Image: With our Spring 2025 graduate student welcome reception, we welcomed eight new Plant Biology graduate students to the Department and celebrated the successes of our students. Congratulations to Jacqueline Pena, a graduate student in the lab of Douda Bensasson, who received the Wilbur Duncan Award. This award is the highest recognition awarded to students in Plant Biology and it recognizes a PBIO graduate student's excellence in two of three areas: research, teaching and service to the department. Wilbur H. Duncan (1910-2005) was a faculty member and Curator of the UGA Herbarium in what was then the Botany Department for 40 years (1938-1978). He increased the herbarium collection from 16,000 to 135,000 specimens, described 3 new plant species and published five books, three of them with his botanist wife, Marion, of 64 years and after he had officially retired. He is remembered by colleagues as a skilled field botanist, gifted teacher, field guide, author, plant photographer and friend.
