Chirag Gupta, a cell and molecular biology doctoral student, recently won the Scherago International Student Travel Grant Award at the International Plant and Animal Genome conference held last month in San Diego.

The travel grant award was given to the three international students with the best research abstracts. The award is valued at $800. Gupta's winning abstract was titled An Abiotic-Stress Conditioned Gene Regulatory Network in Rice Predicted Using an Ensemble of Reverse-Engineering Solutions.

Gupta's dissertation research focuses on developing methods and software for bio-molecular data analysis and data integration. He is advised by Andy Pereira, a professor in the Department of Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences.

The Plant and Animal Genome Conference is designed to provide a forum on recent developments and future plans for plant and animal genome projects. The conference featured more than 2,000 abstracts, more than 1,200 posters, more than 140 workshops and more than 135 exhibits. Gupta was one of several University of Arkansas graduate students to present research at the conference.