By:
Chuck Woods (352) 392-1773 x 281Source(s):
P.K. Nair pknair@ufl.edu, (352) 392-846-0880
John Bellow bellow@coaps.fsu.edu, (850) 645-1253
GAINESVILLE, FLA.—P.K. Nair, a distinguished professor of agroforestry at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, and his former graduate student, John Bellow, have been selected by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) to receive awards for their scientific contributions.
Nair will receive the Scientific Achievement Award and Bellow will receive the Outstanding Doctoral Research Award in August 2005 at the 12th IUFRO World Congress in Brisbane, Australia. The awards, which include a scroll and $1,500 honorarium, are presented every five years.
“This is the first time that an advisor-advisee team has been selected independently to receive the organization’s outstanding recognition for separate scientific accomplishments at the same world event,” Nair said.
The purpose of the Scientific Achievement Award is to recognize distinguished individual achievements in the fields of research covered by IUFRO. Nair, who is director of the Center for Subtropical Agroforestry in the UF/IFAS School of Forest Resources and Conservation, is a pioneering researcher, educator and world leader in agroforestry.
He has been editor-in-chief of Agroforestry Systems since 1994 and has served on the editorial board of Plant and Soil for six years. He served as chair of the Global Organizing Committee for the 1st World Congress of Agroforestry in Orlando in July 2004.
During 2004, Nair received the International Service in Crop Science Award from the Crop Science Society of America, and the Barrington-Moore Award in Forest Biology from the Society of American Foresters. He also received a Distinguished International Educator of the Year Award from UF.
Nair has a doctoral degree in agronomy from Pantnagar Agricultural University, India; a doctor of science in agriculture from Goettingen University, Germany; and an honorary doctor of agriculture degree from Kyoto University, Japan.
Bellow’s award is for “path-breaking doctoral dissertations, including post-doctoral or other scientific activities during the five-year period preceding the IUFRO Congress.”
Bellow, who received his doctoral degree from UF in 2004, is one of seven scientists selected for the 2005 award. The title of his dissertation is Tree-Crop Interactions and Socioeconomic Characteristics of Fruit-Tree-Based Agroforestry in the Western Highlands of Guatemala.
As a doctoral student, Bellow also was a Named Presidential Fellow at UF/IFAS. He is now a postdoctoral researcher with the Southeastern Climate Consortium in the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies at Florida State University in Tallahassee.
During the previous five-year award cycle, Reinhold Muschler, another graduate student under Nair’s supervision, received an Outstanding Dissertation Award in 2000 at the IUFRO Congress in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
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