Andrew T. Smith’s graduate students Boyle, Kessler and Hogan win awards
April 26, 2006
It’s been a good month for Andrew T. Smith's laboratory. Not only is Smith the newly appointed associate director of Undergraduate Programs and recipient of the Parents Association Professor of the Year award, but his graduate students Sarah Boyle, Brigitte Hogan and Aimee Kessler's fortunes have also been high.
Boyle has received a Philanthropic Educational organization (P.E.O.) Scholar Award for 2006-2007 for her work studying the behavior and survival of the bearded sake monkey in Brazil. The P.E.O, founded in 1869 by seven students on the Wesleyan College Campus in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, now embraces a quarter of a million members in the U.S. and Canada. The P.E.O has touched the lives of nearly 70,000 women, through educational loans, continuing education grants and Scholar Awards. Scholar Awards are one-time awards, given yearly to women whose study and research will lead to “significant contributions in their fields of endeavor.”
Smith notes that both his mother and grandmother were P.E.O members. He adds of Boyle's research, “Sarah’s research is with primatologist Wilson Spironello at the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project in the Brazilian Amazon. There has been little primate work done there and they are very happy to have her.” Boyle was awarded a Fulbright in 2005 to support similar research.
Hogan and Kessler have also curried favor with award panels. Hogan will receive the Lisa Dent Memorial Ecology Fellowship for 2006-2007, an award created to recognize exceptional students studying ecology and to support women and diversity at ASU. Hogan’s work site is in Tibet where she studies the impact of the plateau pika on plant species richness, nutrient cycling and ecosystem dynamics.
Kessler’s research takes her to Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia. She says she will examine, “the conservation biology of the Great Bustard and evaluate the suitability of this bird, whose populations are declining, as an indicator species for land-use planning in the region.” To support her work, Kessler has been awarded the American Museum of Natural History Frank. M Chapman Memorial Research Grant and the International Research and Exchanges Board Individual Advanced Research Opportunities Fellowship (IREX). She was also one of four graduate students in School of Life Sciences awarded a National Science Foundation Predoctoral Graduate Research Fellowship.
Smith says of his winning graduate student triumvirate, “I’m really proud of my people.”
Animal Behavior Society Student Research Grant
Lisa Taylor
Matthew Toomey
Zachary Stahlschmidt
Biotechnology Student of the Year in Molecular and Cellular Biology 2005-2006
Matthew Pearcy
David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship 2006-2007
Jennifer Rupnow
El Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) Fellowship
Claudia Hernandez Camacho
Hugo Beraldi
Jerome Aronson Plant Biology Fellowship 2003-2006
Bradley Butterfield
Michael A. Cichan Memorial Award for Excellence in Botany 2005-2006
Matthew Lingard
Preparing Future Faculty, Faculty Emeriti Association (FEA) Fellowship 2006-2007
Nathan Morehouse
Teaching Associate of the Year Awards 2005-2006
James Watts, Outstanding Teaching Associate of the Year
Cindy Cordery, Teaching Associate of the Year
Danna Schock, Teaching Associate of the Year
Media Contact:
Margaret Coulombe
(480) 727-8934
margaret.coulombe@asu.edu