The CBE Graduate Peer Mentors are part of the Graduate Peer Mentoring Collaborative, an initiative supported by The Graduate School and four colleges at NC State. The Collaborative provides one-year fellowships to a small group of Ph.D. student leaders in each college, providing these students with opportunities to receive training in key skills for peer mentoring and to serve as mentors to their fellow graduate students.

Rewards	Responsibilities
Become a trained peer-mentor with a $1000 award for the academic year	Attend ~30 hours of virtual and in-person mentorship training
Make and strengthen connections with student within and across departments	Serve as your department’s or program’s peer mentor for the academic year
Contribute to the well-being of fellow graduate students	Meet informally with first-year Ph.D. students on a weekly or biweekly basis

Meet the 2026-27 CBE Grad Peer Mentors!

Syed Ahmed Jaseem

• 4th year Ph.D. student advised by Prof. Michael Dickey
• His research focuses on developing soft, stretchable energy-harvesting devices based on hydrogels and liquid metal particles for sustainable energy applications. By leveraging the unique properties of liquid metals including the sintering of liquid metal particle networks and electrical double-layer phenomena, he is designing variable-area energy harvesters with improved performance. The long-term goal of the work is to deploy these soft energy-harvesting systems for capturing ocean and wave energy, enabling scalable, sustainable and clean energy generation.
• Outside of the lab, he enjoys cooking and walking on nature trails!

Mara Alonso

• 3rd year Ph.D. student advised by Prof. Gregory Parsons
• She works with metal-organic frameworks, a class of materials known for their surface area and crystallinity. She uses MOFs for catalytic degradation of toxic organophosphates. She explores various areas within MOF research: using gelatin strategies to make robust MOF macrostructures, developing MOF thin films, and integrating multivariate MOFs for simultaneous sensing and degradation of toxic chemicals.
• Outside of the lab, she loves reading, watching movies, painting with oil pastels and staying active!

Kerri Corcoran

• 2nd year Ph.D student advised by Profs. Cristiana Boi and Ruben Carbonell
• Her research focuses on the use of novel, functionalized nonwoven membranes to purify therapeutic proteins, ultimately lowering manufacturing costs, accelerating run rates and increasing productivity. In her current research, she is leveraging proteomics to provide insights to the development of an all-membrane downstream process for MAM01, a mAb against malaria.
• Outside of the lab, she loves spending time with her two pet bunnies and staying active!