Last week, Emporia State biology students made quite a showing in two different competitions – the Southwestern Association of Naturalists (SWAN) and the Annual Meeting of Kansas Academy of Science (KAS). The students made a clean sweep of top awards in the master’s level presentations.

In the Wilks Award Competition at the recent 60th annual meeting of SWAN held at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Nathan Holoubek, graduate biology student, won first place in the competition with his presentation entitled, “Bird Occupancy in Relation to Habitat Structure in the Oak Savanna Cross Timbers of Kansas, USA.”

The vast majority of students selected to compete for the Wilks Award Competition were Ph.D. students from universities all throughout North America. Holoubek was the only graduate student of the four final presenters.

“There is a large group of people from different backgrounds and even non-English speakers,” Holubek said. “Because it is an international conference, people from Mexico, in some cases, they don’t know English. I tried to make a presentation that accommodated to everyone.”

Each finalist gave a talk in the plenary session to be selected as the best presentation.

Bill Jensen, professor of biology and Holoubek’s thesis adviser, said that Holoubek was not only a skilled researcher but also a good presenter to deliver his significant information to the audience in a proper way.

Holoubek said this award meant a lot to him and that the work he put in paid off.

“It doesn’t matter, necessarily, if you are a doctoral student or not,” Holoubeck said. “If you work hard and get everything together well enough, you can compete on many levels.”

At the 145th Kansas Academy of Science Annual Meeting from April 5-6, Chen Yang, graduate biology student, won the award for Best Master’s Level Oral Presentation, and Brittany Miller, graduate biology student, won the award for the Best Master’s Level Poster Presentation.

Yang also won one of the two KAS Student Grant Awards for master’s level students with her project from last semester called, “Oleanolic Acid Induced Apoptosis and Autophagy in Human Malignant Melanoma Cells.”

“This is my first time giving a scientific oral presentation in a meeting,” Yang said. “Actually, I did not expect to get this award because there are many other outstanding graduate students, but I tried my best in the competition.”

Yiting Ni, biology graduate student, received first place in Poster Presentation at KAS.