Four seniors named winners of the 2026 Babcock Prize in Environmental Science

May 16, 2026

Congratulations to Celeste Basken, Ella Giguere, Joohwan Yoo, and Connie Zhang on receiving the 2026 Kenneth L. Babcock Prize in Environmental Science.

Established in 1995 in memory of Kenneth L. Babcock by a group of donors, including his late widow, Claude Babcock (BA ’52 English, MSW ’82), and brother Sherman Babcock (BS ’41 Soil Science), the prize recognizes exceptional academic achievement by graduating seniors in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM).

Celeste Basken

Environmental Science

Celeste Basken took every opportunity at UC Berkeley to explore the intersection of environmental resilience and food systems.

Basken began her undergraduate research in the Zero Waste Lab, working to conduct a literature review and design a qualitative study centered on sustainability and food waste in UC Berkeley dining halls. She later joined ESPM Professor Timothy Bowles’ Berkeley Agroecology Lab, where she worked with PhD student Delfina Grinspan to study the ecosystem traits and soil characteristics of California dry-farm and irrigated vineyards, and with Miguel Ochoa on isotope hydrology in cover-cropping systems on the Central Coast. In both projects, Basken learned to install and maintain field sensors and to run chemical, elemental, and statistical analyses.

For her senior honors thesis, Basken studied how changes in belowground processes influence spring wheat development. Working out of the Oxford Tract greenhouses, Basken tracked how legume intercropping, water availability, and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi—which form a symbiotic partnership with plant roots—influence the development of functional plant traits, biomass, and yields. She hopes the research, advised by Assistant Professor Laureano Gherardi, can help identify soil-ecology-based strategies to sustain wheat production under climate change.

Outside research, Basken serves as the Sustainable Food and Agriculture Fellow for the UC Office of the President, where she built a sustainable procurement database improving purchasing transparency for ten UC campuses. As Food Policy Coordinator for UC Berkeley's Housing and Dining Sustainability Office, she has written grants totaling more than $65,000 for campus projects and redesigned the menus for sustainability. She was awarded the 2026 Sustainability Award from the Campus Advisory Committee on Sustainability.

Ella Giguere

Molecular Environmental Biology

Ella Giguere came to Berkeley with an appreciation for science as a tool for addressing real-world challenges and spent four years pursuing that in both laboratory and clinical settings.

In her first year, Giguere joined the lab of Brian Staskawicz, a professor in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology and director of sustainable agriculture at the Innovative Genomics Institute. Through internships offered by Rausser College’s Sponsored Projects for Undergraduate Research (SPUR) program, Giguere learned to apply gene sequencing, DNA and plasmid isolation, and other molecular biology techniques to model organisms such as tomato, rice, wheat, and tobacco. She also contributed to projects investigating how effector proteins are delivered into plant cells via the Type III secretion system in Agrobacterium tumefaciens, a soil bacterium commonly used to transfer small segments of DNA into a plant host.

These experiences provided her with a solid foundation in molecular biology. For her honors thesis, Giguere used CRISPR prime-editing technology to modify the IPA1 gene in rice plants. IPA1 regulates rice plant architecture and influences disease resistance, traits that could improve yield in a staple crop that feeds much of the world.

Outside the lab, Giguere has pursued opportunities in clinical medicine and global health. With support from Rausser College Travel and Summer Internship Grants, she traveled twice to the Philippines with ABC’s for Global Health. She worked in mobile clinics and conducted ethnobotanical research alongside Indigenous herbal practitioners during her first visit, and helped establish a community vegetable garden to support food security and preserve traditional knowledge of medicinal plants during her second trip.

Joohwan Yoo

Environmental Science

Drawn equally to the natural sciences and policy, Joohwan Yoo spent his four years at Berkeley studying wetland landscapes and the soils beneath them.

Through the SPUR program, Yoo joined ESPM Professor Iryna Dronova’s Wetland Remote Sensing Lab as a field technician in the San Joaquin Delta, operating camera traps and audio recorders and conducting point-count bird surveys. He also joined ESPM Professor Céline Pallud’s Biogeochemistry Lab, where he performed gas chromatography on rice paddy soils, monitored soil and water chemistry, and designed a titration protocol to measure the alkalinity of irrigation water.

Moving between the field and lab taught Yoo how to connect landscape-scale observations to molecular-scale mechanisms. For his senior honors thesis, Yoo developed an independent project examining how microplastic contamination alters carbon cycling and greenhouse gas emissions in the San Joaquin Delta’s wetland soils. He credits designing and troubleshooting his own incubation experiment with deepening his fascination with mineral-organic interactions in soils and strengthening his independence as a researcher. Building on his honors thesis research, Yoo plans to pursue graduate studies in soil biogeochemistry.

Alongside his research, Yoo’s coursework in environmental policy inspired him to explore how science becomes action. His experience writing a policy brief on the health impacts of illegal mining on Indigenous communities in Colombia taught him to communicate complex environmental processes in ways that inform decision-making. On campus, Yoo has served as president of the Korean Undergraduate Networking Association and as internal director of Compassion at Berkeley, organizing community service work that includes beach cleanups and urban farming. He came to Berkeley after serving as a sergeant in the Korean Augmentation to the United States Army.

Connie Zhang

Environmental Science

Connie Zhang's undergraduate research explores the intersection of one of California’s most pressing environmental issues: how can water managers balance the needs of the state’s agricultural land with its watershed ecosystems?

As an undergraduate researcher in the Berkeley Agroecology Lab, Zhang worked with ESPM PhD candidate Miguel Alejandro Ochoa to sample soils from 30 farms across the Central Coast and test soils for differences in water retention and hydraulic conductivity. She also helped facilitate the River Restoration field course, led by College of Environmental Design Professor Matt Kondolf, which takes place at the Sagehen Creek Field Station near Truckee.

Beyond Berkeley, Zhang spent summers working seasonal field jobs across the West, an experience she credits with exposing her to diverse environments and ecosystems. This past summer, Zhang worked with the Scott River Watershed Council to build more than 100 beaver dam analogs—manmade structures that mimic the benefits of natural beaver dams—in grazed meadow and riparian ecosystems near Etna, California. That work became the foundation for her senior honors thesis, which was advised by Kondolf and Charnna Gilmore of the Watershed Council. Zhang monitored changes in groundwater, dissolved oxygen, and channel elevation in Noyes Valley Creek, a site that supports both cattle grazing and coho salmon. She hopes her research will address the tension between water for agriculture and water for ecosystem health.

Zhang is co-president of Cal Climbing and spends many weekends snowboarding and rock climbing. During her sophomore year, she worked for the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation, providing one-on-one translation services and English classes to elders in Oakland Chinatown. Her experience across field research and community organizing demonstrated the interdisciplinary nature of environmental work.