UTIA soil scientist receives Women in Science National Mentoring Award

Former mentees nominated Sindhu Jagadamma for honor

2025-11-11

(Press-News.org) As a mentor, Sindhu Jagadamma, associate professor of soil science at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, helps her students increase their self-confidence and push themselves to persevere through adversity, traits she learned to improve in herself as a young girl from a small town in India.

Former mentees who worked with Jagadamma in the Sustainable Soil Management Lab nominated her for the Women in Science Mentoring Award, given by the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America and Soil Science Society of America. She received the award at the three societies’ annual conference (CANVAS 2025), held November 9-12 in Salt Lake City.

The Women in Science Mentoring Award recognizes an individual whose efforts have encouraged women or girls in the sciences. Mentoring efforts may be demonstrated by such things as the number of women mentored in academic, government or industry positions; assisting students in presenting and publishing their work, finding financial aid and providing career guidance; providing psychological support, encouragement and strategies for maintaining work-life balance for early-career professionals in agronomy, crops, soils, and environmental sciences; and continued interest in the individual professional advancement of women scientists.

“Among the many responsibilities of a faculty member, mentoring, particularly of female and minority students, gives me the most excitement and satisfaction. Growing up as a girl child of illiterate parents from a remote village in India, I firmly believe that mentoring support is critical for women. I shape my mentoring approaches mostly from my personal experiences, as I deeply understand the barriers many women face in their personal and professional lives,” Jagadamma said.

Jagadamma, who studies ways to mitigate soil and environmental problems associated with conventional farm management practices, also won the Soil and Water Conservation Society’s 2025 Conservation Research Award, another national recognition that was presented in August. Ten years after earning her bachelor’s degree in agricultural sciences from Kerala Agricultural University in India, Jagadamma came to the United States to begin her graduate studies. While married and having a child, she earned her master’s and doctoral degrees from The Ohio State University. She came to Tennessee as a postdoctoral researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2010 and then moved to University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s College of Engineering as a postdoctoral researcher in 2014. In 2016, she joined UTIA as an assistant professor.

Two former postdoc researchers, Sutie Xu and Patricia Lazicki, as well as Shikha Singh, a Ph.D. student in her lab, nominated Jagadamma for the award. They praised her for her support and encouragement both professionally and personally. Xu, now an assistant professor at the University of California at Davis, recalled how Jagadamma supported her while she cared for a newborn and then through the pandemic. Lazicki, vegetable crops advisor for the University of California cooperative Extension, said she was impressed by Jagadamma’s interest in her career goals and how Jagadamma could help. Singh, research assistant professor at Washington State University, said Jagadamma encouraged her to return to her home country for her wedding and then helped her with presentations and manuscripts to become a better researcher and communicator.

“Dr. Jagadamma is a perfect combination of competence, kindness and caring. She made a lasting impact on all of us, and there is no doubt she will continue to have a positive impact on many more women scientists in soil, plant, and environmental science,” the former mentees wrote in their nomination letter.

For more information about the Sustainable Soil Management Lab, refer to jagadammalab.tennessee.edu.

The University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture is comprised of the Herbert College of Agriculture, UT College of Veterinary Medicine, UT AgResearch and UT Extension. Through its land-grant mission of teaching, research and outreach, the Institute touches lives and provides Real. Life. Solutions. to Tennesseans and beyond. utia.tennessee.edu.

END

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

New study finds generative AI can brainstorm objectives but needs human expertise for decision quality

2025-11-11

CATONSVILLE, Md., Nov. 11, 2025 – A new peer-reviewed study in the INFORMS journal Decision Analysis finds that while generative AI (GenAI) can help define viable objectives for organizational and policy decision-making, the overall quality of those objectives falls short unless humans intervene. In the field of decision analysis, defining objectives is a foundational step. Before you can evaluate options, allocate resources or design policies, you need to identify what you’re trying to achieve. The research underscores that AI tools are valuable brainstorming partners, but sound decision analysis still requires a “human ...

New analysis yields clearer picture of toxin-producing blue-green algae blooms

2025-11-11

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A long-term analysis shows that a major Oregon reservoir abruptly swapped one type of toxic algae for another midway through the 12-year study period, absent any obvious cause. The project provides a novel look at harmful algal blooms, or HABs, which pose multiple health risks to people and animals worldwide. Harmful algal blooms in lakes and reservoirs are explosions of cyanobacteria, often referred to as blue-green algae. Microscopic organisms ubiquitous in all types of water around the globe, cyanobacteria use sunlight to make their own food and in warm, nutrient-rich environments can quickly multiply, resulting in blooms that spread across ...

