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

David Kyle, executive director of the Gifford Center for Population Studies, was recently invited to testify before the California State Senate in Los Angeles. Kyle, a well-known scholar on issues involving forced labor and human trafficking, told the Committee on Labor and Industrial Relations that 25 million to 30 million people worldwide are in slavery, including those who make many of the products sold in California.

Susan Cobey, manager of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, has received the 2009 California State Beekeepers’ Association’s Distinguished Service Award for her service to the honey bee industry. Cobey was recognized for improving stock, teaching advanced beekeeping courses on queen bee rearing and instrument insemination, and pushing to develop import protocol to diversify the U.S. honey bee populations.

Ann King Filmer and Karen Klonsky have been appointed by California Department of Food and Agriculture Secretary A.G. Kawamura to three-year terms on the California Organic Products Advisory Committee. Filmer is director of communications for CA&ES, and is serving as the environmental representative on COPAC. Klonsky is a specialist in Cooperative Extension in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, and is serving a second term as a technical representative on COPAC. COPAC board members advise state officials on the California Organic Program on issues related to the California Organic Products Act and the federal Organic Foods Production Act.

Missy Borel, program manager at the UC Davis California Center for Urban Horticulture, has been selected to participate in the 2009-2010 California Agricultural Leadership Program. Her 24-person class, the 40th selected in the program’s history, was recently inaugurated in Sacramento. The California Agricultural Leadership Program is an intensive two-year fellowship that offers professional and personal leadership development experience to program participants.

The UC Natural Reserve System has awarded grants to several UC Davis graduate students for their independent and field science studies at NRS reserves. They are: Michelle Afkhami, doctoral student in population biology, Sarah Gravem, doctoral student in ecology, Clarissa Sabella, doctoral student in population biology, Kelly Smith, doctoral student in ecology, William Wetzel, doctoral student in population biology, and Christopher Woodcock, M.F.A. student in art.

Associate professor Kathy Stuart of history was recently awarded the Hans Rosenberg Prize for her article “Suicide by Proxy: The Unintended Consequences of Public Executions in 18th-century Germany,” by the Conference Group for Central European History, an affiliate of the American Historical Association. The prize is given biennially for the best article in the area of Central European History published in North America in the preceding two years.

Richard J.D. Pan, an associate clinical professor of pediatrics in the UC Davis School of Medicine, has been selected to receive the 2010 Physician Humanitarian Award from the Medical Board of California, the state government agency that licenses and regulates physicians. Pan is a leading health-care reformer, child-health advocate and medical educator. The award will be presented in July.