Emory graduate students win awards, prizes, fellowships and more.

May 8, 2009

Many Emory graduate students have accomplished great things this spring.  Below are the honors and accomplishments we know about -- congratulations!

Anthropology

• Amy Cobden received an Oberlin College Alumni Fellowship.
• Sebastian Duenas has been awarded an National Science Foundation dissertation improvement grant.
• Claire-Marie Hefner received both an National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to study Islamic Education and Gender Socialization in Contemporary Indonesia, and a Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship to attend an Immersion Program in Arabic at the University of Wisconsin.
• Jennifer Sweeney received a Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant.

Art History

• Joe Madura has been awarded a pre-doctoral fellowship for American Art Historians to Travel Abroad from CASVA, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery in Washington.  The award will allow Joe to travel to Europe to see artworks he has studied in the seminars of professors Walter Melion and Jean Campbell. 

Biological and Biomedical Sciences (GDBBS)

• Reena Oza Frank, Nutrition and Health Sciences, received a 2 year  CDC/CSTE fellowship at the Ohio Department of Health in Columbus, Ohio.  The position will be to work with the state epidemiologist office on childhood obesity related issues.  Reena currently holds a dissertation research grant from the CDC Office of Public Health Research.
• Alexandra Mercante, Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, was awarded a Carl Storm Underrepresented Minority Fellowship to travel to the Gordon Research Conference on Multi-Drug Efflux Systems, where she presented a poster of her research.  Alexandra works in Professor William Shafer’s lab.

Chemistry

• Savannah Adams, from the David Lynn Lab,  has been invited to the ACS Summer School on Green Chemistry and Sustainable Energy program this summer at the Colorado School of Mines in golden, CO.  Savannah was also offered a ThinkSwiss Scholarship this summer: in Spring 2010 Savannah will be working with Prof. Beat Meier at the ETH-Zurich to learn multidimensional NMR techniques for biophysical investigations.
• Keith Freel, a student in the Michael Heaven Lab, has been awarded a summer internship at Hanscom Air Force Base, MA supported by the Space Scholars Program.  He will work in Dr. Albert Viggiano’s Group on Plasma Chemistry for Air Force Systems.
• Erika Milczek has received a travel award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to attend the Nobel Laureates Annual Meeting in Lindau Germany at the end of June.  She is one of 74 graduate students selected from universities across the nation to attend the meeting.  Erika is a Ruth Kirchstein NIH predoctoral fellow working in Professor Dale Edmonson’s lab.
• Shana Topp, a student in the Justin Gallivan Lab, has been selected as one of four recipients of this year’s Stanford Biochemistry Founders’ Award for Doctoral Excellence.

Comparative Literature

• Naomi Beeman won a DAAD 3 month research award which she has declined in favor of accepting a fellowship in the Freie Universität Berlin Graduate Student Exchange program.
• David Ritchie won a  DAAD University Summer Course Scholarship to study at the Freie Universität Berlin.
• Ariel Ross received the Horst Frenz Prize for best paper presented by a graduate student at the annual meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association. The prize was formally awarded at a banquet in March 2009 in honor of a paper Ms. Ross delivered at the 2008 meeting and includes  publication of her paper, “‘I Will Move Hell’:  Virgil’s Repetition Compulsion,”  in the upcoming Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature.

Computer Science and Informatics

• Yandong Liu and Qi Guo received the prestigious Yahoo! 2009-2010 Key Scientific Challenges award.  The award "was created to recognize outstanding graduate-student researchers who will have the greatest potential to make significant contributions and become thought leaders in their research fields."  The competition drew applications world-wide, and only 20 awards were given.  Both students are members of the Intelligent Information Access Laboratory under the direction of Professor Eugene Agichtein

Educational Studies

• Keisha Green and Vera Stenhouse received the Cultivating New Voices Among Scholars of Color (CNV) fellowship. CNV is a two-year mentoring program for advanced doctoral students and junior scholars (i.e., fellows) who are within the first two-to-two and a half years beyond the awarding of a doctorate degree. Funded through the Research Foundation of the National Council of Teachers of English, CNV prides itself on supporting the professional, intellectual, and activist activities of scholars of color by pairing each fellow with a senior scholar in the field.
• Jessica Hammock has been awarded $10,000 Ideablob Grant to fund Astronomy Outreach activity with East Atlanta Kids Club. She has also been selected to participate in the National Association of Research in Science Teaching 2009 Summer Research Institute.
• Latrise Johnson-Bashir and Professor Maisha Fisher have a contract to write a book together, Writing Instruction in the Culturally Relevant Classroom, for the National Council of Teachers of English Principles in Practice Series.
• Mari Roberts is a winner of the Gift of Time Kuhmerker Research Grant, awarded by the Association for Moral Education and funded by the Gift of Time Charitable Foundation. The purpose of the grant is to encourage a new generation of scholars from a wide variety of fields to make a significant contribution to advancing the field of moral development.
• Michelle Purdy received a Spencer Dissertation Fellowship for Research Related to Education.  Michelle is one of only 29 students nationally to receive this award from over 600 applicants.

