleta. She also completed an internship at the Andalusian Center for Developmental Biology in Seville, Spain, where she investigated zygotic genome activation in zebrafish.
Banka’s experiential learning opportunities were made possible, supported, or recognized by a ClarkCONNECT summer internship, a Plave Family Research Fellowship, an Experiential Learning Award, and the Dr. Kenneth A. Senter ’43 Endowed Award for Premed Undergraduates.
Banka, who is majoring in biochemistry and molecular biology with a minor in environmental science, ultimately plans to return to the U.S. to support Polish immigrant communities as a medical physician.
“The Fulbright Program is among the most prestigious postgraduate awards that a student can win. Rowan and Kaya embody the excellence that this fellowship demands and show that Clark graduates are among the very best in the country,” said Steven Moon, director of special academic opportunities. “Our university offers an experiential education that prepares students like Rowan and Kaya to immediately take on advanced research projects, and that is not common amongst the national applicant pool.”
