Every year Clemson University College of Science recognizes some of its most outstanding undergraduate and graduate students during an awards ceremony in the Spring. Three genetics and biochemistry students were honored for their work, dedication and accomplishments at this year’s ceremony.
Brooke Dillingham: Outstanding Junior in Science
This award recognizes the best overall junior in the College of Science based on scholarship and character.
As a member of the Honors College, Dillingham started her research in Michael Sehorn’s laboratory as a Eureka! participant during the summer before her first year at Clemson. Her work involves evaluating DNA repair and genome stability through investigation of the BRCA2 novel binding sites. She has received research grants during her first and sophomore years.
Sehorn writes, “One of her strongest attributes is her passion and focus. These are attributes that demonstrate personal growth and maturity.”
Dillingham has participated in a cultural exchange in Germany and when she is not doing science, she is helping to promote it through writing articles for the Clemson News page and as a member of the Science Student Advisory Board. In addition, she is a mentor with the ClemsonLIFE program and a member of the Pre-Law Society. She enjoys fostering and training dogs from shelters, learning new recipes, reading, traveling and, of course, Clemson Football.
Dillingham plans to attend law school and work an as attorney in either health care, intellectual property or biotechnology.
Elizabeth Caldwell: Outstanding Senior in Science
This award recognizes the best overall graduating senior in the College of Science based on scholarship and character.
Caldwell is an active researcher in Sehorn’s lab, where she estimates she’s spent over 1,000 hours since arriving at Clemson. She is also one of 15 students chosen to participate in a special research project at Prisma Health that studied the role of surgical approach on cholecystectomy outcomes.
She received one of four National Scholars Program scholarships at Clemson and, as a part of this elite program, studied abroad in South Africa. Caldwell has also been named a Truman Scholar.
Alison Starr-Moss said of Caldwell, “She truly embodies the spirit of the Outstanding Senior, with demonstrable impact in every activity she pursues.”
Caldwell is the co-founder and president of Tigers for Accessibility, which serves to address accessibility barriers at Clemson. She is also the student representative of the University’s Accessibility Commission and serves as an Academic Success Center peer tutor and as the Inclusion Chair for the Phi Delta Epsilon South Carolina Beta Club. This fall alone, she has given four public presentations, including a TEDx Clemson talk.
Caldwell volunteers her time at the Clemson Free Clinic and as a hospice volunteer. In her free time, she enjoys hiking the national parks. She has visited 58 out of 63 of them. She also likes writing, baking new gluten-free recipes and watching science fiction.
After spending this summer as an intern in Washington, D.C., as part of the Truman Summer Institute program, she will pursue an M.D./Ph.D. in public health, which she will use to continue to bridge the gap between patient care, disability advocacy and scientific discovery.
Adam Gatch: Outstanding Undergraduate in Discovery
This award is given to a graduating senior who has performed outstanding original research in the sciences. Adam Gatch is a biochemistry major with minors in physics and chemistry with a 4.0 GPA over 158 earned credits.
Gatch has been involved in the research group of Feng Ding, where he uses methods from computational physics to study molecular interactions between proteins relevant to Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases. This research has resulted in five peer-reviewed publications, including two first-author publications, and five poster presentations.
“What sets Adam apart is his growing ability to independently formulate new research problems — an essential trait for a future scientist,” Ding said.
Gatch has also performed summer research at the Medical University of South Carolina using neuroimaging analysis to find predictive markers of response to drug therapy in Parkinson’s disease.
His body of work has already been recognized outside of Clemson. He is a Goldwater Scholarship recipient and recently became Clemson’s third Churchill Scholar and one of 16 nationally.
Outside of the lab, Adam serves as a tutor at the Academic Success Center, is a member of the debate team, works as an emergency medical technician and volunteers at the Paw Pantry.
After graduation, Gatch will complete a master’s in philosophy at the University of Cambridge before returning to the United States to complete an M.D./Ph.D.
Trudy Mackay, the director of the Clemson University Center for Human Genetics, is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on the genetics of complex traits. Her groundbreaking research uses the common fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to discover the genetic roots of complex traits — traits that are influenced by multiple genes — that are important to human health.
This impactful research has led Dr. Mackay to be honored by the Linnean Society of London with the Darwin-Wallace Medal, one of the top international prizes in evolutionary biology.
“I was surprised and delighted to learn that I am the recipient of the 2025 Darwin-Wallace Medal. It is a great honor to join the ranks of the celebrated evolutionary biologists who are recent and past recipients of this prestigious award,” Mackay said.
The Darwin-Wallace Medal was originally awarded in 1908 to commemorate the anniversary of the reading of a joint paper, which introduced the idea of evolution through natural selection, by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace at a meeting of the Linnean Society on July 1, 1858. The first medals awarded in 1908 were awarded to Wallace himself and six others. The awards were given every 50 years until 2010, when the Linnean Society began awarding it to one person annually in recognition of the growing importance of research on evolutionary biology.
“Dr. Trudy Mackay’s receipt of the 2025 Darwin-Wallace Medal is a remarkable achievement and a testament to her pioneering contributions to evolutionary genetics,” said Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Robert H. Jones. “Her groundbreaking research continues to shape our understanding of complex traits and inspire the global scientific community. Trudy’s work exemplifies the excellence we strive for at Clemson, and this honor further underscores the transformative impact of her scholarship on human health and the future of genetic research.”
During her undergrad, biochemistry major and genetics minor Sam Harpst ’20 found a passion for the spirits industry. Today, Sam is the Operations Analyst & Project Manager for Statesville Contract Distilling, a division of Southern Distilling Company, located in Statesville, NC, where she oversees the lab.
Statesville Contract Distilling offers a diverse range of standard and custom new fill whiskies, extensive aged barrel inventory, warehouse barrel storage, private label production, and co-packing for more than 150 brands globally.
Some of Sam’s daily duties involve collecting and formatting data from the distillery operations department, including grain quality, enzymatic activity, ethanol production, process flow, sanitation, and spirit quality. She plans to continue her journey in the spirits industry and discover more and more about the science of fermentation.
“This industry is starting to grow at an exponential rate, and there are endless opportunities to further whiskey science!”
On Saturday, April 5th, three Genetics and Biochemistry undergraduate students ran a G&B sponsored table at the Be A T.I.G.E.R. Field Day. Be A T.I.G.E.R Field Day went from 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. prior to the Clemson Football Spring Game on the Littlejohn Lawn and was open to children grades kindergarten through sixth grade.
This event focused on games and activities teaching the T.I.G.E.R. character traits. Each letter in the word ‘TIGER’ stands for a character trait that is important for young children to understand and practice in their everyday lives:
The G& B table was run by sophomore biochemistry major Kaitlyn Anderson, senior biochemistry major Berkeley Cannon and sophomore biochemistry major Brittain Gaines. There were three major activities for the children at our table.
For the first activity there was a microscope and various plants sealed in petri dishes for the children to look at them under the microscope. The second activity included a mini centrifuge and a few test tubes with different mixtures.
“The kids could place the mixtures in the centrifuge and separate or mix the solutions,” says Gaines. “Some solutions we made were oil and water and colored water with glitter.”
The last activity on the table was coloring with micropipettes. After the children drew a picture with a sharpie on wax paper, they used micropipettes with the G&B students’ assistance to pipette colored water to color their drawings.
“Overall, everything turned out great and the kids really loved the activities!” says Gaines.
