Recent accomplishments by the campus community were earned by Deepak Nadig Anantha, Brian Bockelman, Amanda Easterly, Richard Ferguson, Ashley Garcia, Andrea Laughlin, Byrav Ramamurthy, Mitch Stephenson, David Swanson, Bruno Canella Vieira and the Rural Law Opportunities Program.

Faculty/Staff

• Richard Ferguson, professor of agronomy and horticulture, received the Fertilizer Industry Roundtable Recognition Award for Innovative Technologies Advancing the Fertilizer Industry on Nov. 15 during the Fertilizer Outlook and Technology Conference in New Orleans. The award recognizes outstanding achievements in research, extension and education that centers on fertilizer technology and associated benefits to agricultural productivity and sustainability. Applicants are judged on research originality, quality and practical application as demonstrated by concrete results, letters of recommendation, dissemination of findings, contribution to sustainability and potential for international application.

Courtesy photo

A paper co-authored by (from left) Byrav Ramamurthy, David Swanson, Deepak Nadig Anantha, and Brian Bockelman earmed a top paper award during an IEEE conference in India.

• Deepak Nadig Anantha, Byrav Ramamurthy, Brian Bockelman and David Swanson are co-authors of a paper that was named the First Best Paper in the Regular Papers category at the IEEE International Conference for Advanced Networks and Telecommunications Systems, which was held in December in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India. The paper, “Differentiated Network Services for Data-Intensive Science Using Application-Aware SDN,” was based on work supported by a National Science Foundation grant. The conference is a premier IEEE forum on networking and telecommunications topics. Anantha is a graduate research assistant in computer science and engineering. Ramamurthy, Bockelman and Swanson are computer science and engineering faculty.

• Mitch Stephenson, assistant professor of agronomy and horticulture, and forage and range management specialist at the Panhandle Research and Extension Center, received the Innovative Extension Award during Nebraska Extension’s fall conference in Kearney, Nov. 28-30. Stephenson has worked with Nebraska Extension since 2015. Along with delivering presentations, organizing workshops and co-authoring several publications, Stephenson was a part of the team that developed Nebraska’s award-winning range and forage website.

Students

• Amanda Easterly and Bruno Canella Vieira are recipients of the Henry M. Beachell Fellowship, which recognizes academic excellence and research potential in the agronomic and horticultural sciences. Easterly’s research is focused on increasing wheat productivity through hybrids to meet growing populations and needs, She received a doctorate from Nebraska in December and was advices by P. Stephen Baenziger, professor of agronomy and horticulture. Vieira, an agronomy doctoral student, is focusing on understanding how incorrect herbicide application practices can affect herbicide resistance in weeds. He is advised by Greg Kruger, associate professor of agronomy.

• Ashley Garcia a graduate student in communication studies, earned a top four paper for the Communication Ethics, Activism and Social Justice Interest Group of the Central States Communication Association. She will have the opportunity to present her paper, “Negligent Nipples: FEMEN’s Self-Objectifying Protests as Global Media Events,” during the association’s annual conference in April in Milwaukee.

• Andrea Laughlin, a master’s student in dietetics, has received the Marie E. Knickrehm Scholarship from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Foundation.

Departments/Units

• The Rural Law Opportunities Program was named the 2018 American Bar Association Louis M. Brown Select Award recipient, which is chosen by a voting process. The annual award recognizes programs and projects that enable affordable access to legal services for those of moderate income in ways that are exemplary and replicable. The Rural Law Opportunities Program at Chadron State, Wayne State and the University of Nebraska at Kearney is a unique partnership with the University of Nebraska College of Law that aims to increase access to legal representation for all Nebraskans. Students from rural Nebraska are selected by the participating schools and are guaranteed a spot in the University of Nebraska College of Law if they maintain good grades in college, complete their undergraduate requirements and score well on the Law School Admission Test.

This column is a regular Friday feature of Nebraska Today. Faculty, staff and students can submit their achievements to be considered for this column via email to achievements@unl.edu. For more information, call 402-472-8515