UC Davis Faculty Members Earn Top Honors

The following offers a sampling of the awards and honors presented to UC Davis faculty and emeriti recently.

-- UC Davis engineering professor emeritus George Tchobanoglous, an international authority on wastewater treatment, management and reuse, is the 2003 winner of the Athalie Richardson Irvine Clarke Prize for excellence in water research. The Clarke Prize is given annually by the National Water Research Institute to recognize outstanding scientists who have implemented better water-science research and technology. The prize includes a gold medallion and $50,000. Tchobanoglous has taught on water treatment, wastewater treatment and solid waste management at UC Davis since 1970. He writes, consults and lectures internationally.

-- Carl Winter has been appointed to the United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization/ World Health Organization Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives. His term runs to 2006. Winter is director of the FoodSafe Program and an extension food toxicologist in food science and technology at UC Davis. The committee advises global organizations and governments. Winter also received this year's Hod Ogden Award from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the Association of State and Territorial Directors of Health Promotion and Public Health Education. The award honors imaginative and creative efforts promoting good health.

-- Professor Stanley Sue is winner of the 2003 American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Contributions to Applied Research, given for research leading to important advances in applied psychology. The association has 155,000-plus members and is the world's largest psychologists group. Sue is a professor in psychology and Asian American Studies and founding director of the National Research Center on Asian American Mental Health at UC Davis. In 2001, he received the campus's Distinguished Public Service Award. This spring, he earned the $30,000 UC Davis Teaching Prize, thought to be the largest of its kind in the nation.

-- UC Davis mathematics professor Abigail Thompson has received the 2003 American Mathematical Society Satter Prize. Presented every two years, the prize recognizes an outstanding contribution to mathematics research by a woman in the previous five years. Thompson was honored for her outstanding work in three-dimensional topology.

-- R. Bruce Martin, director of the Orthopaedic Research Laboratories at UC Davis, has been named to the External Advisory Council for the National Space Biomedical Research Institute. The institute, funded by NASA, is a consortium of institutions studying health risks related to long-duration space flight.

-- Husein Ajwa, associate extension specialist in vegetable crops at UC Davis, was among those recently honored with a White House Closing the Circle Award. He was recognized for his research on methyl bromide alternatives with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service Water Management Research Laboratory in Parlier, Calif. In total, 26 award winners were selected from more than 200 nominations.

-- UC Davis neurologist and researcher Mark Agius has been named Doctor of the Year by the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation. The award recognizes a physician who has made an extraordinary effort in the conquest of myasthenia gravis -- an autoimmune disorder in which the immune system attacks receptors in muscles that respond to signals generated by nerve impulses. An estimated 70,000 people in the United States live with the disease.

-- Emily Goldman, associate professor of political science at UC Davis, has received a Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Fellowship for 2003-2004. The Center awards 20-25 residential fellowships annually in an international competition that draws 400-plus applicants. Goldman's project, "Military Transformation under Uncertainty: Will the Revolution in Military Affairs Preserve American Preeminence?" examines conditions under which military transformation helps or undermines state power and influence. The center is part of the Smithsonian Institution and was created by Congress as a memorial to Woodrow Wilson.

-- UC Davis professors of geology Isabel Montañez and Howard Spero were recently elected fellows of the Geological Society of America, recognizing their significant contributions. Montañez uses compositions of minerals and fossil plant material to analyze ancient atmospheres and oceans. Her goal is to reconstruct past climate systems, indicating what future generations might face. She came to UC Davis in 1998. Spero, with UC Davis since 1990, studies living and fossilized planktonic organisms to find how changes in ocean temperature, salinity and circulation influenced Earth's climate in the past.

-- UC Davis environmental design professor Victoria Rivers has been selected as an American Artist Abroad in the Artists in U.S. Embassies program through the U.S. Department of State. Rivers will have pieces exhibited at the embassy in Accra, Ghana. As an honoree, Rivers -- an expert in ethnic designs and textiles -- also will travel for 10 days to teach and exchange ideas with artists of Ghana. The Art in Embassies Program was established in 1964. Original works by U.S. citizens show in public rooms of some 180 American embassies, playing a role in the nation's public diplomacy and providing a sense of the scope of American art and culture.

