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Relevant Research

CALS graduate students address important issues and blaze paths to future careers with their GSRS research projects.

N.C. State University’s eighth annual Graduate Student Research Symposium, held April 19, showcased the outstanding quality and diversity of graduate research at the university. There were 42 entries from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences among the more than 200 poster presentations representing research conducted in 62 graduate programs.

Featured here are the research projects of four CALS students, Miranda Ganci, Gourishankar Karoshi, Elizabeth Harris and Kevin Stallings. Their research holds promise for valuable applications and benefits to human health, the environment and the economy – and also has given them a leg up on the work they hope to pursue in their careers.

  • Stopping aggressive boxwood blight Miranda Ganci wants to work as an Extension agricultural agent or in the crop protection industry. Already, she’s playing those roles. Expecting to receive her master’s degree in 2014, Ganci is studying ways to design mitigation strategies against box blight, an aggressive disease that threatens the economic viability of the boxwood industry.
  • Making the methane conversion process value-added and eco-friendly Gourishankar Karoshi’s entrepreneurial spirit was reflected in his explorations of a process that takes an abundant greenhouse gas and an abundant agricultural waste product and potentially yields value-added and eco-friendly results.
  • Strategy to inhibit ovarian cancer in hens could benefit human health Elizabeth Harris is conducting a large-scale clinical trial assessing the effects of a synthetic compound on ovarian cancer rates in hens. The study could have important implications for reducing cancer rates in woman.
  • Pinehurst No. 2 goes native Kevin Stallings is studying the vegetation at a storied golf course, all in an effort to develop sustainable management strategies that can be applied there and at other courses.

— Terri Leith