2023 Employment of the Year Awards

The National Lab for Agriculture and the Environment hosted the 2023 Employment of the Year awards. The undergraduate student employee of the year Amy Loutsch Memorial Award went to Sophia Parker, who joined NLAE and the Midwest climate hub in May 2023. Sophia has tackled new and complex topics using her skills including ArcGIS and HTML coding. Sophia’s major is in Global Resources Systems and Environmental Science. Sophia is engaged in several student organizations on ISU campus, such as the Climate Reality Campus Corps and the International Association of Students in Agricultural and Related Sciences. We were honored to have with us the Amy Loutsch family who attended the dedication event for the newly furnished NLAE Resource Room dedicated to their daughter and sister, Amy Loutsch, a former NLAE student working with Keith Kohler. The NLAE Employee of the Year Award went to Samantha Purdy for leading the development of innovative solutions for greenhouse gas measurements and contributing to research for a number of partners and stakeholders, including NASA, Northern Arizona University, Iowa State University, Utah State University, and others. Samantha is working with Dr. John Prueger in their diverse and complex scientific problems related to GHGs across national geographic regions.