IN THIS ISSUE: ACES | DADS ASSOCIATION | ENGINEERING | INTEGRATIVE BIOLOGY | LAS |LIBRARY
agricultural, consumer and environmental sciences
Margaret Rosso Grossman, Bock Chair and a professor of agricultural law in the department of agricultural and consumer economics, received the 2008 Professional Scholarship Award from the American Agricultural Law Association during its 2008 conference last month. The award recognizes the best agricultural law article published in a law review during the previous year. Grossman’s article, “Anticipatory Nuisance and the Prevention of Environmental Harm and Economic Loss From GMOs in the United States,” was published in the Journal of Environmental Law and Practice. Grossman also won the award in 2006.
Schuyler S. Korban, professor of molecular genetics and biotechnology in the department of natural resources and environmental sciences and in the Division of Nutritional Sciences, was elected a 2008 Fellow of the Crop Science Society of America. This is the highest recognition awarded by the society. Korban was recognized for his achievements and excellence in plant genomics and genetics and for his contributions to the field of crop sciences. The society presented the award at the 2008 Joint Annual Meeting Oct. 5-9 in Houston.
UI Extension’s “Parenting 24/7” Web site has received the Florence Hall Award from the National Extension Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (National and North Central Region), said site developer Aaron Ebata.
“The Web site, found at www.parenting247.org, provides research-based, practical round-the-clock parenting advice for today’s families – for parents of infants, preschoolers, school-aged kids and teens,” said Ebata, a professor of social development.
The award was given to UI Extension family life team members Ebata, Patti Faughn, Giesela Grumbach, Milly Kaiser, Deborah McClellan, Janice McCoy, Geraldine Peeples, Angela Reinhart, Sherry Rocha, Diane Ryals and Angela Wiley.
Jack Widholm, professor emeritus of plant physiology in the department of crop sciences, has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for In Vitro Biology. This award is the highest honor given by the society, and is presented annually to a scientist who is considered a pioneer in the science and art of cell culture. Among the firsts credited to Widholm’s research: his UI laboratory was the first to report the regeneration of soybean plants.
dads association
The Dads Association at the UI presented its annual Certificate of Merit Awards at its annual Dads Weekend banquet Oct. 31.
The Certificate of Merit recognizes a student, a faculty member, a staff member and a registered student organization for their contributions to the improvement of the university and the community. No faculty member was recognized this year.
The 2008 recipients:
Virginia Vermillion, assistant dean for academic administration and dean of students in the College of Law, was named Outstanding Staff Member. Vermillion’s duties include serving as an advocate for students and student organizations, administering the disciplinary processes, implementing the college’s academic policies, presiding over orientation and convocation, and, most important, individually counseling students within the college.
After years of practicing law at a firm in Chicago, Vermillion returned to her alma mater and, in the words of a co-worker, began to “truly revolutionize student life at the College of Law,” caring for each student with a supportive approach and “student-first” attitude.
The Student Advancement Committee within the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences is the Outstanding Student Organization. Begun 20 years ago, SAC is a group of 30 undergraduates selected to work with the Office of Advancement to serve as college ambassadors. The students work with alumni, dignitaries and other student groups to raise funds for the college through events such as Feed Your fACES and the ACES Phone-A-Thon.
Brian Matesic, a senior majoring in general engineering, and minoring in chemistry and in technology and management, from Fisher, Ill., is the Outstanding Student.
engineering
William Gropp, the Paul and Cynthia Saylor Professor of Computer Science and deputy director for research at the Institute for Advanced Computing Applications and Technology, has been named this year’s winner of the IEEE Computer Society’s Sidney Fernbach Award.
Thomas Huang, the William L. Everitt Distinguished Professor in Electrical Engineering, was recently named a 2008 Academician by Academia Sinica, a pre-eminent academic institution in Taiwan.
Karrie Karahalios, a professor of computer science, has been awarded an A. Richard Newton Breakthrough Research Award from Microsoft for her work on voice visualization technologies.
