Thursday, March 31, 2005

Writer: Carole VanSickle, 706583-0599, rcomm@ovpr.uga.edu

Contact: Judy Purdy, 706583-0599, jbp@ovpr.uga.edu

UGA FACULTY AND GRADUATE STUDENTS HONORED FOR RESEARCH, CREATIVITY

Athens, Ga. – University of Georgia faculty and graduate students were recognized for excellence in research and creativity at the university’s 26th Annual Research Awards Banquet on March 30. The award program is sponsored by the nonprofit University of Georgia Research Foundation Inc.

CREATIVE RESEARCH AWARDS

Three Creative Research Awards are presented annually to UGA faculty in honor of outstanding creative activity and research that has received national and international recognition. Celeste M. Condit received the William A. Owens Award for research in the social and behavioral sciences; W. Frederick Mills received the Albert Christ-Janer Award for the humanities; and William M. Yen received the Lamar Dodd Award for research in the sciences.

Condit, Distinguished Research Professor of Speech Communications, analyzes the effectiveness of different means of communicating genetic research and how terms, such as mutation and cancer-causing gene, may evoke different meanings for medical communities and for the public. Recently, she has focused on “race-based medicine,” a method of diagnosis and prescription based on information about gene frequencies in race-categorized groups. She also studies how lay interpretations of this technique may cause resistance to treatments. Her research has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and has been published in such leading journals as Nature Review and the Journal of the American Medical Association. The National Communication Association recognized her as a Distinguished Scholar and invited her to give its most prestigious talk, the Carroll C. Arnold Distinguished Lecture, in 2004.

Mills, William F. and Pamela P. Prokasy Professor in the Arts, is an internationally acclaimed trumpet player, arranger and conductor. A 24-year veteran of the Canadian Brass, he performed as a soloist in 16 countries on five continents, released more than 65 CDs, DVDs and videos, and gave more than 5,000 live performances before joining UGA’s music faculty. Mills’ arrangements and scoring for brass ensembles have changed the standard repertoire for brass chamber music, and he has released six new CDs since coming to UGA. He founded and now coaches UGA’s Bulldog Brass Society, a nationally recognized chamber group that is the prime member of the Georgia Brass, the newest large ensemble at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music. Mills will return to Moscow next year to direct concerts with the Bolshoi Theater Brass.

Yen, Graham Perdue Professor of Physics, studies the optical properties of solids, especially those that emit light. He invented and patented a new kind of glow-in-the-dark pigment that radiates light for more than 20 hours after a few minutes of exposure. These new, low-cost, nontoxic phosphors have a range of applications from emergency signage to toys and clothing. Yen’s laboratory also has contributed extensively to the X-ray and UV imaging techniques used in biological microscopy and related materials. In the past six months, Yen has given keynote plenary addresses at four international conferences. He has received more than $20 million in external funding, been awarded four patents and published more than 275 peer-reviewed journal articles. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and co-founder of two conference series.

INVENTOR’S AWARD

This award is presented to an inventor for a creative and innovative discovery that has made an impact on the community. This year’s recipient is Steven L. Stice.

Stice, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Animal Reproductive Physiology, received the Inventor’s Award for his contributions to the fields of developmental biology and genetics. His discoveries in agriculture and human medicine contribute to “platform”technologies that may lead to advances in both fields. For example, Stice’s work in cloning technology led to the first adult-cell cloning of cattle, George and Charlie, and to the first cow, KC, cloned from a carcass. Stice’s cloning work has demonstrated that transgenic cloning–transferring genes from one organism to another – can be used to breed“pharm” animals that produce biomedically important products. Stice also works on developing new treatments for nervous system disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease and ALS. Since Stice came to UGA in 1998, the UGA Research Foundation has filed eight patent applications based on his discoveries, and he has helped form several biotech companies based on his pioneering research.

CREATIVE RESEARCH MEDALS

These medals recognize outstanding research projects and creative activities with a single theme carried out at UGA. This year’s medal recipients are: Edward T. Kipreos, Velma McBride Murry, Ellen L. Neidle, Daniel E. L. Promislow and Michael P. Winship.

