Recent achievements for the campus community were earned by Katie Campbell, Shudipto Dishari, Jeremy Hiller, Huang Li, Joseph Mendola, Ken Price, Rebecca Roston, Abbey Snyder, Carlos Urrea, Lan Xu and the College of Business.
Honors
The College of Business climbed five spots to No. 23 among public universities and No. 36 overall in the five-year Texas A&M University/University of Georgia ranking of U.S. business schools for management research productivity. The annual index evaluates institutions based on faculty publications in the field’s top academic journals. For 20 years, TAMUGA Ranking of Management Department Research Productivity has tracked contributions from faculty in management departments to eight influential scholarly journals. Learn more here.
Katie Campbell, a doctoral student in natural resources sciences, won a 2025 Meritorious Graduate Student Award from the School of Natural Resources for her many accomplishments, including leading research on the reproductive health of male African elephants. Campbell has been studying 18 male elephants, called bulls, at zoos across the country, and helped establish the first elephant sperm bank in Omaha.
The research team led by Shudipto Dishari, McCollum Associate Professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, won the American Society for Engineering Education's Best Overall Zone Paper Award. The national award selects from top papers submitted by 12 sections across 4 ASEE zones. The paper highlights an important and much-needed work for K-12 education. The research was supported by Dishari's NSF CAREER award. Read more about the award and Dishari's research here.
Huang Li, biochemistry, was named one of 30 “New Investigators” by the U.S. Department of Energy. The department’s Joint Genome Institute selected this group of principal investigators — none of whom have previously led projects supported by the institute’s Community Science Program — to pursue genomic research related to the bioeconomy. Li will analyze how modified green algae and oilseed crops differ in gene expression level and network. The collaborative project aims to identify promising targets and components to improve respiration and energy efficiency at the cellular level.
Abbey Snyder, graphic designer, and Jeremy Hiller, a research manager, each received a 2025 Staff Recognition Award at the School of Natural Resources' Spring Banquet in April. The award typically recognizes two staff members per year for their positive contributions.
Ken Price, Hilligass University Professor of American Literature and director of the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, earned the Julian P. Boyd Award from the Association for Documentary Editing. The award is given every three years and is the highest award presented by the association. The award commemorates Boyd’s commitment to excellence and the breadth of his scholarly interests by honoring a senior scholar for distinguished contribution to the study of American history and culture. The chair of the committee said, "the award committee received several excellent nominations, but the decision was unanimous, as was the belief that recognition of your many years of service to the ADE, your contributions to American historical and cultural scholarship, and your dedication to teaching and mentoring is long overdue." Price also is the co-director of the Walt Whitman Archive and co-director of the Charles W. Chesnutt Archive.
Carlos Urrea, professor of agronomy and horticulture, received a Journal of Plant Registrations 2024 Editor’s Citation for Excellence. The awards recognize the professional commitment and dedication of volunteer reviewers and editors who help maintain the high standard and quality of papers published in the journal.
Lan Xu, research manager in the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture grain quality laboratory, received the department’s Staff Advisory Committee Professional Development Award. The award provides funding of up to $500 to attend a professional event. Xu will attend the 2026 Wheat Quality Council Annual Meeting.
Appointments
Rebecca Roston, biochemistry, is joining the editorial board of The Plant Cell, a leading international journal that publishes novel research of special significance in plant biology. Roston brings expertise in cold stress tolerance in plants, membranes, membrane lipid analyses and chloroplast biology.
Publications
Joseph Mendola, professor of philosophy, will publish "The Neural Structure of Consciousness" June 30 with Cambridge University Press. From the press's website: Consciousness is an intriguing mystery, of which standard accounts all have well-known difficulties. This book examines the central question about consciousness: that is, the question of how phenomenal features of our experience are related to physical features of our nervous system. Using the way in which we experience color as a central case, it develops a novel account of how consciousness is constituted by our neural structure, and so presents a new physicalist and internalist solution to the hard problem of phenomenal consciousness, with respect specifically to sensory qualia. The necessary background in philosophy and sensory neurophysiology is provided for the reader throughout. The book will appeal to a range of readers interested in the problems of consciousness.
