Awards and recognition

Mohana Kuppuswamy Parthasarathy

Psychology

Mohana Kuppuswamy Parthasarathy is an Optometrist from India. She is doing her postdoctoral fellowship with Michael Webster in the Department of Psychology. Her current research is focused on visual adaptation with multifocal contact lenses and medical images. Her areas of research interest include visual adaptation, perceptual learning, medical imaging and community health.

Daniel Haden

Physics

Daniel Haden is a physicist who earned his degree from the University of Nebraska in the generation of x-ray radiation from short-pulse lasers. His research interests include high-intensity lasers, computational physics and high energy density physics. Currently, Daniel is researching electron-ion equilibration in warm-dense-matter in a postdoctoral fellowship under the supervision of Thomas White in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Meet Katelyn McDonough, 2022 Postdoc Mentoring Awardee

Katelyn McDonough is the 2022 recipient of the Postdoctoral Award for Exceptional Mentoring. She demonstrates an outstanding ability to balance excellence in mentoring along with excellence in research and scholarship, including strengths in collaborative efforts, publication, and presentation records. Katelyn is an excellent role model for students and has supervised over 90 undergraduate and graduate students throughout the course of her career. Her nominators for this award noted "She is patient and giving with her time and works to elevate those around her". For her outstanding mentorship, Katelyn was honored at this year's Honor the Best Ceremony.

Katelyn is a Postdoctoral Scholar with the Great Basin Paleoindian Research Unit in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Reno. As an archaeologist, Katelyn looks at material remains to investigate past relationships between people, diet, health, and ecosystems in western North America over the past 14,000 years. During her postdoc, Katelyn is working with plants, parasites, coprolites (ancient feces), and tools from archaeological sites in Nevada and Oregon to understand what people’s lives and environments were like in the past.

This summer Katelyn is partnering with Dr. Geoffrey Smith and graduate student Richie Rosencrance, both from the University of Nevada, Reno, and University of Oregon archaeologist Dennis Jenkins to lead an archaeological field school in central Oregon. Field school gives students an opportunity to gain hands-on experience doing archaeological fieldwork and enhances their understanding of the Great Basin’s natural and cultural history. This will be Katelyn’s tenth year teaching the field school and she looks forward to many more seasons ahead. Katelyn enjoys working with students in classroom, lab, and field settings, and views mentorship as one of the most fulfilling aspects of working in academia.