Daniel Uden recently received the 2025 Faculty Inspiration Award in the School of Natural Resources. The student-selected award came on the heels of his receiving the 2024 Junior Faculty for Excellence in Research award from Nebraska's Agricultural Research Division.
While the junior faculty award focused on his research in managing agricultural land and ecosystems to keep them resilient, the inspiration award focused on ways he inspired students.
"I was very honored to receive that," Uden said about the latest award. "Especially knowing it was a student-nominated award, it was one of the most meaningful awards I could get."
Catherine Chan, a doctoral student in remote sensing, read comments of Uden's nominators at the spring banquet of the School of Natural Resources and announced him as the award winner.
"Dan consistently goes above and beyond for his students, whether he's troubleshooting code, offering hands-on support in the field, stepping in to advise three doctoral students after an unexpected faculty departure or simply making sure his students feel seen and supported," Chan said. "He naturally brings people together, cultivates a strong sense of connection and teamwork, and brings steadiness to high-pressure situations while still managing to stay genuinely enthusiastic. When you’re deep in research with no end in sight, that kind of energy matters more than you'd think."
Uden advises or coadvises nine graduate students and serves on committees of other graduate students in the School of Natural Resources and Department of Agronomy and Horticulture. He said he wants to inspire students in his roles as advisor and mentor but also wants that inspiration to be intrinsic.
"What I hope happens is that they get a sense of the importance of what they're doing, that the work they're doing matters, and that they are the one that is going to advance science in that area," he said. "It's not their advisor. It's not other professors. That is their responsibility. But it's an exciting thing. They don't know yet the things that they'll discover."
Follow the full story about Daniel at https://snr.unl.edu/aboutus/what/newstory.aspx?fid=1279