Kipreos, an associate professor of cellular biology, studies regulation of the cell cycle during an organism’s development. His findings may help scientists understand how deviations in the cell cycle can lead to abnormal cell growth, including rapid growth associated with cancer. Using the round worm Caenorhabditis elegans, Kipreos and his research team identified a protein family called “cullins” that mark other proteins for degradation. If these “flagged” proteins are not degraded, a cell may repeatedly copy part or all of its DNA, up to 50 more times than normal. Human cells that do this may become cancerous or die. The Kipreos lab has been supported by more than $3 million from the NIH and the American Cancer Society, and the work has been published in top journals including Cell, Nature and Nature Cell Biology and Development.

Murry, a professor of child and family development and co-director of UGA’s Center for Family Research, studies African-American families and how parents help their children become confident, self-regulating and resilient in the face of societal pressures, including racism. To further study and foster strong parenting skills, she and her colleagues developed the Strong African American Families (SAAF) project, an intervention program that implements many of her methods and discoveries. Murry currently has $14.8 million in NIH funding and has been a lead researcher on grants totaling more than $26 million. The National Council on Family Relations awarded her the 1999 Ernest Osborne National Teaching Excellence Award and, with her colleagues, the 2003 Reuben Hill Award for outstanding family research.

Neidle, a professor of microbiology, developed a new experimental approach for studying gene amplification by taking advantage of unusual features of the soil-inhabiting bacterium Acinetobactor (ADP1). By exploiting these features, she has been able to explore how bacteria adapt to environmental changes by reversibly altering the amount of their genetic material. Neidle’s work has revealed novel genetic events that demonstrate bacterial capacity to consume chemical compounds and pollutants. Her discoveries have implications for environmental cleanup and for understanding cancer, evolution and bacterial antibiotic resistance. Neidle was awarded one of 19 inaugural Lawton Chiles Fellowships in Biotechnology by the NIH.

Promislow, an associate professor of genetics, studies genes that affect the aging process and explores the possibility that hundreds or even thousands of genes may be involved in such complex processes. Using yeast as a model, he has shown that aging is influenced by large networks of genes and proteins acting in a “hub-like” fashion – similar to the large and small spokes of an airline network. Genes that affect aging have many more connections than genes that are not involved in this process. His findings provide a new and powerful method to study the interconnected genetic factors related to aging. Promislow, a Rhodes Scholar, was named an Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholar in Aging in 2004.

Winship, a professor of history, significantly recasts the story of Puritanism and the struggles that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 17^th century. During this period, religious quarrels over the assurance of salvation escalated into political conflict that brought the colony to the brink of extinction. Winship’s second book, Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636-1641, draws on his extensive research in English and American archives and advances our understanding of early American Puritanism and its impact on the United States and England. Winship’s new book, The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson: Puritans Divided, will be published in May 2005.

DISTINGUISHED RESEARCH PROFESSORS

The appointment as Distinguished Research Professor recognizes outstanding national and international research and creative achievements. This year, Ronald L. Bogue, Mary Ann Moran and Ronald L. Simons received this distinction.

Bogue, a professor of comparative literature, studies the thoughts of 20th century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, whose writings encompassed the arts, humanities and sciences. Bogue explores the systematic coherence of Deleuze’s thought and his important contributions to philosophy. He has shown, for example, how Deleuze provided insights into understanding human creativity as a manifestation of the natural world’s creative processes and has produced innovative ways of approaching literature, cinema, music and painting through readings on Deleuze. A leading international scholar, Bogue wrote the first comprehensive work on Deleuze and has given three plenary addresses on the philosopher, including one at the first international conference held on Deleuze at Oxford. He has published four books about Deleuze since 2003 in addition to co-editing three collections of essays.

Moran, a professor of marine biology, studies microbial communities and their roles in coastal productivity and global climate. She developed a new way to study the role of microbes in marine ecosystems by isolating a unique marine bacterium from the Roseobacter group, which can now be cultured and studied in a laboratory setting. On a genomic level, Moran’s work illuminates the connections between some of the smallest units of living matter and concepts as big as global climate patterns and ocean ecosystem dynamics. She received UGA’s Creative Research Medal in 1997, has helped attract more than $21 million in research grant funding in the past two decades and recently received an unsolicited $2.6 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation for genomic studies on marine bacteria.

Simons, a professor of sociology, investigates the impact of family relationships on childhood development, subsequent life choices and deviant behaviors, including delinquency and substance abuse. He examines how such factors as single parenting, divorce, corporal punishment, peer pressure, community context and economic status affect children’s development and reactions to various milestones throughout childhood and adolescence. Since 1987, Simons has received more than $26 million in grants from the NIH and CDC, among others. He has published three books and more than 100 articles and book chapters in less than two decades and received the 2003 Reuben Hill Research and Theory Award from the National Council on Family Relations.

