Julie Champion, a member of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, has earned the Junior Faculty Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award for 2015. She is the sixth Petit Institute faculty member to win the award in the past six years (there were two winners in 2013).

The award, issued every year by the Georgia Tech Faculty Honors Committee, honors a faculty member who has had “direct impact and involvement with undergraduates doing research, increasing their intellectual integrity and research scholarship and impact on their postgraduate success.”

In selecting Champion for the award, the faculty committee noted her success in mentoring several President’s Undergraduate Research Awards winners as well as heartfelt letters from students, the diversity of the students mentored and student involvement in published papers from the Champion lab.

“Mentoring undergraduates is one of the best parts of my job — to see them start fresh in the lab and mature into researchers who make important contributions to our work,” says Champion, assistant professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering.

“I enjoy talking with them about their future plans and weighing the choices they have as they start their new careers,” she adds. “I am always happy when they come back and tell me about the success they are having after they leave Georgia Tech, whether in graduate school or in industry.”

Champion, who will be honored on April 17 at the Faculty and Staff Honors Luncheon, brings the award back into the Petit Institute community. Five Petit Institute faculty members won the honor from 2010 through 2013: Todd McDevitt, Melissa Kemp, Manu Platt, Michelle Dawson and Raquel Lieberman. Margaret Kosal, assistant professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, won the honor in 2014.