More than 120 people joined the College of Natural Science Alumni Association for its annual awards program to acknowledge alumni, faculty and students for their outstanding achievements and excellence. The event was held April 24 at MSU’s Kellogg Hotel and Conference Center.
Damian Handzy (Ph.D., physics, ’95) received the Outstanding Alumni Award; Jennifer Schomaker (Ph.D., chemistry, ’06) received the Recent Alumni Award; and Babak Borhan, MSU professor of chemistry, received the Meritorious Faculty Award.
Handzy, who earned his doctorate while working at MSU’s National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, has been a leader in the field of financial risk management for the past 18 years. He is chairman and CEO of Investor Analytics, which he co-founded in 1999 after working as a manager for Deloitte & Touche for four years. As a result of providing clients an advanced, intuitive and easy-to-use technology platform, IA was recognized with three industry awards in 2010.
Schomaker is an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. While at MSU, she set new standards for organic chemistry graduate students. Her research is driven by the need for more efficient methods to transform simple hydrocarbons into more complex building blocks for synthesis. In 2013, Schomaker received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and was designated a fellow by the Alfred P. Sloan Research Foundation. In 2014 she received the Rising Star Award from the American Chemical Society Women Chemists Committee.
Borhan, whose research is at the interface of biology and chemistry, has made significant contributions to multiple fields. His group has pioneered de novo protein design leading to novel engineered proteins that can exhibit full color spectrum from red to blue, significantly advancing the fundamental understanding of how human eyes perceive color.
His group has also developed new reactions that have enabled synthesis of highly complex molecules in a well-controlled manner, as well as methods that allow rapid determination of stereochemistry using minute quantities of compounds. He is also the winner of two MSU Teacher-Scholar awards, and is the initiator and coordinator of Project SEED, which brings aspiring high school students from economically disadvantaged Lansing-area families to MSU to participate in summer research.
In addition to these honors, several NatSci graduate and undergraduate students were recognized for their outstanding contributions this past year.
Jie Li, a Ph.D. candidate in biochemistry and molecular biology, and Elizabeth Schultheis, a Ph.D. candidate in plant biology, and in ecology, evolutionary biology, and behavior, each received a Tracy A. Hammer Graduate Student Award, which is given to outstanding graduate students in support of their professional development.
Four students received the Dan Bolin Undergraduate Student Award, which is presented to outstanding juniors in the College of Natural Science in recognition of their leadership qualities, community service and academic abilities. The 2015 recipients are: Hannah Batchelor, neuroscience; Katherine Grantham, environmental biology/zoology; Nicole Mannino, biochemistry and molecular biology; and Caitlin O’Neill, environmental geosciences.
Dean’s Research Scholars and Beckman Scholars—both incoming and outgoing—were also acknowledged. These scholarship programs provide undergraduate students with the opportunity to participate in research—which is critical to students’ future success.