The Department is delighted to recognize the 2023 awardees of the The Elizabeth WagnerScholarship.

Lillian Ebeling-Koning earned the award to complete research in the lab of Dr. Jonathan Jabobs in the Department of Plant Pathology. Her project examines factors that promote the spread of Xanthomonus transluces, the bacteria that cause bacterial leaf streak in barley. Lillian was able to present some of her work at our annual open house in September.

Radhika Abeywickrama  earned the award to complete research in the lab of Dr. Anna Dobritsa. Her project will identify genes involved in pattern formation in pollen, with a focus on genes that control pollen aperture formation in Arabidopsis thaliana. Radhika was able to present some of her work at our annual open house in September.

These awards were funded by the The Elizabeth Wagner Scholarship fund.

Elizabeth Wagner was born in 1912. She earned her bachelor’s degree at OSU in 1933, putting herself through school with a scholarship and a job washing dishes in the cafeteria. She then earned a master’s (1934) and a Ph.D. (1936) in plant physiology, publishing works on the effects of insecticides and inert dusts on bean plants and on yellow coleus. She went on to marry geneticist Sheldon C. Reed, and together they were pioneers for the use of Drosophila in population genetics studies, as well as becoming early proponents of genetic counseling.

Dr. Wagner Reed also published works investigating the effects of sexism on women scientists including a study on the productivity and work of 70 female scientists, and a book entitled American Women in Science Before the Civil War. This work informed her mentorship of younger women through the group Graduate Women in Science.

The  Elizabeth Wagner Scholarship fund was endowed in 2002 by  her son William Reed of Seattle. Consider supporting the fund here.