Donna Xia won the Catherine J. Randall Award in 2019.
Conducting an independent project that analyzed the metabolic interactions in a bacterial community that propagated colorectal cancer tumors – that’s Donna Xia’s idea of summer fun. Xia, a chemical engineering major and a Randall Research Scholars student, conducted that study at the Mayo Clinic in 2018 – one of many research pursuits she has followed at UA.
Xia’s talents in research have earned her several awards, including a national Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for science students, the Randall Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award and the Henry Pettus Randall Jr. Scholarship at UA, as well as the outstanding undergraduate poster presentation award from the Southeastern Theoretical Chemistry Association.
Her talent for and dedication to research has impressed one of her mentors – Dr. David Dixon, Robert Ramsay Chair of Chemistry at UA.
“She is working quite independently (and successfully), an impressive feat for a young researcher,” Dixon said. “I can trust Donna’s results because I know that she is careful and thinks about what she is doing. She asks perceptive questions about the work and is generating new ideas from the results that she is obtaining.”
Outside of research, Xia is active in the Society of Engineers in Medicine, is involved in the Blackburn Institute and the Crisis Text Line and works as a scribe at University Medical Center.
Her parents are Paul Xia and Carola Hsieh.