This series of lectures is newly established in honor of the J. Crayton Pruitt Family for their exceptional support for the Department.  We are especially indebted to J. Crayton Pruitt, Sr., (1931-2011) not only for financial support, but also for his great interest in all things intellectual and entrepreneurial.  Dr. Pruitt was particularly interested in nurturing young scholars and for this last we are establishing this lectureseries, with each lecturer named a J. Crayton Pruitt Scholar.  We hope that this honor is one that helps the Scholar on her or his career path as well as that it informs the wider world of the progress in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida.

We are proud to announce our inaugural recipient of this award is Dr. Carolyn Bayer, holder of the Ruth Kirschstein / NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Bayer’s talk was entitled “Photoacoustic Molecular Imaging and Nanoparticle Contrast Agent Design”.  In the accompanying photograph she receives the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Scholar plaque from BME interim chair Bruce Wheeler.