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Our Celebration

We held our annual end-of-year holiday party on December 11, 2024, at the Kenan Conference Center. Latasha Mingo, our Director of Finance and Administration, introduced our chair, Dr. Jean Cook, who shared our successes and growth from the past year. Dr. Qi Zhang also announced the monthly themes for our 2025 Inclusive Gatherings.

Jean Cook speaking at awards night 2024Qi Zhang speaking at awards night 2024Silvia Ramos speaking at awards nights 2024


Excellence Awards

Dr. Silvia Ramos announced awards while sharing quotes from the nominators for this year’s excellence awards for staff and postdoctoral awards. 

The winners of our BCBP 2024 Excellence Awards:

  • Ellie Frost and Latasha Mingo – Staff Excellence in Administration
  • Dalia Fleifel
    Dalia Fleifel, PhD Candidate

    Leiah Carey PhD – Staff Excellence in Research

  • Martha Johnson PhD – Postdoctoral Scholar Leadership Award

Wolfgang Bergmeier PhD, Director of Graduate Studies, shared the history of our student award that is given in honor of Dianne Harris, a longtime staff member in Biochemistry and Biophysics. He then announced the Dianne Harris Graduate Student Award for exemplary leadership.


What our nominators said about our awardees:

Ellie Frost and Latasha Mingo - Staff Excellence in Administration  
Ellie Frost and Latasha Mingo

Ellie

“Submitting funding proposals is pretty stressful for the applicants, but Ellie is calm, knowledgeable, very responsive, and upbeat. She answers emails super-fast, and that makes the whole remote/on-campus relationship seamless.”
“Ellie was pivotal in supporting my first grant application as faculty. She helped me develop a budget that I can adapt for other proposals and thoroughly explained considerations for planning to cover salaries for new hires.”
“Ellie helped us submit two instrument grants one NIH one NSF and did an amazing job”

Latasha

“She is professional, gets things done, and has a great attitude.”
“She is amazing and has done a great job in the transition as Jean became chair all while filling Lynn’s shoes.”
“I’d like to nominate Latasha because I feel she’s done an incredible job of going above and beyond her job description. She’s done a wonderful job of modeling enthusiasm, leadership, and a positive attitude for the administrative team and I so appreciate all of the care she puts into the department and her colleagues!”
Leiah Carey near poster
Dr. Carey presenting a research poster
Leiah Carey PhD
Leiah Carey PhD

Leiah

“I’m a first year student. Leiah Carey has helped me acclimate and feel included in the department. She is always willing to discuss her experiments and the techniques she uses in the lab.”
“for continually being a resource to the department and helping with all sorts of research questions and departmental equipment”
“She does extra service work (helps with autoclaves and trains new students in her lab). She has a great, professional attitude and a sense of humor.” “Leiah is wondefully kind and generous with her time and expertise.” “Leiah is a really hard working researcher, that finds time to help in projects from other people in the lab, helping a lot with the teamwork in the lab. She has an enormous knowledge in protein analysis by NMR and crystallography” “She helped write the department equipment supplements that brought in a new shaker in 2023 and new autoclave this year. Leiah helped update our department equipment documentation, which was quite out of date. Leiah also served on the retreat committee last year and played a major role in retreat organization and organizing the poster sessions. Given her ‘goto’ reputation, members from other labs within the department seek her out and she is always willing to help. Leiah is a rare gem and vital part of our department and is worthy of this award.”
Martha Johnson PhD postdoctoral researcher
Martha Johnson, PhD

Martha

“Martha Johnson has served as a leader organizing campus-wide postdoc events for UNC PDA- BIPOC Postdoc Alliance, or regionally for grad student/postdocs in the NC triangle through a service organization she co-founded (Phoward N Black). Martha has also impacted undergraduate education by teaching courses as an instructor of record in UNC’s chemistry department, all while maintaining her own successful research activities.”
“Dr. Johnson has put so much effort in DEI and outreach activities over the past few years in the BCBP department as well as across UNC in general. She works tirelessly to make people around her feel included and celebrated for their achievements. She is also leading a big group of stellar undergraduate students who are working on a super creative project that will culminate into a publication very soon.”

Dalia

Read about our student award news here.

Photos from our celebration

party photo Jean Cook and Aziz Sancar December 11 2024 standing