“The choice of a research topic and the quality of the work for an MSc thesis are the main reasons why I was given the Hans H. Ruthenberg Award for Best Graduate Thesis in 2012”, says Reginald. Reginald from Ghana, has been awarded the prize for his research entitled “Contribution of Home Gardens to Household Income Generation in Burkina Faso (A Case Study of Bieha District). “Working with smallholder farmers in one of the most food insecure countries in the world like Burkina Faso has caught the attention of the award giving body”, he added. “I think employing both qualitative and quantitative research is necessary in order to capture the complex problems in the field”, he continued. In his opinion, the ability to analyze the data properly, answer the research questions and adequately discuss the findings of the research convinced his supervisors to give him this mark of 1.3 which was a minimum criteria for the award. Now, Reginald is a PhD candidate in Bonn, working on Range land ecology in West Africa on the WASCAL project (www.wascal.org). Photo with Reginald Guuroh (right) Find the interview of the other awardees: Athena Birkenberg http://blog.tropentag.de/node/245 Lilli Scheiterle http://blog.tropentag.de/node/244