Five students were awarded the annual Guy and Giese Graduate Student Fellowship. The Giese Graduate Fellowship was created in memory of Henry Giese, professor of structures and environment areas for Iowa State University’s Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Department (ISU ABE). The Harold and Katherine Guy Graduate Fellowship was designed to promote research done in soil and water conservation.
The following students are this year’s recipients:
Emily Warning is a third year doctoral student in the agriculture water management group under Matt Helmers, director of the Iowa Nutrient Research Center and professor. Her research focuses on fertilizer timing on cover crops and the impact it has on subsurface drainage water quality.
Brady Nahkala is an environmental science major in his second year. Nahkala is currently conducting research on the flooding dynamics of prairie potholes in agricultural areas. His future goals include creating an online tool for field management decisions that can benefit producers with financial and ecological benefits.
Vitor Martins is a third year graduate student working under Amy Kaleita, ABE professor. Martins’ research is focused on deep learning methods in land cover classification. Specifically, he is researching the convolutional neural network and multi-layer perceptron algorithms to simplify image classification for data in environmental science.
Suzanne Leonard is a fourth year student advised by Hongwei Xin, former director of the Egg Industry Center and assistant dean of research, and Brett Ramirez, assistant professor, studying animal production systems. Her research topic is working on optimizing housing designs for sows. Leonard hopes to work in extension upon graduation.
Ben Smith is an industrial and agricultural technology student under Brett Ramirez. Smith’s research is focused on implementing technological solutions in the barn environment in the swine industry. Smith is additionally a lecturer in Technology Systems Management 327 on animal production systems. He hopes to pursue a career in academia or industry.