CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Six Urbana campus faculty members have been recognized as University Scholars. The program recognizes excellence while helping to identify and retain the university's most talented teachers, scholars and researchers. The faculty members were honored at a dinner Feb. 15 in Champaign.
Begun in 1985, the program provides $10,000 to each scholar for each of three years to use to enhance his or her academic career. The money may be used for travel, equipment, research assistants, books or other purposes.
The recipients (with comments from their nominating papers):
Rajshree Agarwal, professor of business administration. Agarwal, who joined the U. of I. faculty in 2001, has twice been recognized for her research by the most important professional society in the field, the Academy of Management. In 2004, she was given the award for best paper in the Academy of Management Journal, the flagship empirical journal for the professional society. In 2005, the Technology and Innovation Management Division of the Academy awarded her the Stephen Schrader Best Paper Award.
Since her arrival at Illinois, she has made more than 40 presentations to national and international audiences. She is the driving force in the development of the new certificate program in entrepreneurship and management for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in biotechnology and the allied sciences.
Milan K. Bagchi, professor of molecular and integrative physiology. Bagchi's work has made fundamental contributions to the understanding of steroid hormone action involved in the regulation of female reproductive tract function and fertility. He has played a leadership role in establishing a National Center for Research in Reproduction and Infertility at Illinois.
His research goals are to elucidate the molecular pathways that are regulated by the steroid hormones estrogen and progesterone during development and differentiation of key hormone-responsive tissues, such as the female reproductive tract and the mammary gland.
Jodi A. Flaws, professor of veterinary biosciences. Flaws' research interests, grants and publications span from molecular mechanisms of toxicity of estrogenic aryl hydrocarbons on ovarian cells and tissue to epidemiologic studies of menopause, hot flashes, and the reproductive outcomes of women exposed to chemicals in hair salons. In 2008, she was the recipient of the College of Veterinary Medicine's highest research honor, the Dr. Gordon and Mrs. Helen Kruger Research Excellence Award.
Flaws "is the quintessential academic researcher and highly deserving of being named a University Scholar," her nominator wrote. "She has been productive by almost any standard with regards to research funding, quantity and quality of her research publications, her involvement in national service on research and editorial panels, and most importantly for the University of Illinois, the provision of a rigorous training environment for the next generation of translational researchers."
Taekjip Ha, professor of physics and faculty affiliate of the Institute for Genomic Biology. A Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and co-director of the Center for the Physics of Living Cells, Ha has received many honors, including the Barany Award of the Biophysical Society (2007), Fellow of the American Physical Society (2005), Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow (2003), Cottrell Scholar Award (Research Corporation, 2003), the Young Fluorescence Investigator Award of the Biophysical Society (2002), and Searle Scholar (2001).
Ha applies the tools of physics to important problems in biology and medicine. He has already made enormous contributions to the understanding of the physical mechanisms of biological molecules and systems. He also has led the field in the development of powerful new instruments for biological physics.
Neil L. Kelleher, professor of chemistry and faculty affiliate of the Institute for Genomic Biology. Kelleher leads an expansive group affecting three main scientific lines of research involving high resolution tandem mass spectrometry. He has established leading methods and software for identification and characterization of intact proteins - the so called 'Top Down" philosophy of protein analysis. He has devised leading new methods to dissect the bioassembly of peptide and polyketide secondary metabolites.
A key part of his instructional contributions has been concerned with expanding the scope of the chemical sciences, in particular developing a highly fertile interface with molecular and cellular biology. These contributions are most readily seen through Kelleher's development of a highly popular special topics course, Chem/Biochem 574, "Genomics, Proteomics and Bioinformation: A Survey of Modern Bioanalytical Methods," and through the heavy subscription of undergraduate research in his laboratory, which has been taken by students in chemistry, biology, chemical engineering and computer science.
D. Fairchild Ruggles, professor of landscape architecture. Beyond the impact of her original research in the field of Islamic landscape and garden history, Ruggles also has made important contributions to a synthetic, interdisciplinary understanding of the ways that cultural and environmental systems intersect, and why that understanding continues to be important and useful today. In her prolific body of original research, Ruggles has almost single-handedly redefined Islamic landscape studies, and established an alternative, more synthetic, and sophisticated framework for understanding Islamic cultural and technological heritage.
Her first book, "Gardens, Landscape, and Vision in the Palaces of Islamic Spain"(2000), overturned long-accepted but erroneous notions about the Islamic garden as a literal imitation of paradisiacal verses in the Koran. This contribution was recognized by the American Society for Hispanic Art Historical Studies who awarded it the Eleanor Tufts Award for 2002. More recently, in the magisterial "Islamic Gardens and Landscapes (2008)," Ruggles places Islamic garden history on a plane with architectural history.
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