The 2019 Dean’s Distinguished Dissertation Award goes to Lauren Austin (left), Public Policy and Amanda Burmeister, Biological Sciences.
This award is presented each year by the Graduate School to recognize outstanding research and scholarship by a doctoral student at UNC Charlotte.
Austin’s work, "Afraid to Breathe: Understanding North Carolina's Experience of the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic at the State, Local, and Individual Levels,” is the first study of its kind to take a close look at the affect the epidemic had on North Carolina people at the state, local and individual levels and compares the local experience with that of other affected regions of the U.S.
Burmeister is studying “Detrimental Brain Inflammation and the Role of the Interleukin 10 Family Members” to better understand how brain cells respond to invading pathogens and identify the roles of chemical mediators generatedwhen that happens.
As Dean’s Dissertation Award winners, Austin and Burmeister will be entered in a national dissertation competition at the Council of Graduate Schools. That competition includes a $2,000 honorarium.