Iowa State University

Zaffarano Prize Winner

Zaffarano Prize for superior performance in publishable research by an ISU graduate student.

Zaffarano Prize 2008 Winner Scott Emrich received his Ph.D. in August 2007. from  the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Interdepartmental Program and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.  His research is in bioinformatics, where he has done significant research in the area of genome assembly computations through gene sequencing and discovery, currently one of the most important frontiers in science and engineering.

Scott has had 14 outstanding, high impact publications spanning the diverse areas of computer science, bioinformatics, and plant sciences during the period he was a student at Iowa State. He was the primary author or the joint first author on the majority of publications, and three received special recognition when they were published.

Scott was a key member of an Iowa State team involved in Maize genome sequencing. His major professor, Dr. Srinivas Aluru, says that Scott’s work on maize genome assembly was the very first successful effort to assemble the sequences from pilot projects.  Besides working on maize, Scott has applied similar techniques to sorghum.  Dr. Patrick Schnable, Scott’s co-major professor and Director of the Center of Plant Genomics, comments that the research team consisted of biologists and computational scientists with very different knowledge and perspectives and Scott served as a bridge between the two.  His personality and scientific expertise played a significant role in forging the team’s successful cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Scott is now an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame.

Zaffarano Prize -
Honorable Mention

Keri Henderson graduates from Iowa State in May 2008 with a Ph.D. from the Entomology Department, in the Interdepartmental Toxicology Program. Her research area is environmental toxicology and the chemistry of agrichemicals.
Throughout her graduate studies, Keri has been an exceptionally productive researcher. She has eight papers in high quality journals.
She has presented her work at numerous symposia and also assisted in organizing some, including editing the resulting book. She has written successful grant proposals and also secured a graduate fellowship from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.  Her major professor, Dr. Joel Coats, writes “Her research accomplishments and productivity make her one of the best graduate students I have mentored over the past 29 years.”

Zaffarano Prize -
Honorable Mention

Baris Unal will graduate later in 2008 with a Ph.D. from the Materials Science and Engineering Department. His research is related to surface properties of quasicrystalline materials.
Baris is an outstanding experimentalist and prolific author, with 9 peer-reviewed publications and numerous presentations to date. 

His major professor, Dr. Pat Thiel, writes  “In our work, the instrumental challenges associated with . . . sample preparation can . . . lead to weeks and even months of down-time. . .[but Baris] has an uncanny feeling for how to make experiments work.” 

Karas Award Winner

For Outstanding Dissertation in the Behavioral Sciences

Michelle Ihmels received her Ph.D. from Iowa State in December, 2007, from the Kinesiology Department  Her dissertation, entitled Creation and Validation of the Family Nutrition and Physical Activity (FNPA) Screening Tool, focused on a timely and important problem, obesity in children.  Michelle conceived, designed, and tested a screening tool that can identify children at-risk for obesity as well as intervention strategies to reduce the risk of obesity.

Working in partnership with the Des Moines school system, physical data and FNPA information on over 2,000 first graders in 37 schools were obtained. One year later, follow-up data were also collected to examine physical BMI changes in the children over time and the predictive utility of the FNPA.

Longitudinal analysis showed that the FNPA screening tool could predict the likelihood of children becoming overweight, which is new in the pediatric obesity literature, and provides a way to develop intervention strategies before a child becomes obese.
Dr. Gregory Welk, her major professor, reports “Michelle’s work was so well received by the Des Moines school district that we have now expanded our BMI training program to all Polk County Schools.”

Karas Award Honorable Mention

William Todd Abraham received his Ph.D. from Iowa State in December 2007 in the Psychology Department  His dissertation is titled Dispositional optimism and pessimism: Stability, change, and adaptive recovery following life event experiences.
His major professor Dr. Carolyn Cutrona writes “Todd’s dissertation is truly remarkable. Above all, it is extremely interesting. He poses the question: Can adults retain their sense of optimism over the years and through the many stressful experiences that life offers?  He places the question in the context of research on the stability of personality characteristics across the life span.”