English

• Shannon Hipp’s essay, " 'Things of the Same Kind that are Separated Only by Time': Reading the Notebooks of Medbh McGuckian" is going to be published in the Summer 2009 issue of Irish University Review, due out in June.  Shannon’s "Cribs and Collaborations in the Poetry of Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill" is going to be published in the collection New Voices In Irish Criticism, also due out in the coming months.
• Simon Kress’s poem "Metamorphosen" was selected as a finalist for the Agnes Scott Festival poetry prize, and he has two poems forthcoming in the journal Sub-Lit.
• Rebecca Kumar has an essay forthcoming, “Quiet Colonialism: Graham Greene’s The Quiet American” in Thirty Years After: New Essays on Vietnam War Literature, Film, and Art, to be published by Cambridge University Press.
• Sarah Eden Schiff's article "Recovering (from) the Double: Fiction as Historical Revision in Octavia E. Butler's Kindred" was published in the Spring 2009 issue of Arizona Quarterly.

History

• Katherine Mary Armstrong: Mary Lily Research Grant from the Duke University Library 
• Alex Borucki: International Dissertation Research from the Social Science Research Council, and a Mellon Fellowship for Dissertation Research in Original Sources from Council on Library and Information Resources 
• Ashley Brenner: American Historical Association Schmitt Grant 
• Robert Elder: 2009 Lewis P. Jones Fellowship from the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina 
• Chad Fulwider: Research Grant, Archives Seminar, and Horner Library Fellowship from the German Historical Institute
• Melissa Gayan: International Advanced Research Opportunity Fellowship from the International Research and Exchanges Board
• Leah Weinryb Grohsgal: Princeton University Library Research Grant funded by the Mudd Library, and Littleton-Griswold Grant from the American Historical Association 
• Molly McCullers: Fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service
• Durba Mitra: Research Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies for dissertation research in India 
• Adam Rosenbaum: Fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service,  American Historical Association Schmitt Grant, and German Historical Institute Archives Seminar and Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar
• Jill Rosenthal: Conference grant to Bujumbura United States Institute of Peace 
• Daniel Domingues da Silva: Fellowships from the Luso-American Foundation and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation 
• Cari Williams: Fulbright Grant for research in Brazil 2009-10

ILA (Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts)

• Jere Alexander received the Animals and Society Institute Fellowship in human-animal relationships which will take place at Duke University this summer.
• Claire Clarke received the Excel Award where she was named one of the top 85 public school teachers in the state of Florida by the Foundation for Excellence in Education.
• Rhea Combs accepted a $10,000 pre-dissertation Research Fellowship in the Humanities at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon.
• Sheri Davis was accepted to the Environmental Leadership Program’s Southeast Regional Network Fellows Cohort
• Josef Horacek received the National Endowment for Humanities Translation Fellowship.
• Manuel Montoya received a fellowship to pay for his membership as a delegate of the British American Project.
• Brenda Tindal received aTravel Scholarship from the Gamma Trust Alumni Board and a Summer Graduate Student Assistantship with the Mellon-Mays Fellowship Program
• Haipeng Zhou received a Grant from the Rockefeller Archive Center.

Nursing

• Daurice Grossniklaus, who is graduating this year, has been selected to receive the Preventive Cardiovascular Nurses Association (PCNA) 2009 Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Award.

Political Science

• Jakub Kakiatec received an SSRC-ACLS International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) Program award, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (one of seventy-four awardees selected from 1,090 submitted applications from graduate students at 127 universities).
• Jake Ricks received a Social Science Research Council's Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship.
• John Reuter received a Fulbright Hays for dissertation fieldwork (3 months in Russia).

Religion

• Carl Hughes received a fellowship from the American-Scandinavian Foundation which will enable him to do dissertation research and writing at the Søren Kierkegaard Centre in Copenhagen next year.
• Mari Kim is currently chairing the Pacific Northwest American Academy of Religion's section on Theology and Philosophy.
• Jonathan Loar received an International Summer School Fellowship for Religion and Public Life Fellowship.
• Lerone Martin was awarded The Fund for Theological Education Dissertation Fellowship for his dissertation: Selling to the Souls of Black Folk: Atlanta, Rev. JM Gates, the Phonograph, and the Transformation of African American Religion and Culture, 1910-1945.
• Donna S. Mote published a peer-reviewed ethnographic film, Making a Mandala, in the first issue of Practical Matters: A Transdisciplinary Multimedia Journal of Religious Practices and Practical Theology,, the GDR's new online academic journal.
• Harshita Mruthinti received a Fulbright-Hays dissertation fellowship and American Institute of Indian Studies dissertation fellowship.
• Jenn Ortegren and Cat Prueitt received Summer Fellowships from the American Institute of Indian Studies.
• John Senior has been awarded a Louisville Institute Dissertation Fellowship for his work on moral agency and narrative in contemporary American religion and politics.