Ashley Steensland Smith and Beth Burnham Goldstein are receiving a 2008 CDC and ATSDR Honor Award. Smith and Goldstein make up the central lab of the National Birth Defects Prevention Study(NBDPS), whose primary goal is to advance the understanding of what causes birth defects. They work under the guidance of Dr. Margaret Gallagher and Dr. Deborah Koontz, who received her Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology.

Smith graduated from Tech in 2004 with B.S. in Applied Biology; she is currently pursuing a Masters of Public Health. Goldstein graduated from Tech in 2005 with a B.S. in Applied Biology.

For more information about NBDPS: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/bd/centers.htm