CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Seven Urbana campus faculty members have been named University Scholars. The program recognizes excellence in teaching, scholarship and service. The faculty members will be honored at a campus reception Sept. 28 from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in the ballroom of the Alice Campbell Alumni Center, 601 S. Lincoln Ave., Urbana.
Begun in 1985, the scholars program recognizes faculty excellence on the three University of Illinois campuses and provides $15,000 to each scholar for each of three years to enhance his or her academic career. The money may be used for travel, equipment, research assistants, books or other purposes.
“People associate the University of Illinois with the quality and productivity of our outstanding faculty,” said Christophe Pierre, the vice president for academic affairs. “The University Scholars program recognizes faculty achievements as researchers, instructors and members of broader academic communities.”
The Urbana campus recipients:
Vikram Adve, a professor of computer science, has made influential contributions to compiler design and to programming languages, areas that are foundational to how software is developed. He is one of the two lead designers of the innovative, award-winning LLVM Compiler Infrastructure, which has had a broad impact on both commercial products and on research.
Carla Cáceres, a professor of animal biology, is a leading ecologist who works on aquatic ecosystems to address fundamental questions on how communities are structured, on the advantages of sexual (versus asexual) reproduction, and on interactions between hosts and parasites. Her research independently manipulates genetic diversity as well as biotic factors to determine how the two interact to shape communities.
Clare Haru Crowston, a professor of history, is a historian of early modern France who has proved in her two major books to be an original thinker, a prodigious researcher, and an international authority on histories of gender, work, and economies in France. An innovative and stimulating instructor in both general education and advanced classes, she is a co-author of two of the most widely used textbooks in her field.
Leanne Knobloch, a professor of communication, is a scholar who studies communication within close relationships. Her relational turbulence model has become the predominant framework for understanding relational transitions. She has applied that model to the challenges faced by couples, such as a spouse suffering from clinical depression or returning from military service.
Arden Rowell, a professor of law, researches risk regulation and human behavior. She explores how legal decision makers arrive at rational decisions using cost-benefit calculations, and has developed a new regulatory tool for reducing the harm resulting from environmental pollution. She has lent her expertise to federal regulators in the consideration of the social cost of carbon emissions.
Vijay Singh, a professor of agricultural and biological engineering, focuses on science and engineering required to produce sustainable food, biofuels and bioproducts. His integrative research has led to development of innovative processing technology to make the biofuels process more efficient and cost effective, and his work has improved the efficiency and reduced the environmental footprint of the corn wet-milling process.
Emad Tajkhorshid, a professor of biochemistry and pharmacology, investigates the interdisciplinary areas of computational biology and biophysics. His highly collaborative and internationally recognized research program develops advanced modeling and simulation methodologies. His innovations are marked by significant applications to membrane proteins that include critical therapeutic targets.