Campus News

Two receive Graduate Student Mentoring Award

By SUE WUETCHER

Published January 9, 2014 This content is archived.

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Sharon Evans.

Sharon Evans

Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen.

Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen

UB faculty members Sharon Evans and Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen are the recipients of the 2013-14 Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring Award, administered by the Graduate School to recognize UB faculty for their support and development of graduate students through their mentoring activities.

The Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring Award is given annually to a member of the graduate faculty who has demonstrated “truly outstanding and sustained support and development of graduate students from course completion through research and subsequent career placement,” according to John T. Ho, vice provost for graduate education and dean of the graduate school.

Recipients are recognized publicly at the annual Celebration of Faculty and Staff Excellence held during the fall semester.

Evans is professor of oncology in the Department of Immunology at Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) and in UB’s Roswell Park Graduate Division. She joined RPCI in 1987 and the Graduate Division in 1988. She received a PhD in physiology/immunology from the Graduate Division in 1984 and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Medical Oncology and an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Molecular Immunology, both at RPCI.

Evans’ research focuses on defining the molecular mechanisms that control the trafficking patterns of lymphocytes throughout the body, with an aim toward developing novel therapeutic strategies to enhance the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapy. Author or co-author of 60 scholarly publications, her work has been funded by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, both part of the National Institutes of Health.

Evans has mentored more than 30 PhD, MD/PhD and master’s students, as well as postdoctoral surgical fellows and undergraduate summer students. She served as director of graduate studies for the Graduate Immunology Program at RPCI from 2010-13, overseeing the day-to-day training of 25 doctoral students in the graduate program. She also has mentored doctoral and postdoctoral trainees supported by National Research Service Awards.

Bagchi-Sen, a professor in the Department of Geography, College of Arts and Sciences, has been department chair since 2010. A UB faculty member since 1993, she also served as the geography department’s director of graduate studies from 2000-04 and co-director of UB’s Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender — informally known as the Gender Institute — from 2009-10.

Her administrative experience includes stints as a fellow in the UB Faculty in Leadership Program, working in the Office of the President in 2005-06, and as a fellow of the American Council on Education, working in the Chancellor’s Office at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2006-07. In May 2009, she was a visiting scholar at the Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Goteborg University in Sweden.

An urban-economic geographer, her research interests include innovation and industry studies, foreign direct investment, and biotech and bioenergy.

Bagchi-Sen has co-edited a textbook, “Economic Geography: Past, Present and Future,” and is author or co-author of nearly 60 scholarly publications.

An adviser to numerous PhD and master’s students, as well as a member of dissertation and thesis committees, she is UB’s nominee for the 2013-14 Geoffrey Marshall Mentoring Award administered every spring by the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools.