CFAES Research Award Winners

Abdoul Sam

Abdoul Sam is a professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics at The Ohio State University. As an applied economist, his research focuses on agricultural, environmental, and development challenges, studying effective ways to enhance farm productivity, manage production risk, improve rural livelihoods, and mitigate environmental impacts in the United States and internationally. His work has been published in leading economics and finance journals, and he has contributed to the field as an associate editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics and as a member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics and the African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics. Over his 19-year academic career, he has advised 21 doctoral students and served on 49 additional dissertation committees. For the past decade, he has been actively engaged in research and teaching across Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Europe. He joined Ohio State in 2005.

Jonathan M. Jacobs

Jonathan M. Jacobs is an associate professor of emerging infectious disease ecology in the Department of Plant Pathology. His research in microbial ecology focuses on plant pathogens and diseases that limit crop production. His interdisciplinary team has made discoveries in how pathogens emerge to cause new outbreaks. His team works across scales from the molecular to the field and leverages partnerships with growers for real-time pathogen tracking. Jacobs is a two time Fulbright Scholar and an American Phytopathological Society Hewitt awardee, and his program been funded by Ohio Department of Agriculture, National Science Foundation (NSF), USDA, and Department of Energy. He is motivated to train the next generation of scientists and was awarded the Ohio State Postdoctoral Faculty Mentor of the Year in 2024. His trainees push the boundaries of our understanding of emerging threats to agriculture and have been awarded prestigious fellowships from NSF and USDA. His group is now leading national efforts to use microbiome science for pathogen tracking. 

Brian E. Roe

Brian E. Roe is the Fred N. Van Buren Professor in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics at Ohio State. Brian has worked broadly in the areas of agricultural and environmental economics focusing on issues including food waste, agricultural marketing, information policy, farm nutrient management, behavioral economics, and product quality. Brian helped form and currently leads the Ohio State Food Waste Collaborative and co-directs an NSF-funded Research Network focused on addressing wasted food. He served as a committee member for the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine consensus study on "A Systems Approach to Reducing Consumer Food Waste" and as a member of the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research Advisory Council on Health-Agriculture Nexus. 

Brian was recently elected president of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) and was named an AAEA fellow in 2022. Brian has a BS from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a PhD in agricultural and resource economics from the University of Maryland – College Park. 

Mike Kauffman

Mike has devoted 23 years of research at the Center for Food Animal Health exploring food safety risks involving human pathogens in our food chain. His research projects have included transmission of E. coli by European starlings; pathogen reduction in composted dairy free-stall bedding; pathogen education in domestic homes; and pathogen transmission within vegetable production systems. 

He has been the “point man” in collaborative projects with the Food and Drug Administration — $1.3 million funding — investigating food safety gaps in the federally mandated Food Safety Modernization Act. This effort facilitated on-farm testing of environmental risk factors affecting food safety of locally grown produce. His efforts enabled a unique connection between Ohio vegetable growers and the FDA. In 2019, he presented his research findings at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome, Italy. 

Mike’s tireless effort, congenial personality, competence, and willingness to help make him an accruing asset to CFAES and its vision, We Sustain Life. 

Maria Sholola

Maria Sholola is a 5th year PhD candidate in the Department of Food Science and Technology at Ohio State, where she uses chemistry, biology, and bioinformatics to investigate the absorption, metabolism, and health benefits of small molecules derived from tomatoes. Maria’s most recent publication about the discovery and quantification of tomato steroidal alkaloids has earned her the prestigious William E. Krauss Director’s Award for Outstanding Publication. She has presented other research at leading scientific conferences, including the Gordon Research Conference on Carotenoids.

With prior experience in the pharmaceutical industry and a foundation in analytical chemistry, Maria applies multidisciplinary approaches to advance nutrition research. She actively contributes to science communication and mentorship, serving as current president of Citation Needed, a food science communication student organization. Through her work, she aims to bridge food science and health, leveraging dietary compounds to inform nutrition recommendations and improve public health outcomes. 

Mary M. Gardiner

Mary M. Gardiner is a distinguished professor of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences at Ohio State and Co-Director of the Ohio State Environmental Science Graduate Program. The Gardiner Lab’s community-engaged research program examines the ecology and management of urban greenspaces for insect conservation including vacant lots, residential greenspaces, parks, and rain gardens. The Gardiner Lab has published over 75 peer-reviewed publications and been awarded $8.1 million in grant support, with current funding from the NSF, USDA, and the MITRE Foundation.

Mary is also a state specialist in Extension and is active in the Ohio Master Gardener Volunteer Program. She has advised 23 graduate students and postdocs, and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in insect ecology, presentation skills, and grant writing. Mary serves on the Entomological Society of America Governing Board and is a past president of the ESA North Central Branch.