Five honored with Distinguished Dissertation Awards

Five recent Auburn University graduates have been selected as winners of the Graduate School’s 2014-15 Distinguished Dissertation Awards.
Award winners are Chris Eklund and Libby Jones in the Humanities/Fine Arts category and Justin Havird, Farruk Lutful Kabir and Rui Malinowski in the Biological/Life Sciences category. Eklund and Lutful Kabir will go on to compete for the Council of Graduate Schools/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Awards.
The Distinguished Dissertation Awards recognize the scholarship of doctoral students whose dissertations make an unusually significant contribution to their respective disciplines. Auburn’s colleges and schools nominate students for the awards, and an award committee composed of graduate faculty selects the award winners.

This year’s winning dissertations are:

• “Private Paths to Protecting Places: The Creation of a Conservation Infrastructure in the American South Since 1889” by Chris Eklund (dissertation embargoed). His dissertation committee consisted of Auburn faculty members Aaron Shapiro (chair), Jennifer Brooks, Cathleen Giustino and David Lucsko. Eklund graduated in May 2015 with a doctorate in history and has accepted a position teaching high school in North Carolina. He is ultimately seeking a teaching position at a college or university.
• “The Devolution of Irish Masculinity in Twentieth Century Irish Drama: Representations of Manliness in the Plays of John Millington Synge, Sean O’Casey and Martin McDonagh” by Libby Jones (dissertation embargoed for non-Auburn University users). Her dissertation committee consisted of Auburn faculty members Jonathan Bolton (chair), Chris Keirstead, Sunny Stalter-Pace and Ralph Kingston. Jones graduated in May 2015 with a doctorate in English and now teaches at the University of South Alabama and Spring Hill College.
• “Disturbance in the anchialine ecosystem: ramifications for ecology and physiology” by Justin Havird. His dissertation committee consisted of Auburn faculty members Scott Santos (chair), Raymond Henry, Mark Liles and Alan Wilson. Havird graduated in May 2014 with a doctorate in biological sciences and is now a postdoctoral fellow at Colorado State University.
• “Altered Expression Profiles and Defects in a Group of Cell Cycle Regulators and Tumor Suppressor Genes (INK4) and Evaluation of Comprehensive Expression Profiles of Canine miRNAs in Spontaneous Canine Breast Cancer Models” by Farruk Lutful Kabir. His dissertation committee consisted of Auburn faculty members R. Curtis Bird (chair), Bruce Smith, Frederik van Ginkel and Jacek Wower. Lutful Kabir graduated in December 2014 with a doctorate in biomedical sciences and is now a postdoctoral fellow at Auburn.
• “Carbonyl inhibition and detoxification in microbial fermentation of biomass hydrolysates” by Rui Malinowski (formerly Rui Xie). Her dissertation committee consisted of Auburn faculty members Maobing Tu (chair), Yoon Lee, Maria Auad and Eduardus (Evert) Duin. Malinowski graduated in May 2014 with a doctorate in forestry and now works as an analytical chemist at Cool Planet Energy Systems.

Award winners receive an honorarium of $500 and a certificate.
The two categories for the Distinguished Dissertation Awards rotate each year. The Graduate School will solicit nominations in the fall for the 2015-16 categories: Social Sciences and Mathematics/Physical Sciences/Engineering.