1. Kansas State University
  2. »Division of Communications and Marketing
  3. »K-State Today
  4. »Kirkham to receive Higuchi-KU Endowment Research Awards

K-State Today

October 10, 2013

Kirkham to receive Higuchi-KU Endowment Research Awards

Submitted by Communications and Marketing

Mary Beth Kirkham, professor of agronomy, will receive a Higuchi-KU Endowment Research Achievement Awards on Oct. 30 at a ceremony at the Lied Center of Kansas in Lawrence. She will receive the Irvin Youngberg Award for Applied Sciences.

This is the 32nd annual presentation of the awards, established in 1981 by Takeru Higuchi, a distinguished professor at the University of Kansas from 1967 to 1983, and his wife, Aya. The awards recognize the exceptional long-term research accomplishments of faculty at Kansas Board of Regents universities.

Each award includes a citation and a $10,000 award for ongoing research efforts. The money can be used for research materials, summer salaries, fellowship matching funds, hiring research assistants or other support related to research.

Kirkham is an international authority on the plant-water relations of winter wheat and the uptake of heavy metals by crops grown on polluted soil. She was the first to document the effects of elevated levels of carbon dioxide on crops grown under semi-arid conditions. Kirkham came to Kansas State in 1980 following faculty appointments at Oklahoma State University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her academic background includes a Bachelor of Arts from Wellesley College and master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Wisconsin.