|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|||||||
| |
|
||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
| |
|
|||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||
|
C.R.
Rao Awarded National Medal of Science
Penn State's Calyampudi R. Rao, emeritus holder of the Eberly Family Chair in Statistics and director of the Center for Multivariate Analysis, was one of fourteen scientists and one engineer awarded the National Medal of Science by President Bush in June before more than 200 people in the East Room of the White House. Rao received the award for "his pioneering contributions to the foundations of statistical theory and multivariate statistical methodology and their applications, enriching the physical, biological, mathematical, economic, and engineering sciences." The medal is the nation's highest award for lifetime achievement in fields of scientific research. This was Rao's second trip to the White House, but his first as an honored guest. "My first trip was a long time ago, around 1953. I was at the White House on a visitor's tour," Rao said. This time at the White House, Rao and other laureates had a chance to talk informally with President Bush about the importance of their scientific contributions and the role they play in the country. In his introduction of the laureates, Bush thanked them for their contributions to society. "The science and technology leaders here today have turned genius and persistence into knowledge, technology that will shape lives for decades to come," Bush said. "All of our honorees, and their colleagues throughout the United States, are asking questions whose answers will improve lives not only here at home, but around the world." Bush emphasized the importance of research conducted by the laureates and their colleagues, and the originality it produces. "Innovation helps Americans to live longer, healthier, and happier lives. Innovation helps our economy grow, and helps people find work. Innovation strengthens our national defense and our homeland security ..." Rao is internationally acknowledged as one of the pioneers who laid the foundation of modern statistics, as well as one of the world's top five statisticians with multifaceted distinctions as a mathematician, researcher, scientist, and teacher. His pioneering contributions to mathematics and statistical theory and applications have become part of graduate and postgraduate courses in statistics, econometrics, electrical engineering, and many other disciplines at most universities throughout the world. His research, scholarship, and professional services have had a profound influence on the theory and application of statistics in such diverse fields as anthropology, geology, biology, psychology, social sciences, and national planning. Rao's research in multivariate analysis, for example, has been used to improve economic planning, weather prediction, medical diagnosis, tracking the movements of spy planes, and monitoring the course of spacecrafts. Technical terms bearing his name appear in all standard textbooks on statistics, including such terms as the Cramer-Rao Inequality, Rao-Blackwellization, Rao's Score Test, Fisher-Rao Theorem, and Rao Distance. A book he wrote in 1965, Linear Statistical Inference and Its Applications, is one of the most-often-cited books in science.
Rao is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Science in the United States, a Fellow of the Royal Society in the United Kingdom, and a member of the Indian National Science Academy, the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, and the Third World Academy of Sciences. The recipient of numerous awards throughout his career, including the 2000 Emanuel and Carol Parzen Prize for Statistical Innovation, Rao also has received a number of medals, including the Wilks Medal from the American Statistical Association, the Guy Medal in Silver of the Royal Statistical Society of England, the Megnadh Saha Medal of the Indian National Science Academy, the J.C. Bose Gold Medal of the Bose Institute, and the Mahalanobis Centenary Gold Medal of the Indian Science Congress. He has been awarded 27 honorary doctoral degrees from universities in 16 countries. He has been honored by the government of India with the Padma Vibhushan award—the country's second-highest civilian honor for outstanding contributions to science, engineering, and statistics; with being selected as the namesake for a national award to be presented to the country's outstanding young statisticians; and with receiving from the prime minister of India the highest honor bestowed by the University of Visva-Bharati, the Desikottama award, whose translation in English is "Ideal Person of the Country," in recognition of his "enormous contributions in the field of statistics and its applications." Rao was born in 1920 and earned his Ph.D. and Sc.D. degrees in 1948 at Cambridge University in England. He held many important positions during the course of his career, including the directorship of the Indian Statistical Institute, the Jawaharlal Nehru Professorship and the National Professorship in India, and the University Professorship at the University of Pittsburgh. Rao came to the United States in 1978 after serving as director of the Indian Statistical Institute, where he had held various research and administrative positions since 1944. In 1982 he established the Center for Multivariate Analysis at the University of Pittsburgh, where he continues as adjunct professor. He joined the Penn State faculty in 1988. He has authored or co-authored 14 books and more than 300 research papers published in scientific journals. He has supervised the doctoral research of approximately fifty students, most of whom now are employed in universities and other research organizations worldwide and many of them have become research leaders in their areas of their specialization. Rao is the second Penn State faculty member to receive this award. Erwin W. Mueller, Evan Pugh research professor of physics, was awarded the medal posthumously in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter "for his invention of the field-emission microscope, the field-ion microscope, and the atom-probe microscope, which helped to resolve the atomic structures of solids." The National Science Foundation administers
the National Medals of Science for the White House. Congress established
the National Medals of Science in 1959. The latest awards bring to 401
the total number of science medals awarded since congress established
the National Medals of Science in 1959. Fedoroff, Walker Named Evan Pugh Professors Nina Fedoroff, the Willaman Professor of Life Sciences and Director of the Life Sciences Consortium and the Biotechnology Institute, and Alan Walker, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Biology, have been named Evan Pugh Professors, the highest distinction that Penn State can bestow upon a faculty member. Named after Penn State's first President, this prestigious award are awarded to faculty members whose research publications and creative work or both are of the highest quality over a period of time, are acknowledged national and international leaders in their fields, as documented by pioneering research or creative accomplishments, are recipients of prestigious awards, and demonstrate excellent teaching skills with undergraduate and graduate students.
