Mohamed Aboelnga and Michelle GuerreroMohamed Aboelnga and Michelle Guerrero received the Governor General’s Gold Medal, Saturday in the St. Denis Centre.

Medals recognize top grads’ academic achievements

A pair of doctoral graduates were honoured for outstanding academic achievement this past weekend during the University of Winsdsor’s 110th Convocation ceremonies.

Mohamed Aboelnga, who received a PhD in chemistry and biochemistry in 2017, and Michelle Guerrero, who received a PhD in kinesiology at Convocation ceremonies in June, received the Governor General’s Gold Medal, Saturday in the St. Denis Centre.

The medals were established in 1873 by Lord Dufferin, Canada’s third Governor General after Confederation, to encourage academic excellence across the nation. Over the years, they have become the most prestigious award that students in Canadian schools can receive, recognizing students graduating with the highest grade point average among peers.

For his doctoral studies Dr. Aboelnga, now an assistant lecturer in chemistry at Egypt’s Damietta University, applied computational chemistry methods to understand a critical step in the translation of genetic codes of cells into proteins. He has written or co-written nine peer-reviewed journal articles, with others currently submitted.

According to her doctoral supervisor, Krista Chandler, Dr. Guerrero has already proven herself a young leader in the area of sport and exercise psychology. She is the author or co-author of 13 articles in peer-reviewed journals and nine book chapters. Guerrero is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa.

Also recognized during Fall Convocation were winners of the Board of Governors Medals in engineering, awarded to the graduating student with the highest academic standing in each program:

  • Civil and Environmental Engineering: Charly Fung Xu
  • Electrical and Computer Engineering: Eric Parker
  • Mechanical, Automotive and Materials Engineering: Nicholas MacMackin

Medals in other faculties are awarded during Spring Convocation.