This column offers a sampling of honors recently awarded to UC Davis faculty, staff and units:

Lesley Randall, a staff research associate in plant sciences, won first prize in the 2007 Margaret Flockton Award for Excellence in Botanical Illustration. Presented annually by the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney, Australia, the honor recognizes botanical illustrations in scientific publications and commemorates the contributions Margaret Flockton made to Australian scientific botanical art. Randall received the award for her illustration of the vine known as Aristolochia gigantea.

Postdoc Moran Wang has been awarded the prestigious J. Robert Oppenheimer Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The JRO fellowship is awarded to individuals who display extraordinary ability in scientific research and show clear and definite promise of becoming outstanding leaders in the research they pursue.

After receiving his doctorate in Engineering Thermophysics from Tsinghua University in China, Wang spent one and a half years working as a postdoc in the mechanical engineering department at Johns Hopkins University. He then came to UC Davis and joined the research group of professor Ning Pan, a faculty member in textiles and clothing, to continue his work on computational modeling of multi-physical behaviors of complex materials systems.

UC Davis recently won a 2007 Achieve-ment Award from the statewide California Park and Recreation Society for its role in the Oct. 20 Davis Neighbors' Night Out, an effort between the university, Associated Students of UC Davis and the city of Davis. The Achievement Award, in the Recreation and Community Program category, recognizes excellence in recreation and community services program planning. In its second year, the Davis Neighbors' Night Out event encouraged citizens to sponsor neighborhood and apartment block parties and to get outside to meet and socialize with their neighbors. More than 80 groups and individuals held events last fall ranging from block parties to barbecues and cookie exchanges.

Peter Siegel, vice provost for Information and Educational Technology, has been elected to the board of trustees for Internet2. His three-year term begins May 6. Internet2 — an advanced networking consortium whose members are drawn from research and academic communities and technology leaders from industry and government — provides network capabilities and partnership opportunities for the development and use of revolutionary Internet technologies. Siegel is also chair of Internet2's research advisory council and, as a member of the strategic planning steering committee, is leading the group writing the strategic plan. Finally, he co-chairs the joint EDUCAUSE-Internet2 security task force.

Helen Raybould, a professor and chair of anatomy, physiology and cell biology in the School of Veterinary Medicine, has been selected by the American Gastroenterological Association's Foun-dation for Digestive Health and Nutrition as one of the association's outstanding women in science for 2008. The award, to be presented in May, recognizes exemplary contributions by Raybould and 23 other female scientists to the field of digestive disease science. Raybould studies mechanisms by which nutrients are detected by the gut wall and how this information is conveyed to the central nervous system to regulate gastrointestinal function. She explores how these processes may play a role in bowel disease and obesity.

Hanspeter Witschi, a professor emeritus in the Department of Molecular Biosciences in the School of Veterinary Medicine, received the Merit Award for 2008 from the Society of Toxicology. The award recognizes his distinguished contributions to the field of toxicology throughout his career. The society referred to Witschi as "a thinking man's pathologist" who published seminal articles in pulmonary toxicology, adaptation to toxicant exposure, second-hand smoke and lung carcinogenesis.

— Dateline staff