-- David Gandara, a professor of medicine and director of clinical research at the UC Davis Cancer Center, has been elected secretary/treasurer and a board member of the American Society for Clinical Oncology, a leading organization for physicians who treat cancer patients. Gandara chairs the Lung Committee of the Southwest Oncology Group, a National Cancer Institute-sponsored clinical trials cooperative research group comprising 283 institutions. He is a lead investigator for an NCI-sponsored early therapeutics award evaluating molecular-targeted agents for cancer treatment. He has been named a top oncologist by Good Housekeeping magazine.

-- UC Davis geology professor Don Turcotte has received the 2003 Bowie Medal, the highest honor of the American Geophysical Union. The honor was established in 1939. Awarded annually, the medal acknowledges an individual for outstanding contributions to fundamental geophysics and for unselfish cooperation in research, guiding principles of the union.

-- Marjorie Glicksman Grene, UC Davis professor emerita in philosophy, has been honored with the publication of Volume XXIX in the Library of Living Philosophers series: The Philosophy of Marjorie Grene. Grene is internationally known for her work in several fields, including the philosophy of biology and early modern philosophy. She is the first woman to be so honored and only the third UC faculty member, joining Rudolph Carnap and Donald Davidson.

-- UC Davis veterinary medicine professor Helen Raybould is among the new members of the American Physiological Society's governing body. Raybould will be a council member until 2006. She studies mechanisms by which nutrients are detected by the gut wall and how this information is conveyed to the central nervous system to regulate gastrointestinal function. She explores how these mechanisms may play a role in bowel disease and obesity.

-- Division of Biological sciences professors Paul Baumann and Stephen Kowalczykowski have been named fellows in the American Academy of Microbiology -- the honorific leadership group of the American Society for Microbiology. Fellows are elected for contributions and leadership and represent 35 countries. Kowalczykowski was elected for his work on DNA recombination. He and Baumann are two of 1,800 scientists elected to the academy in its 50-year history. Also Baumann and his research collaborator and wife, Linda Baumann, recently had a newly described genus of bacteria named after them for their pioneering research on bacteria that live inside the cells of sap-sucking insects, like the glassy-winged sharpshooter.

-- Robert Berman, a UC Davis professor of neurological surgery, has been designated a National Associate of the National Academies, a lifetime membership. He has chaired the Life Sciences Review Panel since 1999 and is a member of the Associateship and Fellowship Advisory Committee for the National Research Council. The National Academies, which include the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council, advises on science, technology and health issues.

-- UC Davis environmental design professor Barbara Shawcroft has completed sculpture installations in Jutland, Denmark, where she was invited to represent the United States in creating site-specific works at Silkeborg Art Museum.

-- Scott Rozelle, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at UC Davis, recently received the Quality of Research Discovery Award from the American Agricultural Economics Association. The award went to Rozelle and co-authors Hanan Jacoby and Guo Li for their paper titled, "Hazards of Expropriation: Tenure Insecurity and Investment in Rural China," published in December 2002 in the American Economic Review.

-- Professor Ruihong Zhang in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering recently served on a key National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council committee. The committee is developing advice for dealing with emissions from animal feeding operations.

-- UC Davis vegetable crops professor Kent Bradford has received the Seed Science Award, presented by the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America and Soil Science Society of America. Bradford helped create the UC Seed Biotechnology Center in 1999 and serves as its director. His interests include applying hydrothermal time models to explain seed germination and dormancy and identifying and manipulating genes involved in germination.

-- Pomology professor Ted DeJong's career work on peaches has been recognized by the National Peach Council, which recently awarded him the Carroll R. Miller Outstanding Peach Researcher Award. DeJong is known internationally for his research on crop responses to environmental stresses, photosynthetic activity and dry matter partitioning. He was a driving force behind the International Peach Symposium held at UC Davis last year.

