The Committee on Awards is pleased to announce the 2010 General Meeting award laureates. Many very worthy nominations were received for each award, making the work of each Award Selection Committee as enjoyable as it was challenging. The Committee on Awards thanks everyone who participated in the awards process by making nominations or by assisting in the selection process, thus ensuring that ASM continues to honor the best in microbiology. Biographical sketches of the 2010 awardees appear below and in the next two issues of Microbe.

Roche Diagnostics Alice Evans Award

In 1928, Alice C. Evans was elected the first woman President of ASM. The Roche Diagnostics Alice C. Evans Award was created in her memory to honor ASM members who have contributed to the full participation and advancement of women in microbiology. The 2010 award laureate is Sara W. Rothman, Ph.D., Associate Science Director, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Silver Spring, Md., for her dedication to mentoring women scientists.

Rothman received her Ph.D. from Boston University and began her career at Walter Reed over 30 years ago as a research chemist. During her tenure, there have been numerous promotions while she actively volunteered. She was a founding member of the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the Association for Women in Science and served on ASM's Committee on the Status of Women in Microbiology for 16 years.

Throughout her career, Rothman has worked to make women aware of every opportunity and encouraged them to inquire, apply, and achieve. She has planned and organized countless meetings at her home and at the ASM General Meeting which focused on women in science and their professional advancement.

Rothman's efforts are not exclusively focused on younger scientists. She consistently nominates women for awards and recommends them for volunteer service. She was instrumental in the establishment of this award in 1983, as well as the Morrison Rogosa Award in 1996. The Morrison Rogosa Award recognizes outstanding research accomplishment and potential of women scientists in the former Eastern-bloc countries. Anne Morris Hooke, Ph.D., Miami University, Ohio, and Rothman's nominator remarked, "Rothman's accomplishments as a scientist and microbiologist make her an excellent role model for young women entering our discipline, but it is her outstanding work as a mentor that render her more than qualified for this award."

Carski Foundation Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award

Since 1968, the Carski Foundation Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award has honored educators for outstanding teaching of microbiology to undergraduate students and for encouraging them to subsequent achievement. John J. Tudor, Ph.D., Professor, Biology Department, St. Joseph's University, Philadelphia, Pa., has been selected the 2010 Carski Award Laureate in recognition of his 40 years of undergraduate teaching.

Tudor received his Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky, Lexington, and has taught undergraduate microbiology courses since 1970. He has developed and taught molecular genetics, molecular mechanisms of pathogenesis, and microbiology for nonscience majors. Additionally, he has taught the freshmen core courses in cell biology and genetics and general microbiology for biology majors. His general microbiology course is only offered once a year, but in many years the student demand has warranted that it be offered twice.

Technology and visuals are an integral part of his teaching, which he works to ensure is always up to date. He uses both to enhance students' comprehension and to quickly address the content when students begin to struggle. He has also used technology to hold onlineQ&Asessions so that students can contact him after class or office hours.

Tudor has taught more than 1,000 students, and more than half of them have gone on to complete advanced degrees in the biomedical sciences. He has personally mentored 75 students, and 54 of them have earned or are completing graduate and/or professional degrees. He routinely receives the highest student evaluations in his department and is consistently in the top 10% of his university. An academic advisor to 20 students each year, he is also actively involved in several educator networks and councils. "Dr. Tudor is considered to be a master teacher, and his concern for student learning is uncompromising," remarked his nominator, Samuel Conti, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

ASM Graduate Microbiology Teaching Award

ASM's Graduate Microbiology Teaching Award honors exemplary teaching and recognizes an individual for distinguished teaching of microbiology and mentoring of students at the graduate and postgraduate levels and for encouraging students to subsequent achievement.

Thomas M. Schmidt, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Michigan State University (MSU), East Lansing, is honored with the 2010 ASM Graduate Microbiology Teaching Award in recognition of his dedication to students and for fostering an intellectually stimulating environment.

Schmidt, a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, received his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University, Columbus, and completed postdoctoral fellowships at Indiana University, Bloomington, and Scripps Institute of Oceanography, San Diego, Calif. His primary research interests are microbial community diversity and function.