Benjamin Lev, a professor of physics, has been awarded a grant through the U.S. Air Force’s Young Investigator Research Program to explore quantum liquid crystals using ultracold dipolar atoms.
integrative biology
The School of Integrative Biology has honored faculty members with several awards.
Evan H. DeLucia, director of the School of Integrative Biology, has been named the G. William Arends Professor of Integrative Biology. He has earned this honor through his internationally known work on the responses of plants to elevated level of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other consequences of global climatic change.
Hugh M. Robertson, professor of entomology, was named an LAS Richard and Margaret Romano Professorial Scholar. The three-year appointment recognizes his outstanding achievements in research on molecular evolution.
liberal arts and sciences
“Life and Death in the Third Reich,” a book by history professor Peter Fritzsche, has been selected as one of three finalists for the inaugural Cundill International Prize in History, acclaimed as “the world’s largest non-fiction historical literature award.”
Fritzsche’s nomination is eligible to be awarded a $75,000 first prize to be announced on Nov. 25. He is guaranteed to at the least receive one of two “Recognition of Excellence” awards of $10,000. The prize is given by McGill University’s Dean of Arts, with the help of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.
Govindjee, professor emeritus of biochemistry, of biophysics and of plant biology, has been awarded the LAS Alumni Achievement Award by the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. This award is “given to the alumnus or alumna who, by outstanding achievement, has demonstrated the values derived from a liberal arts and sciences education,” according to the college’s Web site.
In addition, an international symposium, “Photosynthesis in the Global Perspective,” is being held in Govindjee’s honor in India Nov. 27-29. This conference will “focus on an understanding of photosynthesis in the global perspective especially in terms of changing environmental conditions and enhancement of plant productivity,” says the Web site of the host university, School of Life Sciences in Indore City, India.
“The House in the Garden: The Bakunin Family and the Romance of Russian Idealism,” by history professor John Randolph, has been awarded the W. Bruce Lincoln Book Prize “for an author’s first published monograph or scholarly synthesis that is of exceptional merit and lasting significance for the understanding of Russia’s past.”
Randolph’s book also received honorable mention for the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies’ Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize for the most important contribution to Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies in any discipline of the humanities and social sciences.
M. Christina White, a professor of chemistry, is one of two recipients of this year’s AstraZeneca’s Excellence in Chemistry Award and was presented with a $50,000 unrestricted research grant intended to help foster continued growth in her research program.
White’s research is dedicated to the development of catalytic methods to promote C-H bond activation. Her research into this relatively untapped area of chemical transformation provides new and efficient synthetic tools to be applied to the drug discovery process.
Donald Wuebbles, professor of atmospheric sciences in the School of Earth, Society and Environment, has been elected by member universities to the board of trustees for the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.
Trustees have fiduciary and legal responsibility for all of the corporation’s activities, including final authority to manage the programs and business of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the corporation’s Office of Programs. They provide guidance to the corporation’s management on policy positions, issues affecting the scientific community, and political, financial and advocacy matters.
Trustees serve three-year terms and are elected by the representatives of the corporation’s 73 member institutions at its annual meeting in October.
library
Lura Joseph, Geology and Digital Projects Librarian and professor of library administration, was presented with the 2008 GeoScience Information Society Best Paper Award for her paper titled, “Comparison of Retrieval Performance of Eleven Online Indexes Containing Information Related to Quaternary Research, an Interdisciplinary Science.” It was published in Reference and User Services Quarterly (Vol. 47, pp. 56-75) in 2007. Joseph also won the Best Paper Award in 2007.
“The committee was impressed with the way Joseph demonstrated the benefits of searching multiple databases to achieve comprehensive results for this multi-disciplinary topic. Having such evidence is very useful in this time of budget cuts and pressures to limit library subscriptions to databases,” said selection committee chairman Carol La Russa.
The society is an international professional organization devoted to improving the exchange of information in the earth sciences. The membership consists of librarians, editors, cartographers, educators and information professionals.