BETHESDA, MD. -- The American Society of Human Genetics will present the 2009 William Allan Award to Huntington Willard, director of the Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy at Duke University, in a ceremony at the society's 59th annual meeting Friday.
The society is the primary professional membership organization for human genetics specialists worldwide, representing nearly 8,000 researchers, academicians, clinicians, genetic counselors, nurses and others with a special interest in this area. The Allan Award recognizes substantial and far-reaching scientific contributions to human genetics, carried out over a lifetime of scientific inquiry and productivity.
Willard's work has been instrumental in the understanding of human chromosome behavior. He has completed pioneering research into the behavior of human chromosome centromeres and performed essential studies into the mechanisms of X chromosome inactivation.
The award to Willard includes a $10,000 prize.
Duke law school symposium site
DURHAM -- The government's role in compensating farmers and other land stewards for providing clean water and flood protection is the topic of a symposium at Duke Law School on Friday.
The discussion will also focus on the role of carbon offsets on public lands to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The symposium on emerging ecosystem services markets, which is free and open to the public, will bring together specialists from government, academia, and the private sector. The event is sponsored by the Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum, an interdisciplinary student-edited journal, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Office of Environmental Services and Markets.
Robert Bonnie, senior adviser for environment and climate to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack, will deliver the keynote address. Bonnie previously headed the environmental markets programs at the Environmental Defense Fund.
The symposium begins at 9 a.m. in Room 3037 at Duke Law School.
Microbiologists cite researcher
WASHINGTON -- The American Society for Microbiology has selected Eanas Aboobakar from Duke University as a 2009 award recipient of the ASM Undergraduate Research Fellowship.
The fellowship is aimed at highly competitive students who wish to pursue graduate careers in microbiology. Fellows have the opportunity to conduct full-time summer research at their institution with an ASM mentor and present their research results at the 2010 ASM general meeting in San Diego if their abstract is accepted.
Each fellow receives up to a $4,000 stipend, a two-year ASM student membership and reimbursement for travel expenses to the 2010 ASM meeting.
Joseph Heitman, the new chair of the department of molecular genetics and microbiology at Duke, is Aboobakar's mentor.
Contact Neil Offen at noffen@heraldsun.com or (919) 419-6646.
