We honor three graduate students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
They are
Akshita Gopal
through Biochemistry and
Kithmee De Silva
through Plant Biology
(for the 2025 Govindjee and Rajni Awards) and
Ratna Karatgi
through EEB
(for the 2025 Robert Emerson Award).
Gopal AB, Lv H, et al (2025). Characterization of two non-competing antibodies to influenza H3N2 hemagglutinin stem reveals its evolving antigenicity. bioRxiv; DOI: 10.1101/2025.03.24.644842
Congratulations to Kithmee De Silva (kithmee2@illinois.edu) for receiving the 2025 "Govindjee and Rajni Govindjee Award for Excellence in Biological Research". Kithmee is currently a plant biology graduate student, working, as a research assistant, under the mentorship of Dr. Mathew Brooks of USDA in Urbana-Champaign Her research interests are in “Photosynthesis”; “Molecular Biology”; and Bioinformatics. Kithmee had her B.Sc., in Bioinformatics, in 2020 from the University of Colombo, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Her current research explores how plants integrate environmental signals to coordinate photosynthesis and nitrogen use, using gene regulatory networks across transcriptomic and epigenetic landscapes.
For a recent publication, see: De Silva K, Coelho C, Gao J & Brooks MD (2025). Shining light on Arabidopsis regulatory networks integrating nitrogen use and photosynthesis. The Plant Journal (Accepted April 28, 2025). DOI: 10.1111/tpj.70211
A photograph of Ratna Karatgi (on the right), the 2025 winner of the Robert Emerson Memorial Award,
with Professor Rebecca Fuller (on the left).
Source: Ty Noel, Communicator Coordinator, School of Integrative Biology, UIUC
Rajni and Govindjee congratulate Ratna Karatgi for the 2025 "Robert Emerson Memorial Award". Ratna is a graduate student of Professor Rebecca (Becky) Fuller (Head and Professor, Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior, School of Integrative Biology) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ratna’s research deals with ‘color polymorphism and variation in visual system; and phenotypic plasticity (see below).
Karatgi R and Fuller RC (2025) When rivals are absent: Male aggression towards females in bluefin killifish. Ecology and Evolution 15(3): p.e71048.
Chan J, Karatgi R, Malone E, Patel K, Shamsyna V and Fuller RC (2025) Costs of delayed mating opportunities, overripening, and mate choice in killifish. Ichthyology & Herpetology 113(2): 225-232.
For information on Fuller’s laboratory, see:
beckyfullerlab.weebly.com;
and for Ratna Karatgi, see:
sib.illinois.edu/directory/profile/karatgi2.