Faculty Mentor of the Week Martin Nielsen College of Agriculture, Food & Environment, Equine
Dr. Martin Nielsen is an Associate Professor and Schlaikjer Professor in Equine Infectious Disease in the College of Agriculture, Food and Environment with research interests including equine parasitology, parasite control programs, and anthelmintic resistance. In the last year, Dr. Nielsen has mentored ten undergraduate students and four graduate students.
Dr. Nielsen is a dedicated supporter of undergraduate research and explained how mentoring adds value to his life, "Mentoring undergraduate students is one of the most rewarding activities in my work life. Hosting an undergraduate student is an opportunity to provide an experience that could be life-changing. Most of them come to me because they are curious about research and want to find out whether it might be something for them. We always need help with our many projects, so we provide some training in our laboratory methods and have the students start out working on some of those projects. After a while, many of them develop an interest in doing more and we encourage them to work on their own projects. I engage my graduate students in mentoring and supervising these students and help them develop a project idea. When we get to this point, it starts being really fun." He takes great pride in mentoring and developing undergraduate research students and aims to give them "an experience as a part of a research team, where people work together and help each other." Neilsen is proud of his undergraduate students' efforts, "Most of my undergraduate students have published their work in peer-reviewed research journals, and several have presented their work at scientific conferences. Needless to say that those are both tremendous achievements for undergraduate students. Whether they decide to pursue graduate studies or not, I consider such a research experience invaluable."
When looking for an undergraduate research mentee, Dr. Nielsen found that UK "is just full of smart, talented, hard-working and motivated young people, so I don't need to do much in terms of vetting or selecting the right students. That's our gold." Nielsen's passion for mentoring and research is tremendous. "In this day and age, there is no shortage of information available, and a lot of it is misrepresented, misinterpreted, and cherry-picked," he continued, "As a higher learning institution we should aim at educating our student to acquire and assess information in an unbiased manner. Research experience is key to achieve this."
Thank you Dr. Martin Nielsen for your support of undergraduate research! We greatly appreciate the outstanding mentoring Dr. Nielsen provides and the difference he is making for so many UK undergraduates.
Dr. Martin Nielsen - College of Agriculture, Food & Environment, Equine