Emily Waggoner Honored with P.E.O. Scholar Award

Emily Waggoner, a Ph.D. candidate in The Duhamel Lab, is one of 100 doctoral students in the U. S. and Canada selected to receive a $25,000 Scholar Award from the P.E.O. Sisterhood. She was sponsored by Chapter BB of Tucson, Arizona.

Emily is the daughter of Mindi and Phil Waggoner. She is a Bachelor of Science graduate of the University of Southern California, where she received the Renaissance Scholar distinction for excelling academically in the pursuit of two widely separate fields of study in the College of Science and School of Cinematic Arts.  

The P.E.O. Scholar Awards were established in 1991 to provide substantial merit-based awards for women of the United States and Canada who are pursuing a doctoral-level degree at an accredited college or university. Scholar Awards recipients are a select group of women chosen for their high level of academic achievement and their potential for having a positive impact on society. P.E.O. Scholars have demonstrated their ability to make significant contributions in their chosen field of study, having assumed leadership positions in university academics, scientific research, medicine, law, performing arts, international economics, history, literature, government and other demanding fields.  

Waggoner joined the Duhamel Lab in the fall of 2020 and quickly got to work on her research. In 2021, she had the opportunity to go on a reseach cruise from the Canary Islands to the mouth of the Amazon River. You can read more about her and the trip here and a more recent trip here. In her studies on lab in the lab, Emily is studying organophosphate esters, which are synthetic compounds that are now showing up as contaminants in marine systems. 

If this sounds like an exciting career to you and you want to learn more, feel free to contact Emily!