12/15/2014 - Rebecca A. Melanson, Ph. D. candidate, in the Department of Plant Pathology & Crop Physiology at Louisiana State University and the LSU AgCenter, recently won the prestigious C. W. Edgerton Award. She was nominated by her advisor, Dr. Jong Hyun Ham, Associate Professor. She won this award for her outstanding academic and professional achievements, especially her significant contributions toward our understanding of bacterial regulatory mechanisms. She identified ntpR, a new regulatory gene of major virulence factors, from the plant pathogenic bacterium Burkholderia glumae and characterized its global regulatory function in bacterial signaling and pathogenesis.