News: 2016, March 7th

2016 Merriwether Fellows, Outstanding Graduate Students announced

Twenty-four Auburn University graduate students have been selected as winners of three of the Graduate School’s annual awards.

Twenty students have been selected as the 2015-16 Outstanding Graduate Student Award honorees, while four doctoral students have been selected for the Merriwether Fellowship. From the Outstanding Graduate Student honorees at the doctoral level, Jun Yao was also chosen as the Graduate School’s President’s Award winner.

The Merriwether Fellowship is awarded to doctoral students who show great promise in their academic fields. First awarded in 1971, the fellowship provides a $2,000 stipend and is the result of an anonymous donation in honor of Harry Merriwether, a 1943 Auburn graduate. The Outstanding Graduate Student Awards recognize Auburn’s most distinguished graduate students. Ten students are chosen at the master’s/educational specialist level, and 10 more are chosen at the doctoral level.

Departments nominate students for the awards, and the winners are then chosen by a committee of graduate faculty.

The students will be recognized with other award winners at the Graduate School’s annual awards ceremony on Wednesday, April 27, in the Student Center Ballroom.

Award winners and their departments are listed below.

Merriwether Fellows

• Hector Corzo (Chemistry and Biochemistry)
• Vikrant Dev (Chemical Engineering)
• Hamid Ghaednia (Mechanical Engineering)
• Lauren Jescovitch (Fisheries, Aquaculture and Aquatic Sciences)

Outstanding Doctoral Students 

• Andrew Damiani (Chemical Engineering)
• Zhifeng He (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
• J. Megan Irwin (Kinesiology)
• Feng Liu (Entomology and Plant Pathology)
• Khondaker Rahman (Pathobiology)
• Allen Sabey (Human Development and Family Studies)
• Rajdeep Shakya (Biosystems Engineering)
• Jun Yao (Fisheries, Aquaculture and Aquatic Sciences)
• Yuanyuan Zhang (Materials Engineering)
• Kelly Zuromski (Psychology)

Outstanding Master’s Students

• Katherine Bivens (Animal Sciences)
• Rosemary S. Cuming (Clinical Sciences)
• Kylee Dunham (Forestry and Wildlife Sciences)
• Uday Goteti (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
• Ziaul Haque (Geosciences)
• Alexander Kaeppler (Human Development and Family Studies)
• Steven Kitchens (Pathobiology)
• Savanna Ladner (Nutrition, Dietetics and Hospitality Management)
• William Palmer (English)
• Dan Pierce (Mechanical Engineering)

President’s Award

Jun Yao (Fisheries, Aquaculture and Aquatic Sciences)

To read more about the Graduate School’s annual awards, visit the Web page.