Showing Off Their Skills

AGNR graduate students are recognized by the College for their exemplary research projects

Image Credit: Gail Yeiser

November 30, 2012 Sara Gavin

Graduate students from the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (AGNR) recently went head-to-head in a little friendly competition to find out who has the best research skills.

At this fall’s AGNR Open House held at the Clarksville Research Facility, more than 30 graduate students from the College brought posters outlining current research projects to present to the crowd. The projects covered a diverse range of subject areas including nanoscience (the study of atoms and molecules), the effect of urbanization on wetlands, salmonella in tomatoes, health benefits of edible microgreens, and targeting certain DNA proteins to boost cancer treatments.

Faculty members from several different departments within AGNR were tasked with judging the poster competition. They included Drs. Debabrata Biswas from Animal & Avian Sciences, Seong-Ho Lee from Nutrition & Food Science, Angus Murphy with Plant Science & Landscape Architecture, Wendy Peer with Environmental Science & Technology (ENST), and Bill Bowerman, ENST Chair, who also served as coordinator of the competition.  

Although the faculty judges were only charged with naming the top three posters, they ultimately chose to recognize nine student researchers for their outstanding work.

Pictured above are eight of the nine graduate student winners posing with AGNR Dean Cheng-i Wei and Dr. Adel Shirmohammadi, Associate Dean for Research.

The overall winner of the competition, Zi Teng, is not pictured. Teng is a graduate student in the Department of Nutrition and Food Science and his project was entitled: “Nanoparticles Synthesized from Soy Protein: Preparation, Characterization and Application.”