Destiny N. Johns received the 2022 William R. Lamberson Distinguished Thesis Award as part of the 2022 Celebration of Excellence awards, held April 19. Johns is a graduate student in the Division of Animal Sciences. She developed her thesis, Conceptus Interferon Gamma is Essential for Pregnancy Maintenance in the Pig, to investigate the role of conceptus interferons in regulating the maternal immune system at the placental/uterine interface to prevent abortion.

She presented a research poster at the 53rd Annual Meeting of Society for the Study of Reproduction and was one of only four graduate students to be selected to give a Trainee Oral Symposium Presentation on her research during the 2020 Gilbert S. Greenwald Symposium on Reproduction and Regenerative Medicine at the Kansas Medical School. Johns was also involved in the Animal Science Graduate Student Association where she served as an officer and was active in developing fund-raising programs to support the association.

“During her graduate program, Destiny was academically very solid and served as an undergraduate teaching assistant for several Animal Sciences courses including my class, Reproductive Physiology,” said Rodney Geisert, professor in the Division of Animal Sciences and Johns’ graduate advisor. “Destiny has a gift for teaching and was really involved with assisting undergraduates learn and understand the material in our reproductive physiology labs.”

“Destiny’s scholarship is evidenced by her learning new technologies and applying them,” said Randall Prather, Curators’ Distinguished Professor. “The methods and approach she used for this research is not new, but not widely used. It was new to her and required an in-depth knowledge of the swine genome.”