Three UB faculty members receive prestigious Meyerson award

UB faculty members Eleonora Botta, Priya Banerjee and Andreas Daum have been named recipients of the 2023-24 President Emeritus and Mrs. Meyerson Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching and Mentoring, UB’s highest honor for undergraduate mentoring.

The Meyerson award honors faculty members for the crucial guidance and support they provide undergraduate students to help them develop the necessary skills for research, creativity, critical thinking and innovation.

The award was established through a generous gift by the late President Emeritus Martin Meyerson, who served as UB’s 10th president, and his wife, Margy Ellen, to recognize exceptional teaching and mentoring at the university.

“We are pleased to award the President Emeritus and Mrs. Meyerson Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching and Mentoring this year to three outstanding faculty members — Drs. Botta, Banerjee and Daum — who have each made lasting and wide-ranging impacts on our undergraduate students through their teaching and mentoring,” said Ann Bisantz, dean of undergraduate education.

Eleonora Botta

Botta, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), came to UB in 2019 from McGill University. In 2023, she received the SEAS Early Career Teacher of the Year.

Francine Battaglia, professor and chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, noted that Botta “mentors students to dream and challenges them to think big. Furthermore, Dr. Botta serves as an inspiration to the young women who are pursuing aerospace engineering, as they are few and far between.”

In a letter supporting Botta’s nomination for the award, Mostafa Nouh, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering who received the Meyerson award last year, emphasized that Botta consistently includes undergraduate students on research projects. Seven of her conference papers and one of her journal papers have one or more undergraduate authors. Often, they are the lead authors.

“These numbers are truly a testament to Dr. Botta’s perseverance and commitment to mentoring and undergraduate education,” Nouh wrote.

Two of Botta’s students received the UB NASA Space Grant Award, one has been awarded the Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF), and several have won or placed in the top three in best student paper awards in events organized by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the International Conference on Space Situational Awareness.

Achira Boonrath worked in Botta’s lab, the Space Systems Dynamics and Control Lab, and presented his research during the 2022 AIAA SciTech Forum. In a letter of support, Boonrath wrote he wouldn’t have had this opportunity without Botta’s tutelage. In addition, Boonrath noted that Botta’s mentorship and guidance helped him win multiple research-related awards at UB and influenced his decision to continue his studies in graduate school.

“It was through her leadership,” he wrote, “that I was able to grow and demonstrate the ability to figure out solutions to complex tasks independently.”

Priya Banerjee

Banerjee, associate professor in the Department of Physics, College of Arts and Sciences, joined UB in 2017, following a postdoctoral fellowship at the Scripps Research Institute. In 2023, Banerjee received an NSF CAREER Award, in which there is a substantial education component including undergraduate teaching and mentoring, noted Xuedong Hu, professor and chair of the Department of Physics.

“There is no question that Priya’s meticulous mentoring of undergraduate students at UB is a shining example for every professor, not just individually,” Hu said, “but also from the larger perspective of improving science education in the U.S. in general, and participation of minority and historically underrepresented students in research in particular.”

Paul Dewan Jr., a PhD student in the biophysics program at Harvard University, worked as a research assistant in Banerjee’s lab in fall 2021 and took two of his upper-level courses.

“Beyond the group culture he facilitates in his lab, Dr. Banerjee provided one-on-one mentoring that has helped me to progress as a scientific writer and thinker,” Dewan wrote in a letter of support for Banerjee’s nomination. “Through discussions with him, I learned to convey scientific ideas, directly helping me to win the Goldwater Scholarship and National Science Foundation (NSF) Fellowship. The effective mentorship I received from Dr. Banerjee was essential to my undergraduate successes and has become a pillar to the start of my graduate career.”

John Cerne, professor and director of undergraduate studies in the physics department, noted that Banerjee has mentored 14 undergraduate students in the past five years — and many of his students have made impressive strides in the field.

“We have outstanding undergraduate students,’” Cerne said, “but without faculty like Priya to lead and inspire them with research, I do not think that they would be able to accomplish the great achievements that they have made.”

Andreas Daum

Daum, professor in the Department of History, College of Arts and Sciences, has demonstrated a commitment to undergraduate education partly through the numerous administrative positions he has held since joining the faculty in 2003, including multiple roles related to UB’s international curriculum, noted Kristin Stapleton, professor and chair of the Department of History.

Stapleton said Daum’s “efforts helped to diversify the international education offerings available to undergraduates, paving the way for the development of shorter programs as alternatives to the standard full-semester abroad programs that are inaccessible to many students.”

Louise Lalli, academic adviser, noted that Daum goes to great lengths to recruit and encourage students to participate in the undergraduate history honors program and also encourages students to step outside their comfort zones.

“He noticed that one of his gifted students had never been outside of the Buffalo area and was lacking a larger worldview,” she said. “With Dr. Daum’s guidance and encouragement, the student was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship and is now spending the year in Cyprus.”

Students, including Angelo Lomeo, noted Daum’s kindness and life lessons, such as preparation, accountability and caring for a community, that he conveys to complement his classroom teaching.

“I wanted to take his future classes,” Lomeo wrote in a letter of support, “because I knew I would learn more from him than what I could simply find in a textbook.”

Lomeo enrolled in the graduate history program under Daum and is now teaching at a high school in Buffalo.

Sophie May, who graduated from UB in 2022 and is now a graduate student at Georgetown University, said Daum helped her land a life-changing internship.

“After a series of administrative hurdles, in which Dr. Daum advocated for the utility of this internship in my academic career, I was able to get academic credit for the internship, thereby completing my history minor,” May wrote in a letter of support. “The internship ended up being an extremely valuable learning experience. I am so grateful for Dr. Daum’s commitment to making it happen.”

To learn more about the Meyerson award, visit the Office of Fellowships and Scholarships website.