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Three Students Win 2008 Omenn Awards

06/04/2008

The Gilbert S. Omenn Award for Academic Excellence was established in 2000 in honor of former Dean Gil Omenn to recognize the outstanding achievement by a graduate student in the School who excels in scholarship and has demonstrated a commitment to the field of public health. Starting in 2005 the School selects two students per year for Omenn Awards: one master's level student and one doctoral student. This year a third award will be presented to a student receiving degrees from two departments.

Janessa Graves is receiving her Master of Public Health from the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences. She graduated cum laude from Barnard College in environmental biology. She has served in the Peace Corps in Fiji, done research on crop biodiversity in Mexico, obtained her own funding for a project on hand washing in Kenya, works full time on a large dental health promotion project among Pacific Island children, and has two active projects in San Juan County. Janessa plans to enter our Health Services PhD program.

Beth Thielen is an MD/PhD student in the Department of Global Health, Pathobiology Graduate Program. A summa cum laude graduate in microbiology from Minnesota, Beth has won a Poncin Scholarship, an ARCS Fellowship, and a CFAR predoctoral research fellowship, among many others. Her research findings in HIV have become the basis for a new direction in her lab and the foundation for an RO1 application to NIH. Outside the UW, Beth provides vision and hearing screening to Headstart students and health education classes at Hamilton Middle School.

Carolyn Hutter completed her PhD earlier this year in Epidemiology and receives her MS in Biostatistics this month. She earned an MS in Genetics at Cornell, and her thesis and dissertation make valuable and unique contributions on the use of Medelian Randomization. She has more than 20 papers in publication and communicates complex ideas clearly, a skill that also makes her an exceptional teacher. She is in high demand as a TA, winning the Outstanding TA Award in 2004, and co-organized a "Careers in Genetics" discussion for high school students.