Sonia Rios, a recently hired UC Cooperative Extension Subtropical Horticulture Advisor in Riverside and San Diego Counties was honored with a Dean's Graduate Medalist award from Fresno State University. Annually, the dean of each college at CSUF presents one Dean's Graduate Medalist award and Sonia was the 2015 recipient from the College of Agricultural Sciences and Technology.
Sonia was advised by Dr. Anil Shrestha at CSUF (who also was honored this year by the University) and her graduate research focused on glyphosate-resistant weeds. Over the past few years, she worked closely with a number of weed scientists at CSUF, UCCE, and UC Davis as well as the members of the pest control industry in the San Joaquin Valley in her position as a CSUF graduate student and weed research associate in Tulare County.
Congratulations Sonia!
Brad
See below for the announcement of the awardees (or access directly from CSUF at http://www.fresnostate.edu/studentaffairs/commencement/honorees-awards.html )
College of Agricultural Sciences and Technology
Sonia Inez Rios of Wasco, completed an M.S. in Plant Science with a 3.79 GPA. Having struggled in her undergraduate program due to a variety of personal situations, she persevered and has amassed an impressive list of academic, professional, and volunteer accomplishments. She balanced her graduate studies while working almost full-time as a staff research associate with the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE). As a graduate student, she was the first-author on 11 oral and eight research poster presentations and was a co-author in three peer-reviewed journal papers. Her thesis research on Palmer Amaranth was so paramount that she was interviewed on a radio program and gave talks at professional venues. She won a highly competitive international travel grant to present her work at the Weed Science Society of America's annual conference in Vancouver, Canada, and numerous other scholarships. She was selected as a United States Department of Agriculture Graduate Fellow in 2014 and was a recipient of the University of California's Milton D. And Mary M. Miller Plant Science Award and the Bill and Jane Fischer Vegetation Management Award. She is a subtropical horticulture farm adviser with UCCE serving Southern California.