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

Plant Pathology Professor Pamela Ronald was recently selected to receive a 2009 Science in Society Journalism Award, sponsored by the National Association of Science Writers, for her op-ed, “The New Organic,” which was published March 16, 2008, in the Boston Globe. The article argues that technological anxiety — not science — drives the opposition to genetic engineering.

Bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey, manager of UC Davis’ Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, has won the 2009 Outstanding Service to Beekeeping award from the Western Apicultural Society. Cobey teaches advanced beekeeping courses on queen bee rearing and insemination.

Robert Szabo, UC Davis professor of orthopaedic surgery and plastic surgery, was recently named the president-elect of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand. He will serve as president until Oct. 9, 2010.

Five residents at UC Davis Health System — Shannon Clark, Claudia Krispel, Kamlesh Patel, Demetra Stamm and Aubrey Yao — are the initial recipients of the Sarah C. Armstrong Award for Compassionate Care. The award is intended to recognize residents and fellows who have demonstrated exemplary patience and compassion in the care of patients.

Bryan Jenkins, a professor of biological and agricultural engineering, was recently awarded the 2009 Johannes Linneborn Prize at the 17th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition in Hamburg, Germany. The prize was established to recognize outstanding contributions to the development of energy from biomass.

Four-year-old UC Davis patient Kayla Vittek, and her doctor, Craig McDonald, a professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation who specializes in the treatment of children and adults with muscular dystrophy, were featured on a segment of the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Association Labor Day Telethon. McDonald directs the adult neuromuscular disease program, the pediatric rehabilitation outpatient clinics and the Muscular Dystrophy Association Neuromuscular Disease Clinic.

— Dateline staff