Distinguished Alumni Awardees

The Alumni Relations and Development committee at SBS has announced the recipients of the annual Distinguished Alumni Awards. This is the first year that SBS is honoring a lab alumni, Reshma Shetty, who graduated in computer science at the U in 2002 but was a lab member in the Olivera lab at the SBS. She attributes her time with faculty member/PI Baldomero “Toto” Olivera as a formative experience in propelling her into co-founding in 2008 Gingko Bioworks in Boston. She has been active in the field of synthetic biology for over a decade.

In 2008 Forbes magazine named Shetty one of eight people “Inventing the Future,” and in 2011 Fast Company named her one of 100 Most Creative People in Business. She was a guest of the College of Science’s ACCESS program in 2019 where she spoke with undergraduates in STEM on women in the field and the challenges of creating a start-up.

T. Mitchell Aide received his PhD in 1989 while a member of Phyllis “Lissy” Coley’s lab and has been a professor at the University of Puerto Rico since 1992. As a successful academic he has dedicated himself to training Latin American scientists and started a company to monitor biodiversity through the use of a sophisticated platform to collect acoustic data in the wild. His efforts have significantly impacted conservation in the tropics.

Aide’s PhD work included a single-authored publication in Nature, demonstrating that the synchrony of production of young leaves for a community of tropical trees may have evolved as an adaptation to reduce herbivory by insects. A Fulbright and Smithsonian post-doctoral fellow, he has since published more than 140 peer-reviewed articles and mentored scores of students and post-docs, a service that has had profound impacts on education and conservation in Latin America.

Both Aide and Shetty were acknowledged at the SBS’s annual awards ceremony, this year virtual on ZOOM, April 28, 2021.

“We have made a few changes to the laptop specs to support the memory needed for this robust software,” said Tony Sams, new media projects specialist. “At the end of the day, we’ll have 40 laptop/headset packages for students to check out. These systems will take their learning to a whole new level.”

Distinguished Professor Denise Dearing was selected to receive a Humboldt Research Award, conferred in recognition of the awardee’s entire academic record to date. Award winners are invited to carry out research projects of their own choice in cooperation with specialist colleagues in Germany.