Trainer identification project treads new ground

2025-11-11

Forensic experts are inviting the public to put their trainer knowledge to the test – and contribute to an award-winning research project. Led by University of Staffordshire and West Yorkshire Police, When All is Tread and Done is exploring new forensic techniques to help identify criminals by their shoes. Project lead Professor Claire Gwinnett explained: “While CCTV, body-worn cameras and mobile footage is increasingly used in criminal investigations, suspects often cover their faces. “Shoes, however, can be a distinguishing feature in CCTV footage or images and that is what our research is ...

Parsa & Ascoli studying neuromorphic spintronics

2025-11-11

Principal Investigator Maryam Parsa, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering and Computing (CEC), and co-Principal Investigator Giorgio Ascoli, Distinguished Professor of Bioengineering and Neuroscience, College of Science, received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy for the project: “GAINS: Generalizable, Analog, Izhikevich-Based Neuromorphic Spintronics for Next-Generation Computing.” PI-Parsa is leading this collaborative project with two other co-PIs from University of Wisconsin–Madison (Prof. Akhilesh Jaiswal) and Northwestern University ...

Cancer quality improvement program cuts missed radiation appointments by 40%

2025-11-11

Key Takeaways Cancer patients who frequently miss radiation appointments experience worse clinical outcomes than those who complete their recommended treatment. Transportation barriers, unrelated illnesses, and not wanting to continue with treatment are the most common reasons patients miss radiation appointments. Providing patients with structured and individualized support can reduce missed radiation therapy appointments by almost half, a national quality improvement project found. CHICAGO — A national quality improvement program led by the American College of Surgeons (ACS) found that transportation barriers and illness are among the top reasons cancer patients miss critical ...

Innovation turns building vents into carbon-capture devices

2025-11-11

A nanofiber air filter developed by the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) could turn existing building ventilation into carbon-capture devices while cutting homeowners’ energy costs. In a paper recently published in Science Advances, researchers from the lab of UChicago PME Asst. Prof. Po-Chun Hsu developed a distributed carbon nanofiber direct air capture (DAC) filter that could potentially turn every home, office, school or other building into a small carbon-capture system working toward the global problem of airborne CO2. A ...

Discussion approach improves comprehension for 4th, 5th graders, study finds

2025-11-11

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Small-group discussions designed to help elementary students engage in conversations that promote critical analytic thinking, reasoning and deeper understanding of the content they read increased critical thinking over time for fourth- and fifth-grade students, according to a new study by a team that includes researchers from the Penn State College of Education. It’s the latest evidence in support of Quality Talk, the “deliberate approach to discussion that transforms student engagement” developed by P. Karen Murphy, associate dean for research and outreach in the Penn State College ...

Non-native plant species adapt to natural ecosystems faster than expected

2025-11-11

For a long time, scientists assumed that newly established plants in Europe served less often as food or hosts for native animals and fungi, since they share no common evolutionary history with local fauna and could therefore spread particularly aggressively. According to Staude, the study confirms this initial phase. However, the study also showed that this changes over time: after a few centuries, many of these plants are increasingly used by plant parasites. Unlike pollinators, plant parasites are usually highly specialised in native plants – which makes the findings all the more surprising, according to Staude. “We also observe in this context that ...

It’s not just in your head: Stress may lead to altered blood flow in the brain

2025-11-11

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — While the exact causes of neurodegenerative brain diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia are still largely unknown, researchers have been able to identify a key characteristic in affected brains: reduced blood flow. Building upon this foundational understanding, a team at Penn State recently found that a rare neuron that is extremely vulnerable to anxiety-induced stress appears to be responsible for regulating blood flow and coordinating neural activity in mice. The researchers found that eliminating type-one nNOS neurons — which make up less than 1% of the brain’s 80 billion neurons and die off when exposed to too much stress — resulted ...

Automated high-throughput system developed to generate structural materials databases

2025-11-11

A NIMS research team has developed an automated high-throughput system capable of generating datasets from a single sample of a superalloy used in aircraft engines. The system successfully produced an experimental dataset containing several thousand records—each consisting of interconnected processing conditions, microstructural features and resulting yield strengths (referred to as “Process–Structure–Property datasets” below)—in just 13 days. Datasets are generated over 200 times faster than when using conventional methods. The system’s ability to rapidly produce large-scale, comprehensive datasets has the potential to significantly ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Scientists trace microplastics in fertilizer from fields to the beach

The Lancet Obstetrics, Gynecology, & Women’s Health: Taking paracetamol during pregnancy does not increase risk of autism, ADHD or intellectual disabilities, confirms new gold-standard evidence review