Research Awards: Celeste Condit

Affiliate Professor Celeste Condit was recently honored at the University of Georgia's 26th Annual Research Awards Banquet on March 30, 2005 to recognize faculty and graduate students for excellent in research and creativity. Dr. Condit received the William A. Owens Award for research in the social and behavioral sciences.

Dr. Condit, Distinguished Research Professor of Speech Communications, analyzes the effectiveness of different means of communicating genetic research and how terms, such as mutation and cancer-causing gene, may evoke different meanings for medical communities and for the public. Recently, she has focused on “race-based medicine,” a method of diagnosis and prescription based on information about gene frequencies in race-categorized groups. She also studies how lay interpretations of this technique may cause resistance to treatments. Her research has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and has been published in such leading journals as Nature Review and the Journal of the American Medical Association. The National Communication Association recognized her as a Distinguished Scholar and invited her to give its most prestigious talk, the Carroll C. Arnold Distinguished Lecture, in 2004.

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