Three Women Scholars at Major Universities Honored With Prestigious Awards

Davene M. White, a clinical assistant professor in the department of pediatrics and child health at Howard University in Washington, D.C., is the inaugural recipient of the Director’s Award from the Office of Research on Women’s Health of the National Institutes of health. She also serves as the director of the Howard University Hospital CARES public health program.

White earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Howard University. She holds a neonatal nurse practitioner degree from Georgetown University and a master of public health degree from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Julia Bailey-Serres, a distinguished professor of genetics and director of the Center for Plant Cell Biology at the University of California, Riverside, has been chosen to receive the 2017 Stephen Hales Prize from the American Society of Plant Biologists. She played a key role in the discovery and analysis of the gene that allows rice to survive under water.

Dr. Bailey-Serres is a graduate of the University of Utah and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Kathleen M. Rasmussen, the Nancy Schlegel Meinig Professor of Maternal and Child Nutrition in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, received the Conrad A. Elvehjem Award for Public Service in Nutrition from the American Society for Nutrition. Her research focuses on maternal nutrition and its effects on long-term health outcomes for women and their children.

Dr. Rasmussen began teaching at Cornell in 1981 and was promoted to full professor in 1996. She is a graduate of Brown University and holds master’s and doctoral degrees in nutrition from Harvard University.