Barbara McClintock Science Achievement Graduate Scholarship in Biology

Emily Howerton, graduate student in biology, is interested in various topics in theoretical ecology, including using competition models to analyze how species spread and coexist. A professor of Howerton’s said that “she is the once-in-a-career student who does everything well, to a degree that is without peer.” Howerton earned bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and philosophy at the College of Wooster in Ohio.

The scholarship in biology is named for Barbara McClintock, who is recognized as a pioneer in modern genetics and plant biology for her discovery of “jumping genes,” or mobile genetic elements, for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1983. She is the only woman to receive an unshared Nobel Prize in that category and was the first woman elected as president of the Genetics Society of America in 1945.