The William L. Brown Award

The William L. Brown Award recognizes the outstanding contributions of an individual in the field of genetic resource conservation and use. It is administered by the William L. Brown Center (WLBC) at the Missouri Botanical Garden and is made possible through a generous endowment from the Sehgal Family Foundation, in cooperation with the family of Dr. Brown.

Bill Brown was a distinguished, internationally-recognized scientist, businessman, and humanitarian. Over the course of five decades, he devoted himself to the collection, preservation, understanding, and sharing of plant genetic resources in order to help meet the global demand for food. The William L. Brown Award recognizes an individual whose efforts and achievements reflect a concern for those issues that were so important to Dr. Brown.

In 2008, the Fifth William L. Brown Award for Excellence in Genetic Resource conservation will be given to Dr. Nancy Turner, an ethnobotanist at the University of Victoria. Dr. Turner is also a Research Associate with the Royal British Columbia Museum. Her area of research encompasses the fields of botany and ecology, most noticeably where they intersect with anthropology, geography, and linguistics. She is interested in the traditional ecological knowledge systems and traditional land and resource management systems of indigenous peoples, particularly in western Canada. She has worked with and learned from First Nations elders and cultural specialists in northwestern North America for nearly 40 years, with a strong record of collaboration with Indigenous communities to help retain and promote their traditional knowledge of plants and habitats, including traditional foods, materials and medicines, as well as language and vocabulary relating to plants and environment.
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Previous recipients of the award include Gordon Cragg of the National Cancer Institute, Henry Shands of the USDA Agricultural Research Service, Carlos Ochoa of the Centro Internacional de la Papa (International Potato Center), and Calvin O. Qualset of the University of California at Davis. To read more, use the dropdown menu on the upper right hand corner of this page.

The Wm. L. Brown Research Fellowship

Through the generosity of the Sehgal Foundation and other friends of the William L. Brown Center, fellowships are available for South Asian research professionals in plant biology who have an interest in the discovery, study, and conservation of useful plants.
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The Anne S. Chatham Fellowship

The Garden Club of America is pleased to announce a fellowship open to Ph.D. candidates and recent Ph.D.s to promote the study of medicinal botany. The fellowship was established to protect and preserve knowledge about the medicinal use of plants, and thus prevent the disappearance of plants with therapeutic potential. Providing this research opportunity for botanists can, in turn, assist medical science in its ability to protect lives, alleviate suffering, and develop new medicines. The fellowship was created and endowed by a generous contribution from Anne S. Chatham, a member of the Garden Club of America's Scholarship Committee and a member of the Jupiter Island Garden Club.
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