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August employees of the month

Jolene Fairchild University support staff

Jolene Fairchild

Started at KU: 1976.

Current title: Budget officer, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

What that means: Fairchild oversees an annual budget of $80 million in state funds and $40 million in external research funds.

Notable: The University Office of Internal Audit gave CLAS a positive report after a recent audit. The success was due in large part to Fairchild's leadership in budget operations.

Douglas Byers Unclassified employee

Douglas Byers

Started at KU: 1998.

Current title: Budget administrator, KUCR.

What that means: Byers oversees a multimillion-dollar budget that includes NSF and Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation contributions.

Notable: Byers maintains detailed accounting of grant funding received, monitoring the budgets of literally dozens of projects. He also routinely fields requests from awardees for rebudgeting and time extensions.

KU IQ

Lisa Timmons, assistant professor of molecular biosciences, has a "Nobel" connection. She worked as a postdoctoral researcher for Andrew Fire at Stanford University. Fire and Craig Mello recently were awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for their work with RNA interference. Timmons' research focused on the process of turning off the effects of certain genes. One KU alum, Vernon Smith, has won a Nobel Prize.