Winners

Perspectives: Research and Creative Activities at SIUC, Spring 2008

:: research survey ::

Winners

The SIU Alumni Association's 2007 Outstanding Thesis Award went to zoology student Forrest Brem. Under the guidance of advisor Karen Lips, Brem studied a fungus that is wiping out frog populations in Central America. He was the first researcher able to study a population before, during, and after infection, which revealed valuable new information about why the fungus is so deadly and how it spreads.

The 2007 Outstanding Dissertation Award went to anthropology student David Goldstein, a paleoethnobotanist. Working with co-advisors Izumi Shimada and Lee Ann Newsom, Goldstein combined various lines of investigation, from forest ecology to metallurgy, to focus on the procurement and use of plant fuels for pottery firing and metalworking by pre-Inca peoples living along the northern coast of Peru. His work showed how local artisans worked together to establish resource management practices that did not adversely affect local forests.

In 2007 there were two winners of SIUC's annual Outstanding Graduate Student Research Award. Chemistry doctoral student Kaushik Balakrishnan, who works with advisor Ling Zang, fabricates and studies the characteristics of nanowires and "nanobelts" made from organic semiconducting molecules. Such nano-assemblies, he explains, "have now emerged as unique building blocks in the miniaturization of optoelectronic devices."

The second winner, Abhijit Shukla, a doctoral student in biochemistry and molecular biology, works with advisor Sukesh Bhaumik to understand the mechanisms involved in gene regulation and how they can go awry. Shukla, who concentrates on mechanisms implicated in human diseases, holds a two-year, $52,000 fellowship from the American Heart Association.

—by Marilyn Davis