Recent achievements for the campus community were earned by Sasitharan Balasubramaniam, Frederick Bliss, Richard DeFusco, Nicole Gray, Priscilla Grew, Holly Hatton-Bowers, Charles William Stuber and Kristy Weissling.
Honors
Frederick A. Bliss and Charles William Stuber, received the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture 2022 Alumni Lifetime Achievement Award. This award is the highest honor bestowed upon graduates of the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture who have made significant contributions to their community, state and nation through professional service, public service and/or civic engagement. Stuber is considered a pioneer of quantitative genetic mapping and marker-assisted selection in maize. His achievements include the development of genetic marker systems used in maize and adapted in numerous other crops, the first methods to identify quantitative trait loci and the creation of new breeding methods that integrated molecular markers into applied breeding. His work was instrumental in creating the foundation for modern plant breeding that relies heavily on combining genetic marker information with field evaluations of quantitative traits.
Richard DeFusco, department chair and professor of finance was recognized by the Department of Finance Advisory Board with the creation of the Richard DeFusco Tribute Scholarship. The scholarship honors his nearly 40 years of leadership, service and impact to the university.
Priscilla C. Grew, professor emerita and Native American Graves and Repatriation Act adviser, received the 2022 Geological Society of America’s Presidential Medal on Oct. 9. The President’s Medal of the Geological Society of America, commissioned in 2007, is conferred only on individuals, groups or entities whose impact has profoundly enhanced the geoscience profession through supporting and contributing to the Society; advancing geosciences, enhancing professional growth, and/or promoting geosciences in service of humankind; or significantly enlarging the range of scientific achievement for the growth of our profession.
Holly Hatton-Bowers, associate professor and early childhood extension specialist in the Department of Child, Youth and Family Studies, received the 2022 Outstanding Engagement Award at the 2022 Board on Human Sciences Awards presented by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities Board on Human Sciences. The award recognizes a campus-based or state-level faculty member with exceptional creativity and scholarship in the development, application and evaluation of outreach, Extension and public service programs.
Kristy Weissling, professor of practice in the Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders, was selected as the recipient of the Recognition of Service Award from the Nebraska Speech-Language-Hearing Association. The award is given to an individual in recognition of exemplary commitment and contribution to the field, with an emphasis on specific contributions within the last six years. Weissling received her award during the 2022 NSLHA Fall Convention Oct. 14-15 at Nebraska Innovation Campus.
Appointments
Sasitharan Balasubramaniam, associate professor in the School of Computing, has been named editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological, and Multi-Scale Communications. IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological and Multi-Scale Communications is a quarterly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers IEEE Communications Society and established in 2015. The journal is devoted to the principles, design, and analysis of communication systems that use physics beyond classical electromagnetism, including molecular, quantum, and other physical, chemical and biological techniques. Balasubramaniam will serve as editor in chief for a term of two years and views the role as an opportunity to support IEEE’s interdisciplinary efforts.
Nicole Gray joined Archives and Special Collections at the University Libraries as assistant professor and digital archivist on Aug. 16. In this position she will evaluate digital materials coming into the Archives to determine ways to make them usable, accessible, and available to researchers in the long term. In 2014 Gray joined the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s English Department as a post-doctoral research associate and worked on the Walt Whitman Archive as its project manager. Her other positions on campus include research assistant professor in the English Department, project specialist, Genoa Indian School Digital Reconciliation Project, for University Libraries and most recently as a developer in the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities.
