UT Institute of Agriculture Presents Top Faculty and Staff Awards for 2025
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – The accomplishments of the faculty and staff of the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture were celebrated at an annual awards luncheon held on the UT Knoxville campus in the new Agriculture and Natural Resources Building on July 30. Many of the awards are gifts made possible by faculty, alumni and friends of the institute.
UTIA Senior Vice Chancellor and Senior Vice President Keith Carver hosted the luncheon and praised the honorees for their work. “The enthusiasm and expertise demonstrated by our UTIA faculty and staff is unparalleled,” he said. “I am always in awe of their dedication to providing real life solutions to the people of Tennessee. These well-deserved awards represent impacts and accomplishments that benefit Tennesseans and society now and for years to come.”
Scott Lenaghan, associate professor in the Department of Food Science and co-director of the Center for Agricultural Synthetic Biology, received the UT AgResearch Dean’s Grantsmanship Award. This award recognizes the extraordinary effort of faculty members in successfully securing competitive extramural grants and contracts and who exceed expectations of good departmental/institutional citizenship. The award is based on the total dollar amount of competitive extramural grants/contracts secured by the faculty member serving as principal or co-principal investigator. Other winners of this year’s award are Patrick Keyser, professor in the School of Natural Resources, and Debasish Saha, assistant professor in the Department of Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science.
“Since arriving at UT in 2009, I have enjoyed the opportunity to engage with researchers across campus and across disciplines to push the boundaries of what is possible,” he said. “I love the challenge of engaging in high-risk, high-reward research and pushing myself and my team to address critical issues related to Tennessee and abroad.”
His research focuses on engineering biological systems, biomaterials and devices that utilize cutting-edge synthetic biology tools and approaches to provide solutions for global food security and biomedical sciences. He joined the faculty as a postdoc and then research assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering at UT Knoxville. He then moved to the Center for Renewable Carbon to lead a project on single-cell biology and bioengineering. Lenaghan joined the Department of Food Science in 2016. He founded the Center for Agricultural Synthetic Biology in 2018. Over the last five years, he has been awarded more than $44 million in extramural funds with more than $17 million going to his lab.
Lenaghan also won the AgResearch Grantsmanship Award in 2023. He received the UT AgResearch Mid-Career Faculty Research Excellence Award last year.
Lenaghan earned his bachelor’s degree in marine science and biology from the University of Miami and his Ph.D. in biological sciences from Auburn University.
The University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture is comprised of the Herbert College of Agriculture, UT College of Veterinary Medicine, UT AgResearch, and UT Extension. Through its land-grant mission of teaching, research and outreach, the institute touches lives and provides Real. Life. Solutions. to Tennesseans and beyond. utia.tennessee.edu.