-- Phyllis Wise, dean of the UC Davis Division of Biological Sciences and a professor of neurobiology, physiology and behavior, has received the 2003 Mentor Award from the Women in Endocrinology organization. The chair of the award committee, Kathryn Horwitz, a medical professor at University of Colorado, wrote in a letter: "The committee was truly impressed with the number and quality of endocrinologists you have trained over the years."

-- Professor Phillip Rogaway of UC Davis' computer science department was recently honored for research contributions in cryptography at the 12th annual RSA Conference -- a leading international e-security event. The awards recognize those who spark new ideas and advancements in e-security. Rogaway won the award in mathematics with Mihir Bellare of UC San Diego. They co-developed the "random oracle" model, used for reasoning about the properties of cryptographic methods.

-- The American Animal Hospital Association has named veterinary medicine's Autumn Davidson as recipient of the 2003 Hills' Animal Welfare Humane Ethics Award for her service and for furthering humane principles, education and understanding in the veterinary community. Since 1995, she has been an associate clinical professor of internal medicine and reproduction in medicine and epidemiology. A UC Davis alumna, she also is Guide Dogs for the Blind Veterinary Clinic director and medical director for the National Labrador Retriever Club.

-- Victor Montejo, chair and professor of the Native American Studies Program, has received a Fulbright scholarship to work in Guatemala studying Mayan knowledge. The anthropologist is looking at how indigenous people produce knowledge and organize and explain their existence within their particular worldviews. Montejo also will teach on his research subject at the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala.

-- Richard Berteaux, an architect and associate professor in environmental design at UC Davis, has received a 2003 California Council Society of American Registered Architects Honorable Mention for the design of Tan Orthodontics in Woodland. The annual awards honor California architects for "superior achievement and professional design excellence." Berteaux won in the rehabilitation/remodeling category. His previous honors include a 1995 award for the design of the Yoder Climate Sensitive Hillside House in Winters. His firm's recent projects include the Lofts building at 105 E St., in Davis, and the current renovation of the Davis Manor Shopping Center in East Davis. Berteaux's work emphasizes environmentally friendly design, renovation, affordable housing and interior lighting design. He is known for playful use of color.

UC and campus awards

-- A scientist who seeks to help curb obesity and diabetes, an expert in writing composition and Elvis, and an instructor who helps students read between the lines of great literature have been honored recently at UC Davis. Winner of the Academic Federation Award for Excellence in Research, Peter Havel, and recipients of 2003 Academic Federation awards for Excellence in Teaching, Donald Johns and Donna Reed each received $500 awards, recognizing non-ladder-rank faculty members for their contributions to the research and educational missions of UC. Havel, a research associate professor of nutrition, is internationally known for his research in understanding the metabolic and hormonal pathways involved in body-weight regulation and in the pathophysiology of obesity and diabetes. A lecturer with UC Davis' composition program since 1983, Johns is consistently described as a "challenging," "caring" and "inspiring" teacher and a wise and thoughtful mentor. Reed began teaching in UC Davis' Comparative Literature Program in 1981 and has been called the "backbone" of the lower-division program.

-- Academic Senate faculty members in chemical engineering and materials science, geology, chemistry and animal science were recognized recently by colleagues at UC Davis for their outstanding teaching. Receiving Distinguished Teaching Awards were James Shackelford, a professor of chemical engineering and materials science; James McClain, a professor of geology; Susan Tucker, a professor of chemistry; and Chris Calvert, a professor of animal science. The senate also recently recognized two professors, Adel Kader of pomology, and Karen Watson-Gegeo of education, with the Distinguished Graduate Mentoring Award. The awards are given annually and carry a $500 award for each recipient and for his or her academic departments.

-- Professors who have made geology come alive, who have reduced Californians' exposure to toxins, and who have tirelessly advocated for immigrants are the winners of this year's Distinguished Scholarly Public Service Awards at UC Davis. They are geology professor Eldridge Moores, professor of medicine Jerold Last and professor Bill Ong Hing of the School of Law and Asian American Studies. The UC Davis Academic Senate, representing all tenured faculty at the campus, makes the awards annually to recognize significant contributions to the world, nation, state and community through distinguished public service. Moores has frequently advised U.S. government agencies on matters related to earth sciences. He also has been deeply involved with the effort to establish UC Merced and with public school education in Davis, Sacramento and Yolo County. Last has provided scientific expertise to federal and state legislative committees and administrative agencies on many complex environmental health issues. He has led state and national efforts to study the health impacts of MTBE and chromium-6. Hing established the nonprofit Immigrant Legal Resource Center, volunteering as executive director for almost 20 years. In addition to serving on various government commissions, boards and foundations, he is a frequent media commentator on immigration law and health issues.

