Susan O’Donnell wins the Clarence Berg Award
Monday, August 30th, 2010Susan O’Donnell, who recently completed her PhD with Madeline Shea, has been named the winner of the 2010 Clarence Berg Award. This prize is given every other year to a student who demonstrates “scholarship, integrity, cooperativeness, consideration and a willingness to help others.” Dr. O’Donnell was an American Heart Association-funded graduate student who focused on the structural and thermodynamic bases for recognition of calcineurin by calmodulin domains. Previously, Susan was the winner of the 2006 Usha Balakrishnan Award for best poster presented at the annual meeting of the Center for Biocatalysis and Bioprocessing. She also presented her work in a plenary session of the 2007 Gibbs Conference on Biothermodynamics and received a 2008 Biophysical Society Student Research Achievement Award as well as an inaugural Gehring Award last fall.
Dr. O’Donnell is currently a post-doctoral fellow with Robert Deschenes at University of South Florida.
Susan is the 21st winner of the Berg Award, which was established by former students of Professor Berg, an internationally known amino acid biochemist who was a member of the department for 39 years. Dr. Berg is well known as the author of the 1980 book, The University of Iowa and Biochemistry from their Beginnings.
Prior winners of the Berg Award are:
- 2008 Zeynep Akyol Ataman (Shea)
- 2006 Rhonda Newman (Shea)
- 2004 Wendy Van Scyoc (Shea)
- 2002 Jon Rubach (Plapp)
- 2000 Cheryl Bailey (Donelson)
- 1998 Kristin Scott (Geyer)
- 1996 Liskin Swint Kruse (Robertson)
- 1994 Daniel Kephart (Price)
- 1992 John Dagle (Weeks)
- 1990 William Shalongo (Stellwagen)
- 1988 David Lowery (Van Ness)
- 1986 David T. Dudley (Spector)
- 1984 Tristam Parslow (Granner)
- 1982 Robert J. Gould (Spector)
- 1980 Gary L. Firestone (Heath)
- 1978 Ross C. Hardison (Chalkley)
- 1976 Richard McGee (Spector)
- 1974 Rodney L. Balhorn (Granner)
- 1972 David B. Henson (Swenson)
- 1970 Grace M. Lehrer (Barker)