Grad students receive grants, scholarships

Congratulations to Alex Paya and Maria Smith for receiving a Andrew W. Mellon Student Research Grant and to Bryan Emmett for receiving a Arthur Boller Student Research Grant to support his research. All three are part of Taryn Bauerle’s root biology lab.

Judson Ward, Ph.D student in Plant Breeding and Genetics who works with Courtney Weber received the Perrine Scholarship. Says Weber, “Jud Ward’s work on understanding the genetic mechanisms of disease resistance in red raspberry is truly cutting-edge and has broad implications for developing disease resistant varieties of raspberry as well as many other related fruit crops, including apple, cherry, strawberry, blackberry, plums and peaches. His use of the latest sequencing technology and collaborations with researchers at multiple institutions has led the the sequencing of the raspberry genome which will propel our research for years to come. Jud is a pleasure to work with and is a model student who excels in the classroom as well as the laboratory.”

David Perrine, who established the gift in memory of his wife, Franny French Perrine, was a prominent orchardist from Centralia, Illinois. He met and fell in love with Franny while at Cornell in the 1920s. At the time, Franny was a student in bacteriology and David a student in pomology.