Graduate School to honor dissertation prize winners in hooding ceremony

LAWRENCE -- Winners of the Dorothy Haglund and the Argersinger $1,000 prizes for outstanding dissertations at the University of Kansas will be honored during the 4 p.m. Saturday, May 17, hooding ceremony for the Graduate School at the Lied Center of Kansas.

Pannirselvam Kanagaratnam (pa-neer-SEL-vam ka-na-ga-RAT-nam) in electrical engineering and computer science won the Dorothy Haglund (HAYG-lund) Prize for his dissertation, "Airborne Radar for High-Resolution Mapping of Internal Layers in Glacial Ice to Estimate Accumulation Rate."

Christopher Wiethoff (WEET-hoff) in pharmaceutical chemistry won the Marnie and Bill Argersinger Award for his dissertation, "Structural and Functional Analysis of Nonviral Gene Delivery Systems."

Diana Carlin, dean of the Graduate School and International Programs, said, "The Haglund and Argersinger dissertation prizes honor Dorothy Haglund's and Dean William Argersinger's efforts to improve graduate education, and we celebrate the creation of new knowledge and research by awarding these outstanding graduate students."

The Haglund Prize for an outstanding doctoral dissertation was established in 1979 through the generosity of former vice chancellor and Dean William J. Argersinger Jr., his wife, Marnie, and their friends, in cooperation with the KU Endowment Association. The prize was established to honor the late Dorothy Haglund, who served KU graduate students from 1940 until her retirement in 1983. In 1992, Argersinger and his wife established a fund to provide an additional dissertation prize. Before a dissertation may be nominated into the competition for either the Haglund or Argersinger dissertation prize, doctoral candidates must pass their dissertation defense with honors.

Four more doctoral candidates whose dissertations were nominated for the dissertation prizes will be recognized at Saturday's hooding ceremony. They are:

 • Jennifer Elizabeth Golden, medicinal chemistry

 • Kerry Anne Morgan, history of art

 • Lizette Annette Peter, teaching and leadership

 • Christine Michele Robinson, sociology