Dean’s Award for Exceptional Achievement recognizes graduate students

By Lorena Infante Lara

Thanks to their high academic and scientific achievement, 11 graduate students have been presented with the Dean’s Award for Exceptional Achievement in Graduate Studies. Recipients are recognized for the originality, significance and rigor of their dissertation research.

The awardees were selected by a committee made up of the directors of graduate studies for each of the Ph.D.-granting programs in the School of Medicine and was chaired by Bruce Carter, professor of biochemistry. Each awardee will receive $5,000 in stipend support for each of the next two years.

“The bar for the Dean’s Award for Exceptional Achievement is getting higher each year,” said Larry Marnett, dean of Basic Sciences and Mary Geddes Stahlman Chair in Cancer Research. “This year’s awards were very competitive with a large number of talented students nominated.”

The awardees, their programs and mentors are:

• Catherine Shelton, Microbe-Host Interactions. Advised by Mariana Byndloss.
• Cody Heiser, Chemical and Physical Biology. Advised by Ken Lau.
• Elaine Chen, Microbe-Host Interactions. Advised by Dr. James Crowe.
• Gabriella Robertson, Cell and Developmental Biology. Advised by Vivian Gama.
• Ivette Perez, Biochemistry. Advised by Tina Iverson.
• Jennifer Zachry, Pharmacology. Advised by Erin Calipari.
• Kritika Singh, Human Genetics. Advised by Lea Davis.
• Mary Chalkley, Cell and Developmental Biology. Advised by Rebecca Ihrie and Dr. Kevin Ess.
• Melissa Wolf, Cancer Biology. Advised by Dr. Kim Rathmell.
• Patrick Melugin, Neuroscience. Advised by Cody Siciliano.
• Wendy Bindeman, Cancer Biology. Advised by Barbara Fingleton.

“I am very pleased to be able to recognize these students’ accomplishments and I’m especially grateful to Bruce Carter and the selection committee for a great job identifying the recipients,” said Marnett.

All students in Ph.D. programs tied to the School of Medicine are eligible for nomination, including students working on the Ph.D. portion of the Medical Scientist Training Program, the School of Medicine’s M.D./Ph.D. program.

Recipients are selected based on research excellence, evidenced by fellowship awards, publications, and presentations at conferences. The awardees demonstrate a mastery of their disciplines through a track record of high achievement in their classes and of strong performances in their qualifying exams and committee meetings.