Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Accolades for Annie's hard work

It has been a good spring for Dr. Powell. She has recently been promoted to "Instructor in Medicine" which means Annie is out of her Post Doctoral Fellowship (in under 3 years) and is now on the first step of the faculty ladder. Her work and lab situation are similar to before but she is now setting up a plan to get her own funding sources and begin working on her independent projects. A very exciting time in her career!


Then, this last week she attended a Research Symposium at Vanderbilt and presented her work at a poster session. She won "Best in Category: Cancer Biology"! She has long been good at composing her work into visual form and showed again her attention to detail, thoroughness in thought and knowledge in her field of study.


That was Wednesday and on Friday she attended a Vanderbilt conference for the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology. At the end of the conference, there was to be awarded a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Year... she was that Postdoctoral Fellow! Her dedication to the science and furthering of the understanding of cancer biology in the colon was made apparent to the committee and they awarded her this honor.

Now for the bonus round. Later this month she will attend the American Gastroenterological Association meeting in Orlando, FL. With her submission representing her current work, they chose her and only 2 others amongst all participants worldwide to receive the Horizon Pharma Fellow Abstract Award. Their selection process was summed up as "Awardees will be selected based on novelty, significance of the proposal, clarity of the abstract and contribution of the applicant."

I am so proud of Annie for her continual pursuit of excellence yet balanced approach to life. Many in academic science never get such awards yet spend night and day in their labs thinking that more time=more success but Annie gives her family equal attention and dedication as she does her science.