The Albert D. and Elizabeth H. Kirwan Memorial Prize was awarded to Sylvia Daunert, Gill Eminent Professor of Analytical and Biological Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry, College of Arts and Sciences. The award was named in honor of Albert D. Kirwan, the seventh president of the University of Kentucky and his wife Elizabeth H. Kirwan, and recognizes yearly a full-time faculty member of the University of Kentucky for original research or creative scholarship.  The award consists of a Diploma and a $5,000 cash prize. The 2009 Albert D. and Elizabeth H. Kirwan Memorial Prize was presented to Daunert at the 142nd University of Kentucky's Commencement Ceremony.

Read more about the Kirwan Memorial Prize.

Daunert was also awarded the 2009 Bill Barfield Award of the Kentucky Water Resources Research Institute (KWRRI). The award was presented by Lindell Ormsbee, Director of the KWRRI, at a ceremony during the Annual Symposium of the Kentucky Water Resources Research Institute. The Barfield Award was established in 2005 to honor the Commonwealth's foremost researchers in water-related fields. Daunert has contributed to environmental research through the development of biosensors that detect environmental pollutants in soils and waters. The research of her group in this field has been funded continuously for the last fifteen years by numerous agencies, including the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences.