The eighth annual CEPCEB Special Award Ceremony was held on October 15th, 2010 from 2-4pm in the Genomics Auditorium. The following individuals were acknowledged by the Center for Plant Cell Biology for their outstanding research achievements in the 2009-10 period:

• Angelika Mustroph (postdoctoral fellow award, Julia Bailey-Serres lab)
• Tongda Xu (graduate student award, Zhenbiao Yang lab)
• Fitz-Gerald Dalia (Neil Campbell undergraduate student award, Katherine Borkovich lab)

The Center for Plant Cell Biology Award Fund was established in 2002 to provide annual awards in recognition of research excellence in areas of plant cell and molecular biology, genomics, chemistry and bioinformatics by pre-college students, undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers. The Award Fund also sponsors an annual special seminar and awards ceremony where an invited prominent scientist presents his or her work. This year the invited 2010 Noel Keen Lecturer was Philip Benfey, a National Academy of Sciences member and Paul Kramer Professor and Chair of the Biology Department at Duke University. Dr. Benfey’s research focuses on plant developmental genetics and genomics, with a particular emphasis on the origin of cell identities and stem cell populations known as meristems.

The CEPCEB Awards have a monetary value of $500 each, and awardees’ names are posted on the website and added to a permanent plaque inscribed with the names of the CEPCEB lecturer and awardees each year.