-- Sociologist Jack Goldstone received his peers' highest commendation recently when the UC Davis Academic Senate named him the Faculty Research Lecturer for 2003, recognizing his exceptional research contributions. A member of UC Davis' faculty since 1989, Goldstone is an expert on revolutions and social movements, demography and international security, and social theory, especially in Asia and developing countries. The award has been given annually for 61 years to a faculty member whose research contributions have greatly enhanced human knowledge and brought widespread honor to themselves and the university.

-- The UC Board of Regents recently named two new University Professors -- Francisco Ayala, formerly of UC Davis, now of UC Irvine; and Ming Tsuang, of UC San Diego. The title is one of the highest UC faculty can earn. It is reserved for scholars of international distinction who are recognized and respected as teachers of exceptional ability. Prior to the appointments of Ayala and Tsuang, only 33 UC faculty had been honored with the designation. Ayala, in Irvine's department of ecology and evolutionary biology, is recognized as one of the world's most influential and distinguished scientists in evolutionary biology. In 2001, he was awarded a National Medal of Science, the nation's highest science honor. Ayala's research focuses on population and evolutionary genetics, including the origin of species, genetic diversity of populations, the origin of malaria and the molecular clock of evolution. He joined the UC Davis faculty in 1971 as an associate professor; and in 1987 was appointed to the Irvine faculty.

-- Susan Murin, associate professor of internal medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, has received this year's Joan Oettinger Memorial Award for her outstanding research on the lung. Murin's main area of expertise is the effect of smoking on pulmonary metastasis from non-pulmonary cancers. The award is named for UC Davis graduate drama student Joan Oettinger, who died of lung cancer in July 1970. Awardees are selected by the Research Affairs Committee at the School of Medicine annually to recognize outstanding lung or cancer research. Oettinger's husband, Martin Oettinger, was a senior lecturer in economics at UC Davis before his death in 1986. Murin directs the UC Davis Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Fellowship Program and serves as a faculty mentor for the UC Davis School of Medicine "Women in Medicine Program."

-- Professor emeritus of anthropology Sarah Hrdy has received the Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award. The UC-wide honor has been awarded for 20 years. One nominee's name is forwarded by the emeriti association president of each UC campus after a nomination process on each campus. Panunzio (1884-1964) was a professor of sociology at UCLA from 1931 until his retirement in 1952. He has been called "the architect of the UC Retirement System" and was instrumental in bringing about a substantial increase in the stipends of his UC colleagues who were already retired, and in discovering what the situation was for other retirees at U.S. institutions by launching a nationwide emeriti census in 1954. The $5,000 award recognizes emeriti who have, since retirement, engaged in work or service of outstanding character in scholarship or other educational service. Hrdy's research interests focus on primate behavior, evolutionary and historical and origins of sex roles.

-- Medieval studies lecturer Kevin Roddy recently received Educator of the Year honors during the first campuswide Excellence in Undergraduate Education Award to be presented by the Associated Students of UC Davis. He was among about a half dozen campus faculty honored. Some 280 campus instructors were nominated. A committee of students assessed student nominations and visited top nominees' lectures. Roddy, a lecturer in medieval studies at UC Davis since 1976, is known for going above and beyond to help students both academically and personally. Awardees were named in each college and in the Division of Biological Sciences. Other faculty winners were: Sean Davis, computer science; Thomas Famula, animal science; Eric Mann, microbiology; Milmon Harrison, African American and African Studies; Roger Rouse, anthropology; and Bryan Enderle, chemistry.

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Amy Agronis, Dateline, (530) 752-1932, abagronis@ucdavis.edu

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