The University of Georgia Graduate School honored six outstanding graduates on Oct. 23 with the 2025 Alumni of Distinction Award. These recipients were selected for achieving exceptional success in their professional careers and for significant service to their communities.
“Each of these distinguished graduate alumni embody the excellence to which we encourage our current and future graduate students to aspire,” said Ron Walcott, vice provost for graduate education and dean of the Graduate School. “Their accomplishments in a wide variety of fields clearly exemplify UGA’s mission to teach, to serve and to inquire into the nature of things.”
The Graduate School Alumni of Distinction Award was established in 2012 by the Graduate Education Advancement Board, and the first recipients were named in 2013. All graduate-level UGA alumni are eligible to be considered for the annual award. Recipients were nominated by their respective schools and colleges and selected by members of the Graduate Education Advancement Board.
The 2025 award recipients are:
Caleb Adams
M.S. in computer science, 2020
B.S. in computer science, 2018
Franklin College of Arts and Sciences
Caleb Ashmore Adams, of Marietta, is a project manager and principal investigator at the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California. He leads the Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy group, which demonstrates advanced swarm technologies on multi-spacecraft missions. He is also the deputy project manager of the Starling mission, a four-satellite swarm. On Starling, DSA demonstrated the first fully autonomous distributed space mission, and it continues to accomplish firsts in space while in operations today. Adams won an Early Career Achievement award from NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate in 2024 and received the directorate’s highly competitive Early Career Initiative award in 2025.
Matthew Bonds
Ph.D. in ecology, 2006
Odum School of Ecology
Ph.D. in economics, 2003
Terry College of Business
Matthew Bonds, of Seattle, Washington, is an associate professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is cofounder of Pivot, an organization that partners with the government of Madagascar to establish a model health care system. Bonds is distinguished for his work that broadly explores complex systems at the intersection of health and economic development. Since its founding, that health care system has impacted more than 1.7 million patients and currently serves approximately 280,000 patients annually. This work has generated some of the strongest evidence in Africa that strengthening local health systems can lead to significant improvements in population health.
Catherine Bradshaw
M.Ed. in counseling and guidance, 1999
Mary Frances Early College of Education
Catherine Bradshaw, of Crozet, Virginia, is a University Professor and the senior associate dean for research at the School of Education and Human Development and a faculty advisor with the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Virginia. She was previously an associate professor and associate chair of the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she maintains an adjunct faculty position. Her research focuses on school-based prevention of behavioral and mental health problems. She has expertise in bullying and school climate; emotional and behavioral disorders; and the design, evaluation and implementation of evidence-based prevention programs in schools. Bradshaw has served on advisory boards and as a consultant to federal agencies and organizations including the United Nations, the World Bank and the National Education Association. She also served on the 2011 White House panel on bullying and helped organize related studies for the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, including the 2016 consensus study on bullying.
Robert “Bob” Izlar
MFR in forest resources, 1972
BSFR in forest resources, 1971
Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources
Robert “Bob” Izlar, of Danielsville, retired in 2022 from the UGA Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources where he served as the founding director of the Harley Langdale Jr. Center for Forest Business since 1998. As director, Izlar was responsible for the development and implementation of instruction, research and service programs. During his tenure, the center’s forest business support endowment grew to more than $1 million, ensuring resources will be available for future success. As an international forestry consultant, Izlar has 24 years of operational experience in the forest industry.
Adrienne Madison
Ph.D. in biological and agricultural engineering, 2013
College of Engineering
Adrienne Madison, a native of Fairfield, Alabama, is currently a research biomedical engineer in the U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory at Fort Rucker, Alabama. In her current role as a principal investigator and subject matter expert, she oversees research in injury biomechanics that focuses on sustaining mission performance and preventing service member spinal musculoskeletal disorders/injury while wearing personal protective equipment, such as helmets, in air and ground military operational environments. This work has led to the development and dissemination of helmet system guidelines to reduce the risk of mission performance decrement in ground soldier populations. Previously this guidance existed only for aviators.
Sangram S. Sisodia
Ph.D. in biochemistry, 1985
Franklin College of Arts and Sciences
Sangram S. Sisodia, of Chicago, is the Thomas Reynolds Sr. Family Professor of Neuroscience and director of the Center for Molecular Neurobiology in the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Chicago. His research over the past three and a half decades has focused on understanding the cellular and molecular biology of genes that cause familial forms of Alzheimer’s disease. He has received several awards, including the Potamkin Prize, the highest award for Alzheimer’s disease research from the American Academy of Neurology, and the Metropolitan Life Foundation Award for Medical Research.
Read full bios here.