Category: Graduate Student Excellence-in-Research Award

Robert C. Anderson Memorial Award 2014
Graduate Student Excellence-in-Research Award 2014

Tore Olsson, a recent doctoral graduate in history, has made numerous important contributions to the fields of modern U.S. and Mexican political and diplomatic history and transnational history, and he has conducted interdisciplinary scholarship in food, agricultural and environmental studies. His dissertation, “Green Revolutions: The American South, Mexico, and the Twentieth-Century Remaking of the Rural World,” examines the intertwined histories of U.S. and Mexican agrarian reform programs from the early twentieth century to the early Cold War period. Olsson’s multi-sited and multilingual archival research convincingly demonstrates that the roots of the so-called “Green Revolution” were first planted not in the minds of post-World War II development technocrats, but instead in the Rockefeller Foundation’s efforts to tackle rural poverty in the U.S. South during the Progressive Era. Olsson is now working on a book manuscript, and he is an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Graduate Student Excellence-in-Research Award 2013
Robert C. Anderson Memorial Award 2013

Ying Wai Li, a doctoral graduate in physics, was an outstanding graduate student researcher while at UGA, and her many accomplishments led to her current postdoctoral fellowship at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. For her PhD research project, Li worked at the interface between physics, computational science and biochemistry. She carried out very detailed simulations of the hydrophobic-polar protein folding model, which examines how proteins become functional in space. Her painstaking work led to the identification of a small number of “universal classes” of protein folding behavior. Understanding the folding behavior of proteins under diverse conditions is key to interpreting their functional properties, and Li developed a number of novel approaches to speed up the simulations and to permit her to access system sizes necessary to reveal the relevant physics. Her work explores and maps new territory, and the conclusions she has drawn may lead to new design principles for proteins or peptides used in nanotechnology and a range of real-world applications.

Graduate Student Excellence-in-Research Award 2012
Robert C. Anderson Memorial Award 2012

Franklin Leach, a recent doctoral graduate in chemistry, developed and refined new mass spectrometry methods for the structural characterization of glycosaminoglycan (GAG) carbohydrates, a particularly difficult target for such analysis. These biomolecule chains exist on the surfaces of most cells, and the pattern contained within each chain, in particular that of sulfation, determines how individual cells interact with each other and the outside world. One of Leach’s papers reports the first ever complete sequencing of intact glycosaminoglycan chains derived from a proteoglycan, and the unexpected finding of a well-defined pattern of sulfation within the glycan chains, which supports the existence of a sulfation code for cellular communication. Leach is author or co-author of 13 papers and two book chapters. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, where he is working on the design and construction of a next generation mass spectrometer.

Robert C. Anderson Memorial Award 2010

Kaushlendra Singh, an assistant professor of wood science and technology at West Virginia University, developed novel technology for fractionating poultry litter to re-use in beneficial ways. Through fractionation, pyrolysis, and pelletization, Singh produced several value-added products from poultry litter. The smaller fraction, which is rich in nutrients, can be pelletized for use in both solid and liquid fertilizers and soil amendments. The larger size can be used as the raw material for bioenergy production. His innovative work, which has already gained the interest of private industry, is likely to lead to new, less-costly storage and transportation solutions—and to new value-added, income-producing products from poultry wastes. Singh has published five research papers, with four more under revision for various academic journals.

Previous Award

Graduate Student Excellence-in-Research Award 2009