ROCK HILL, SOUTH CAROLINA – Winthrop University Biology Professor Julian Smith III recently received the 2019 Distinguished Research Leadership Award from the S.C. Governor’s School of Science and Mathematics.
The Distinguished Research Leadership Award honors an individual who has made significant contributions to the success of the residential school in Hartsville, South Carolina. Smith has contributed more than 25 years to the school by mentoring the summer research projects of governor’s school students in his lab at Winthrop.
Smith received the award in a Feb. 9 ceremony at the school’s research colloquium in Hartsville.
Smith has contributed significantly to developing resources to support research activities for Winthrop graduates and undergraduates, including contributing to the design of the university’s science building, Dalton Hall, and the creation of the Winthrop Microscope Facility in 1994-96 with donated electron microscopes.
He used the microscope facility to focus on understanding the microscopic animals that live between grains of sand (meiofauna), particularly free living flatworms. Smith applied microscopy and molecular methods to learn about the evolution of these organisms and their food-webs in response to human beachfront development and nourishment.
Smith’s research and mentorship is supported by the SC Idea Network for Biomedical Research Excellence (SC-INBRE).
Before joining the Winthrop faculty in 1989, Smith earned his Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Wake Forest University and his Doctor of Philosophy degree in zoology from the University of North Carolina. He conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Maine.
Smith is a member of the American Microscopical Society, Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, S.C. Academy of Science, and the International Association of Meiobenthologists. Among other honors, he received the S.C. Junior Academy of Science Service Award in 1996.
For more information, contact Judy Longshaw, news and media services manager, at longshawj@winthrop.edu or at 803/984-0586.