ROBERT C. ANDERSON MEMORIAL AWARDS

Each year two awards are given – one in natural sciences and one in another field – for an outstanding record of graduate research and innovation. The award is named for the late Robert C. Anderson, UGA’s former vice president for research and former president of the UGA Research Foundation. Hannah K. Knudsen and Rupal Thazhath received this year’s awards.

Knudsen, a recent doctoral graduate in sociology, focused her research on decision-making processes in large organizations, including drug abuse treatment centers. By drawing on her work on drug abuse in the workplace, she determined that although Americans mourned the lives lost in the Sept. 11 attacks, there was no lasting impact in terms of alcohol consumption and depression. She has published 10 journal articles in the past two years and participated in five conference presentations in 2004. Now she is an assistant research scientist at UGA’s Center for Research on Behavioral Health and Human Services Delivery.

Thazhath, a recent doctoral graduate in cellular biology, studies a little-understood mechanism called glycylation that affects normal cell functions, such as movement and cell division. She discovered that this process also controls the assembly of cilia, which are motile, hair-like structures found in many tissues including lungs. Many types of disorders, including kidney disease and infertility, can be caused by the abnormal functioning of cilia. Her discoveries were published in Nature Cell Biology, Molecular Biology of the Cell and The Journal of Cell Biology. She was an invited speaker at the 2003 Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology’s Ciliate Molecular Biology Conference.

JAMES L. CARMON SCHOLARSHIP AWARD AND HONORARIUM

These are given in memory of the late James L. Carmon, a professor who was integral to the advancement of computer research and development at UGA. Congzhou He and Jeremy Gulley received the award and honorarium, respectively, for their innovative use of computers.

James L. Carmon Scholarship Award

He, a doctoral student in computer science, designed computer software that analyzes the effects of a drug that causes distinctive speech patterns typical of people with schizophrenia. She now is combining her original algorithms with natural-language-understanding techniques to develop software that can detect, analyze and diagnose other speech patterns associated with schizophrenia.

James L. Carmon Scholarship Honorarium

Gulley, a doctoral student in physics and astronomy, wrote a software program that predicts the impact of laser pulses as they propagate through optical devices. Modern commercial lasers are so intense they can temporarily turn ordinary glass pieces into high-powered lenses, which can damage equipment and alter results. Gulley’s program indicates where this may occur and where inferior equipment must be replaced to avoid jeopardizing experimental results and costly lab instruments.

GRADUATE STUDENT EXCELLENCE IN RESEARCH AWARDS

Funded and administered by the UGA Graduate School, these awards recognize graduate students who demonstrate exceptional, significant scholarship in fine arts, humanities and letters, life sciences, mathematics and physical sciences, and professional and applied studies. This year’s recipients are John W. Amoss, Victoria Baramidze, Peter T. Gianiodis, Esther M. Skelley and Michael J. Yabsley.

Amoss, a master of fine arts candidate in printmaking, uses moku-hanga, a Japanese woodblock printing technique, to create multicultural, multigenerational art that combines sculpture, painting and print media. Amoss invented and refined this technique. His artwork has been exhibited in Scotland, Uganda and Japan.

Baramidze, a doctoral candidate in mathematics, develops applied mathematical methods that can be used for earth and atmospheric sciences. She focuses on spherical splines, which are mathematical tools to represent functions over spherical objects like the Earth. She combines splines and satellite data to describe gravitational fields and densities to further advance geodetic and atmospheric science.

Gianiodis, a doctoral student in strategic management, studies the process of transferring and commercializing university discoveries and technologies to industry. His work provides evidence that how a technology-transfer office is configured affects a university’s commercialization success. He has shown that universities that quickly commercialize inventions produce more revenue.

Skelley, a doctoral candidate in international affairs, analyzes the methods and results of U.S. democracy programs abroad. She has concluded that because developing democracies often alternate between progression and regression for several decades, U.S. intervention necessitates a long-term commitment to the consolidation process.

Yabsley, a recent doctoral graduate in veterinary parasitology, studies infectious and parasitic diseases that are transmissible from animals to humans. He developed and validated a surveillance system to monitor the distribution and spread of a tick-borne bacterium (Ehrlichia chaffeensis) that infects humans and white-tailed deer. The system incorporates geographic information systems and projects locations of infection risks across 18 states.

For more information, visit www.ovpr.uga.edu/creativeresearch