This spring two GDCB faculty, Dr. Ling Li, Associate Scientist and Adjunct Assistant Professor, and Dr. Bing Yang, Associate Professor, received awards in recognition of their individual achievements at ISU.

Dr. Ling Li is the recipient of the 2013 ISU Professional and Scientific Excellence Award. This award recognizes and honors professional and scientific staff members who have been employed by Iowa State University for more than five years and who have achieved excellence in their respective fields.

Dr. Lois Girton, academic adviser for the genetics and biology undergraduate majors in GDCB and EEOB, was recognized this spring with an Outstanding Peer Mentor Supervisor Award by the Learning Communities for her supervision of the peer mentors involved in the Genetics: The Secret of Life learning community.

Peer mentor supervisors are nominated by their students for having demonstrated excellence as a peer mentor supervisor. The purpose of the Learning Communities exemplary awards program is to recognize and encourage outstanding achievement by peer mentors and their supervisors working with learning community students. Nomination packets were reviewed by an independent panel involved with the Learning Communities.

Dr. Carolyn Lawrence, a collaborating professor in GDCB and researcher with the USDA-ARS, is a faculty initiate of the Gamma Sigma Delta, the Honor Society of Agriculture.  Dr. Lawrence is best known for having developed MaizeGDB, the research community database for basic, translational, and applied research information for Zea mays, a species of corn. MaizeGDB supports researchers worldwide and is accessed ~2.1 million times per month on average. Today, MaizeGDB is recognized not only as a successful model organism database, but as a general model for how best to meet stakeholder needs for data management projects.

In addition, Daniel J. Schnadt, a sophomore in Biology, was awarded a Sophomore Scholarship by the Honor Society.

Recently, Alpha Lambda Delta & Phi Eta Sigma first-year honor societies asked new inductees to share which instructor at ISU had influenced them during their first year, and how this individual had shaped their academic experience. Denise Williams, adviser to the honor society, shared part of the comments of one inductee about Karin Dorman, professor of GDCB and Statistics:

Professor Jo Anne Powell-Coffman has formally accepted the position of Chair of the Department of Genetics, Development, and Cell Biology retroactive to January 1, 2013. Dr. Powell-Coffman had been interim chair of the department since July 1, 2011, when the previous chair, Dr. Martin Spalding, became interim Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies for the College of Liberal Arts and Science (LAS). Dr. Spalding, accepted the position of Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies for the College of Liberal Arts and Science effective January 1, 2013.

Dr. Carolyn Lawrence, GDCB collaborating professor and researcher for the USDA Agricultural Research Service, has been awarded $1,937,366 in sponsored funding as a collaborator on an NSF Plant Genome Research Project award to PI Dr. Michael Scanlon of Cornell University. The ultimate goal of the research project, entitled, “Genetic Networks Regulating Structure and Function of the Maize Shoot Apical Meristem,” is to increase understanding of the regulatory networks controlling SAM structure and function and the responses of these networks to environmental stresses.