The Department of Biochemistry is pleased to announce its 2019 undergraduate and graduate student departmental awards and fellowships. These awards and fellowships celebrate talented students in the department and are made possible by generous gifts to the department to fund graduate and undergraduate research.
“It’s always a pleasure to honor so many brilliant young people in this ceremony every year,” said department chair Brian Fox at the awards reception on Friday, April 26. “These awards highlight the hard work of these students, mentorship of their faculty advisors, and generosity of our supporters.”
The 2019 Department of Biochemistry Graduate Fellowship awardees include Dana Dahhan, Zack Kemmerer, Kyle Nishikawa, and Dylan Plaskon.
Graduate student fellowships cover a student’s tuition and stipend for an academic year. They provide students flexibility in their research endeavors by not being tied to a specific grant. By freeing up funds, they also, for example, allow faculty to purchase new equipment for labs. Students who receive these fellowships are part of the Integrated Program in Biochemistry (IPiB), the joint graduate program of the Department of Biochemistry and the Department of Biomolecular Chemistry.
This year’s department graduate fellowships are sponsored by the Denis R. A. and Martha Washburn Wharton Fund, Dr. James Chieh-Hsia Mao Wisconsin Distinguished Graduate Fellowship Fund, Arthur B. Michael Fund, and Robert and Katherine Burris Biochemistry Fund.
“This award is both a form of recognition of the contributions my research is making to the field of plant biochemistry and an encouraging sign to continue on,” says Dana Dahhan, an IPiB student in the lab of Professor Sebastian Bednarek. “Because of this award, I will be able to attend the annual American Society of Plant Biologists meeting. There I will be able to interact with a host of plant researchers in fields which are new to me.”
The department also congratulates Nathan Thomas on his Louis and Elsa Thomsen Wisconsin Distinguished Graduate Fellowship from the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
To read more about the awards and undergraduate awardees, see the link below.