Friday, June 18, 2010

Annual Student Symposium

On Wednesday June 16, the Environmental Toxicology Program held its annual student symposium. There were 18 student presentations and it was great to see the breadth of research in which the students are involved. At the end of the day, a number of students and faculty were recognized. The Fukuto award for the top student presentation was given to J.P. Baquiran for his presentation entitled, "The La Brea Tar Pits Metagenome". Honorable mention awards were presented to Katy Zimmermann and Kristy Richardson. The best first year student presentation was awarded to Ashley Swanson. Kristy Richardson was chosen for the student choice award and the Faculty Mentor award for this year went to the Program Director, Yinsheng Wang. The day was a great success. I would like to give a special thanks to Paul Ziemann, Zhenshan Chen, Lynnie Cua, Juliane Finn, Lei Ren, Ashley Swanson and Dawn Huffmann Loyola who as members of the Student Symposium Committee organized the symposium. In addition, I would like to recognize the work of Janet Arey who contacted the alumni and compiled the alumni news that was in the program booklet. Below are a number of photos from the event.

The award winners, Yinsheng Wang, Katy Zimmermann, Ashley Swanson, Kristy Richardson and J.P. Baquiran.
Kristy Richardson receiving the Student Choice award from Kristi Capsel and Gayatri Sankaran.

Yinsheng Wang receiving the faculty mentor award.

Gayatri Sankaran giving her presentation.

The buffet line and various group shots below.









Thursday, June 17, 2010

News from Alumna Heidi Bethel



Heidi Bethel (Ph.D. 2002) sent in the following update and photos for the annual student symposium. Sorry, I am slow getting them posted.

This has been a great year! We purchased our first home in Springfield, Virginia in July of 2009. And, we had a baby boy, Jason Singh Chillar, born in February, 2010. We spent most of the year trying to get our house ready for the baby and we still continue to work on renovation projects and decorating. We are really happy that we were able to move into a house for Jason and we look forward to seeing him run around our 1/3 acre lot. Kris is having a lot of fun working on the yard!

I am still working at EPA in the Office of Water on ambient water quality standards and I will be returning back to work in late summer.

Good luck to everyone on the seminar day presentations and congratulations to those graduating.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Photo from Alumnus Eric Kwok


Ryan (age 5) and Amanda (age 7). "Little ones" of Eric Kwok (Ph.D., 1993)