Each year, the Department recognizes a graduating Genetics major with the Cynthia Kenyon Outstanding Undergraduate Award. The Award goes to a student based on excellence in academics, research and leadership. Students are nominated by the Faculty and the Undergraduate Affairs Committee makes the final selection. The Award is presented at the Spring semester graduation celebration. The recipient receives a cash award and the student's name is engraved on a plaque that hangs in the Genetics office.
The Faculty named the Award to honor a former UGA undergraduate, Cynthia Kenyon. In 1986 Kenyon joined the falculty at the University of California, San Francisco, where she served as a professor of biochemistry and biophysics for 27 years, was named Herbert Boyer Distinguished Professor and served as director of the Larry L. Hillblom Center for the Biology of Aging. In 2014 Dr. Kenyon accepted her current position as Vice President of Aging Research at Calico. She is a pioneer in aging research: in 1993, Kenyon showed that a single mutation could double the lifespan of the roundworm, C. elegans, sparking renewed interest in the molecular biology of aging. Kenyon earned her Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and completed her postdoctoral work with Nobel Laureate Sydney Brenner at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a former president of the Genetics Society of America. She has received many prizes for her work, including the King Faisal Prize for Medicine and the American Association of Medicine Award for Distinguished Research in the Biomedical Sciences.
Genetics majors graduating in the current academic year are encouraged to apply for the Cynthia Kenyon Outstanding Undergraduate Award.
Contact the Undergraduate Coordinator for information on applying.
Past winners of the Cynthia Kenyon Outstanding Undergraduate Award
2021 Tarun Ramesh
2020 Callan Russell
2019 Ashley Amukamara
2018 Lauren Dunavent
2017 Erin Hollander
2016 Patrick Griffin
2015 Amy Webster
2014 Philip Grayeski
2013 Drexel Neumann and Spencer Mitchell
2012 Daniel Piqué
2011 Christina Swoope
2010 Cullen Timmons
2009 Sara Pope
2008 Elizabeth A. Riggle
2007 Shannon Yu
2006 Rebekah Rogers
2005 Kelly Kopf
2004 Adrianne Nehrling
2003 Judson Lewis
2002 Frank Parker Hudson III
2001 Margaret Snoke
2000 Asa Cordle and Holly Gooding