UGA Honors Week: IRIS affiliates show Excellence in Research, Teaching and Engaged Scholarship


This week, April 1-5, is UGA Honors Week, celebrating excellence in professors, students and researchers all across campus. Honors Week is an annual UGA tradition dating back to the 1930s, when then-Chancellor S.V. Sanford dedicated a day to recognize outstanding students. In 2011, the event was expanded to include events recognizing faculty, staff and alumni.

“Honors Week is an opportunity to recognize members of the university community who share a deep commitment to excellence, one of the hallmarks of our great institution,” said S. Jack Hu, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost. “UGA is a national leader in public higher education because of its inspirational faculty, staff, students and alumni. I extend my heartfelt appreciation and congratulations to this year’s honorees.”

Multiple IRIS affiliates have been recognized this week. Congratulations to the awardees!

2024 Distinguished Research Professor

James E. “Jeb” Byers has been named one of 2024’s five Distinguished Research Professors. A UGA Athletic Association Professor in the Odum School of Ecology, Byers is an internationally prominent scientist in the disciplines of population, community, and marine ecology. He is best known for his research quantifying and predicting the success of biological invasions. Byers has performed some of the world’s leading ecological studies on interactions among native organisms and nonnative species, including along Georgia’s coast. He has built mechanistic mathematical models to analyze the impacts of climate change, including expansions of invasive parasites and subtropical species into the state’s marine and freshwater resources. His approach combines experimental work and fieldwork at local, regional, and continent-wide scales with computational models, providing critical theoretical insights. Byers also is known for contributions to host-parasite ecology, ecosystem engineering, and the maintenance and evolution of species-range boundaries. His body of research has been cited more than 16,500 times, with 17 papers exceeding 200 citations each.

Learn more here.

Graduate Student Excellence

Congratulations to the awardees of UGA’s Graduate School Honors Awards, recognizing current grad students and recent graduate alumni that showed strong merit in teaching, research and scholarship over the past year!

Postdoc, recent PhD graduate and N-EWN social scientist Katie Foster was recognized for Excellence in Research. Foster is an environmental anthropologist and completed her PhD in Integrative Conservation and Ecology in 2023. Her research focuses on issues of environmental governance, justice and policy related to complex multi-scalar social-ecological challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss and natural resource conflicts.

PhD candidate Cydney Seigerman was awarded an Engaged Scholarship Award for their work in Integrative Conservation and Anthropology. Seigerman is a transdisciplinary scholar guided by the premise that equity and justice are fundamental to creating more sustainable futures. They specifically study human behavior in relation to the many environmental, political, technological and cultural factors that shape water governance.

Read more about the full list of awardees here. Congratulations to the recipients!

Presidential Award of Excellence

College of Engineering undergraduate student Kate Winters was honored with a 2024 UGA Presidential Award of Excellence. The Presidential Award of Excellence is awarded to undergraduate students in their final year of study who have demonstrated outstanding academic achievement, strong extracurricular involvement, and service to and involvement in their respective school or college. Students selected for this award exemplify the best of UGA’s undergraduate student body.

Kate, a senior in environmental engineering, serves as a College of Engineering Ambassador in addition to her research with IRIS. She was officially honored with the award at a luncheon hosted by the University on April 3rd.

Read more from the College of Engineering here.