Known for his remarkable ability to explain very complicated material in a clear and concise manner, Schmidt is able to inspire genuine interest in his students. He consistently encourages students to go beyond simple observation and to be quantitative in their research. This approach has resulted in more rigorous thinkers and better scientists. "He continually challenges his students and postdocs to rethink, revise, and refine their own ideas and concepts," stated Schmidt's nominator, John A. Breznak of MSU.

Schmidt has advised more than 40 students and is a recipient of MSU's Teacher-Scholar Awards, a highly competitive, university-wide honor. He also codirected the Microbial Diversity course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., from 2003-2008 where he taught over 100 graduate and postgraduate students. His codirector, William W. Metcalf of the University of Illinois, Urbana, writes, "The real essence of Schmidt as a lecturer is the enthusiasm and excitement that he brings to his teaching and his ability to convey to the students what it means to do real research."

William A. Hinton Research Training Award

Renato J. Aguilera, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), has been selected to receive the 2010 William A. Hinton Research Training Award for his fostering the research training of underrepresented minorities in microbiology. The award is given in memory of William A. Hinton, a physician- research scientist and one of the first African- Americans to join ASM.

Aguilera received his B.S. and M.S. from UTEP and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He was an Assistant and Associate Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where his quality teaching was recognized by his department with the conferring of the Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award.

Known for his commitment to training and development of students, he initiated and received a National Institute of General Medical Sciences' Research Initiatives for Scientific Enhancement (RISE) grant to help fund a research experience for approximately 30 minority undergraduates at UTEP. It was recently renewed with funding for six additional undergraduates and nine Ph.D. minority trainees. Seven graduates of the RISE program are now enrolled in Ph.D. programs, and many more are currently enrolled in M.S. programs. Aguilera also established the Student Research Training Center for a majority of the student research training activities in biomedical sciences. "His educational experiences combined with an understanding of the El Paso area left him exceptionally well prepared to understand our students' current educational needs and to appreciate their hopes and dreams for the future," stated Aguilera's nominator, Michael Eastman of UTEP.

Raymond W. Sarber Awards

Recognizing students for research excellence and potential, the Raymond W. Sarber Awards are presented in honor of Raymond W. Sarber and his contributions to the growth and advancement of ASM. Ryan Johnson, an undergraduate student at Juniata College in Huntington, Pa., and Rachel Dutton, a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass., have been chosen as the 2010 laureates.

Dutton's work has focused on disulfide bonds, which are covalent bonds between cysteine residues that aid in the stability and folding of many secreted proteins. She received her undergraduate degree at the University of California, San Diego, where she worked in Kit Pogliano's lab. She is now a graduate student in Jonathan Beckwith's lab where she has used genetic, bioinformatic, and phylogenetic methods to analyze pathways for disulfide bond formation across the bacterial tree of life. She has analyzed 400 bacterial genomes for homologs of the known disulfide bond formation pathway and watched for a bias of even numbers of cysteines in exported proteins. Her bioinformatic analysis formed her hypothesis that a large group of bacteria must have an alternative pathway for disulfide bond formation. She discovered that this alternative pathway utilizes a homolog of the warfarin (Coumadin)-sensitive blood coagulation enzyme from humans, vitamin K epoxide reductase (VKOR). This work was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Dutton continued her work on the VKOR homologue of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and discovered that it replaced the normal Escherichia coli counterpart. This discovery led to an assay of the protein's activity, showing that the mycobacterial enzyme is also sensitive to anticoagulants, and to subsequent collaborations with tuberculosis and blood coagulation laboratories, and a high-throughput screening for inhibitors of the bacteria or anticoagulants.

Beckwith, Dutton's nominator, writes, "She brought a perspective on the microbial world to our lab which has resulted in initial results that were exciting enough, but now have blossomed into potentially medically useful aspects."

