UW faculty win prestigious awards
Throughout the winter, members and departments of the University of Wyoming (UW) College of Agriculture, Life Sciences and Natural Resources (CALSNR) have been celebrated for their exceptional efforts and accomplishments.
UW Celebration of Excellence
UW recognized the achievements of outstanding faculty and university departments during its third annual Celebration of Excellence in Research and Innovation on Jan. 22, including members of CALSNR.
Thomas Boothby, an associate professor of molecular biology, received the UW Distinguished Researcher Award, which is given to a researcher with the highest annual research expenditures averaged over the last three years.
His research focuses on how organisms survive extreme environments and how to make practical use of this knowledge for elevating some of society’s most pressing problems, such as increasing access to medicine and food security.
The Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit received the UW Exemplary Research Culture Award, bestowed upon a department with the highest per-faculty research expenditures and innovation portfolio.
The unit, led by Director Matt Kauffman, is currently one of 43 U.S. Geological Survey Cooperative Research Units nationwide. Their offices, programs and personnel are embedded within the UW Department of Zoology and Physiology.
Qian-Quan Sun, Department of Zoology and Physiology professor and director of the Wyoming Sensory Biology Center, received the UW Distinguished Research Service Award.
This award is given to a faculty or staff member who has made major contributions to UW’s research services and infrastructure.
Lauren Shoemaker, an associate professor of botany, received a Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The CAREER Award is one of NSF’s most prestigious awards in support of early career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.
The university also honored two faculty members from CALSNR for their contributions to UW’s research and innovation landscape.
The College Honoree Award winners are Bledar Bisha, an associate professor of food microbiology and head of the Department of Animal Science, and Grace Shearrer, an assistant professor of family and consumer sciences.
NIH IDeA Program Award
A longtime UW faculty member who led the IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence Program in Wyoming for many years has been honored nationally for his efforts.
Department of Zoology and Physiology Professor Scott Seville, a former senior associate dean of CALSNR, received the prestigious 2026 W. Fred Taylor PhD Award for outstanding contributions to the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) IDeA Program.
Estes Memorial Teaching Award
A UW faculty member was recently bestowed a top teaching honor from the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.
Ramesh Sivanpillai, an instructional professor in the Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center and UW School of Computing, recently received the Estes Memorial Teaching Award from the organization.
Sivanpallai has a longtime association with CALSNR and frequently works with students from farming and ranching backgrounds.
Since 2004, Sivanpillai says he has counted 230 unique projects in which students recruited him for his assistance. Of those, 87 dealt with crops, 60 focused on range mapping, 27 were about wildfires, 18 involved water issues and 14 concentrated on forest projects.
This article was originally published by UW Ag News on March 6.
