Mississippi State is recognizing 12 staff members for their exceptional dedication to service and contributions with this year’s Donald W. Zacharias Distinguished Staff Awards.

Mississippi State Assistant Professor Candace Lukasik has published her first book “Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of U.S. Empire” (NYU Press). The book examines how Coptic Christian migrants from Egypt navigate religious identity through the lens of American political and religious frameworks.

Mississippi State Professor of Physics Dipangkar Dutta is a principal investigator on a groundbreaking experiment—revealing “symmetry” in physics doesn’t always behave as scientists once believed—recently published in the prestigious journal Physics Letters B.