Nominated by his research advisor, Jennifer A. Bennett, Ph.D., Johnson has spent the past two years working in Bennett's lab on the soil bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor. Johnson examined transposon insertion mutants with developmental defects using multiple molecular and microbiological techniques. He identified the transposon insertion site for one mutant using restriction enzymes, ligation of the DNA molecules into circles, inverse PCR, and sequencing.

Bennett's lab had previously demonstrated a novel function in Streptomyces development for a group of proteins that are involved in biofilm formation and virulence in other bacteria. Johnson continued this work by analyzing single and double mutants for two EAL/GGDEF proteins that naturally contain altered catalytic sites. He recently received a Sigma Xi grant to study whether some of the proteins exhibit phosphodiesterase and/or diguanylate cyclase activity.

Johnson is President of Juniata's Tri Beta Biological Honor Society and Student Government President, Vice President of ASM's Juniata College Student Branch, a chemistry tutor, a biology laboratory teaching assistant, and a member of the track-and-field team. In addition to making many scientific presentations, he was awarded first place among poster presentations at the 2008 ASM Allegheny Branch meeting. Johnson was also awarded a 2009 ASM Undergraduate Research Fellowship.

Scherago-Rubin Award

The 2010 Scherago-Rubin Award will be presented to Claudia J. Hinnebusch in recognition of her excellent work as a bench-level clinical microbiologist. The award was established by the late Sally Jo Rubin, an active member of ASM's Clinical Microbiology Division, in honor of her grandfather, Professor Morris Scherago.

Ms. Hinnebusch received her B.S. in Biology from Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pa. She is currently a Medical Technologist, Bacteriology Laboratory, and Teaching Coordinator at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Hinnebusch's scientific interests are the classification, identification, and clinical significance of  the aerobic gram-positive cocci and gram-positive rods.

She is known for being a natural teacher and for her dedication to the patient, student, and coworker. She coordinates the bacteriology rotations for the medical technologists and the pathology and infectious disease residents. Hinnebusch has trained more than 40 postdoctoral fellows who have rotated through the bacteriology laboratory. A former trainee, Amy L. Leber, Ph.D., Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, Ohio, writes, "The most outstanding characteristic about Claudia is her dedication and unbridled enthusiasm about the identification of bacteria and the importance of the bacteriology laboratory to patient management." Hinnebusch has presented numerous posters and coordinated workshops at ASM meetings. "She has consistently demonstrated excellent teaching skills and continues to be involved in all aspects of training in bacteriology," concludes her nominator, Paul Colonna of UCLA.

TREK Diagnostic ABMM/ABMLI Professional Recognition Award

Wm. Michael Dunne, Jr., Ph.D., D(ABMM), is honored with the TREK Diagnostic ABMM/ ABMLI Professional Recognition Award for his leadership in clinical microbiology and for revolutionizing the delivery of the American Board of Medical Microbiology (ABMM) certification examination. Dunne, Medical Director, Clinical Microbiology Laboratory, Barnes-Jewish Hospital, and Professor, Department of Pathology and Immunology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, was certified by the ABMM in 1987.

"Today, very much influenced by Dunne's efforts and contributions, ABMM certification represents the single highest professional distinction that one can achieve in clinical microbiology. It has become a prerequisite for employment for doctoral-level clinical microbiology laboratory directors," states his nominator, Gary V. Doern, Ph.D., D(ABMM), University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City.

Dunne actively volunteered his time and expertise for over 20 years to the ABMM. He worked for years to ensure that the written examination truly assessed the deductive skills of a microbiologist. During his tenure as Board Chair, he eliminated the oral examination component. This elimination and the subsequent transition to online examination delivery have made the examination available worldwide. The number of examinees has skyrocketed, leading to the increased recognition of ABMM certification and clinical microbiologists.

Dunne consistently contributes to the science. With more than 100 publications, he is frequently an invited lecturer, and has served on five different editorial boards during the past 15 years. He also directs a CPEP-accredited postdoctoral training program to ensure there are well-trained scientists. Dunne epitomizes the true spirit of this award by contributing to the science, training the next generation of clinical microbiologists, and working to ensure the professional recognition of clinical microbiologists.