2003
Graduate Student Awards
ROBERT C. ANDERSON MEMORIAL AWARDS
for outstanding
research by recent UGA graduates
Ning Jiang, a recent doctoral graduate in plant biology, is
making exciting contributions to understanding transposons in
rice. Transposons make up the bulk of plant and animal genomes,
and contribute significantly to genome evolution. Dr. Jiang has
pioneered the use of computers in a bioinformatics approach to
find and characterize transposons in a genome. Using publicly
available draft sequences of two rice subspecies, she and her
collaborators documented the first active transposon family in
rice. Active transposons are able to move and increase their
copy number. Calling the family members Ping and Pong, they found
that this transposon family has increased its copy numbers in
rice strains since domestication and may have played a role in
the migration and adaptation of rice varieties to temperate regions.
In the past two years, Dr. Jiang has published four major papers
in top journals, including Nature. She also has coauthored
several other papers and a review on transposons. In 2002, Dr.
Jiang received UGA's Graduate Student Excellence in Research
Award.
D. Catherine Trieschmann, a recent graduate in drama and theatre,
wrote the play The Bridegroom of Blowing Rock for her
master’s thesis. Set in post-Civil War Southern Appalachia, the
play displays her skills for original research and character
and plot development. UGA’s Bridegroom production was
named Regional Winner at the 2001 American College Theater Festival.
Massachusetts’ Williamstown Theatre selected it for the L. Arnold
Weissberger Award in Playwriting, which includes $5,000, a professional
workshop production with the off-Broadway Theatre in the Square,
and publication by Samuel French, a prestigious publisher of
dramatic scripts. Three other original works – the full-length
play Before the Fire, set in 17th century London, and
two short plays, Black Water Delta and Art in Heaven – have
been performed at New York City’s Fringe Festival, Boston’s New
Theatre, and the University of North Carolina, among other venues.
A UGA Outstanding Graduate Assistant Teaching Award recipient
and now a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland, Ms.
Trieschmann is “one of the very best doctoral students to join
the program in the last twelve years,” wrote Dr. Catherine Schuler,
Associate Chair of Maryland’s theatre department.
JAMES L. CARMON AWARD
for innovative use
of computers by a UGA graduate student
Walker S. Ashley, a doctoral candidate in geography, studies
the conditions that contribute to the development of destructive
storm systems. Every year a variety of storm systems cause untold
loss of human life and damage to property in the United States.
One way to minimize this loss is to improve forecasting techniques
to better predict the occurrence of such weather phenomena. Specifically,
Mr. Ashley is working on a computing-intensive modeling system
that is unique in its approach to simulating storm conditions
by analyzing vast data sets that have been composited from past
occurrences of these storms. This application is the first of
its kind implemented on a UGA parallel-processing computer system
and has immense scientific and practical value associated with
it.
GRADUATE STUDENT EXCELLENCE IN RESEARCH AWARDS
for significant
graduate student scholarship
Excellence in professional & applied
studies
Sudie E. Back, a doctoral candidate in psychology,
conducts clinically relevant research in the areas of trauma
and substance abuse. Although
substance use disorders frequently co-occur with post-traumatic
stress disorder, clinicians currently have little research to
guide their selection of a treatment strategy when both disorders
are
present. Ms. Back’s proposed dissertation will examine the chronology
of post-traumatic stress disorder and substance dependence in
individuals with the dual diagnosis. By determining whether the
order of onset
of the two disorders is related to treatment effectiveness, her
work will provide important new data relevant to critical treatment
selection questions.
Excellence in fine arts
James A. Grimsley, a
master’s candidate in art, has developed a carving technique for porcelain that
yields unique, translucent vessels that are three to five inches tall. Involving
hundreds of hours of labor and as many as four firings, the process requires
great determination and patience. The resulting art works are profoundly personal
narratives of technical achievement and precision. With this process, Mr. Grimsley
has fashioned a new chapter in the history of the evolution of world ceramics,
according to Andy Nasisse, Graduate Coordinator for the Lamar Dodd School of
Art. Mr. Grimsley’s work, which has been called “extraordinary, exquisite, elegant,
and eccentric,” opens a new avenue of artistic expression in a demanding and
difficult medium.
Excellence in life sciences
Andrew Benton Reams, a doctoral candidate in microbiology,
studies bacterial genetics and physiology. His discovery that a soil bacterium
readily amplifies
extensive segments of its chromosome is significant because it developed into
a novel system to explore genome plasticity. This topic has significant implications
in areas as distant as cancer biology, antibiotic resistance, bacterial virulence,
and bioremediation, according to Dr. Ellen L. Neidle, a UGA Associate Professor
of Microbiology. A recipient of several prestigious awards and co-author of
articles in top-tier microbiology journals, Mr. Reams continues to earn praise
from notable international scientists for his gene amplification
research.
Excellence in humanities & letters
Benjamin R. Bates, a doctoral candidate in speech communication, studies the
ways in which texts have different meanings for different audiences, and what
this can mean for international and intercultural dialogue. His dissertation
looks at how conventional interpretations of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict fail to account for particular international goals and arguments that
contributed both to the conflict and to a context-specific understanding of the
conflict. Such studies can lead to a re-evaluation of how foreign policy is formed
at national and international levels. His research interests also include speech
communication on topics such as
genetics, race, medicine, and federal politics.
Excellence in mathematics and physical science
Vitaly N. Vologodsky, a doctoral candidate in mathematics,
is contributing to research in two areas of algebraic geometry, a field of
mathematics that studies
solutions of polynomial equations. Two of Mr. Vologodsky’s four published papers
are devoted to a classical factorization problem in birational geometry. The
other two papers concern degenerations of Abelian varieties, which have many
applications in other fields of mathematics and in physics. Mr. Vologodsky’s
research has appeared in the
Proceedings of
the American Mathematical Society and the
Journal fur die Reine und Angewandte
Mathematik (a.k.a.
Crelle's Journal).
Source: 24th Annual Research Awards Program (2003)