A native of Cleveland, Ohio, she received a bachelor’s degree in biology and chemistry in 1966 from Syracuse University and her Ph.D. in molecular biology from Rockefeller University in 1972. She joined the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she continued her research on nuclear RNA. Later, she was a Damon Runyan-Walter Winchell and NIH post-doctoral fellow, at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Baltimore, Md. Working in the laboratory of Donald Brown, Fedoroff pioneered in DNA sequencing. In 1978, Fedoroff became a staff member at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and a faculty member in the Biology Department at Johns Hopkins University. Her research focus changed to the isolation and molecular characterization of maize transposable elements. The isolation of the maize transposons, discovered genetically by 1983 Nobel Laureate in Medicine Barbara McClintock in the 1940s, was achieved in the early 1980s. In subsequent years, Fedoroff's lab showed that the maize transposons were active in a variety of other plants, developed transposon tagging systems, and studied the epigenetic regulation of transposon activity. In 1995 Fedoroff joined the Penn State faculty in her current positions. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Science Board. She also chairs the Publication Committee of the Council of the National Academy of Sciences. She is a member of the International Scientific Advisory Board of the Englehardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow. She also is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Sigma-Aldrich Chemical Company. Fedoroff has received awards and honors, including an NIH Merit Award, a 10-year research grant that supported her work from 1989 to 1999. She also received the University of Chicago's Howard Taylor Ricketts Award in 1990, the New York Academy of Sciences' Outstanding Contemporary Woman Scientist award in 1992, and the Sigma Xi's McGovern Science and Society Medal in 1997.
He has made many important discoveries during the past three decades at paleontological digs in Africa with his collaborators Richard and Meave Leakey, including a famous hominid specimen known as "The Black Skull." In 1995, he and Meave Leakey discovered the skeletal remains of a previously unknown species in the human lineage, which they named Australopithecus anamensis, that lived about 4 million years ago. One of the surprising revelations resulting from his subsequent analysis of these remains is that these ancestors of humans were walking upright that long ago. His most prominent books include The Nariokotome Homo erectus Skeleton, Structure and Function of the Human Skeleton, and The Wisdom of the Bones. Walker was honored with a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1986 and the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life in 1992. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1988, elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996, and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999. Other awards include the Fyseen Foundation 1998 International Prize and the Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize. A native of England, he earned a bachelor's degree with honors in geology and zoology at Cambridge University, United Kingdom, in 1962 and a doctoral degree in anatomy and paleontology at London University in 1967. He taught anatomy at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine in London; the Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda; and the University of Nairobi, Kenya, before moving to the United States in 1973. From 1974 to 1978, he was a faculty member in the Department of Anatomy at Harvard Medical School, where he also was associated with Harvard University’s biology and anthropology departments. He was a professor of cell biology and anatomy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine from 1978 until he joined the Penn State faculty in 1995. Back to Science Journal Fall 2002 Index Biologist
Cosgrove Appointed Eberly Family Chair The position is one of eight chairs established with endowments for each academic department in the Eberly College of Science at by the Eberly Family Charitable Trust of Uniontown, Pennsylvania. The chair is one of the highest honors awarded to faculty members in the college. Cosgrove, who is past president of the American Society of Plant Physiologists, focuses his research on expansins, which are proteins that allow plant cell walls to grow while maintaining their rigidity. The discovery of expansins by his research group in 1992 increased the understanding of the molecular biochemistry and biophysics of cell growth. Cosgrove joined the Penn State faculty as an assistant professor nearly 20 years ago and was named associate professor in 1987, professor in 1991, and Distinguished Professor in 2000. "Dan's research is notable for its consistent creativity," said Nina Fedoroff, the Evan Pugh Professor of Life Sciences and Verne M. Willaman Chair in Life Sciences. "His discovery of the expansin gene family, a major breakthrough in plant biology, has its beginnings in inventive and unusual experiments aimed at understanding the ability of the rigid cell walls of a plant to expand. Of equal importance, Dan also is recognized as an excellent teacher."Since the discovery of expansins, Cosgrove and his colleagues have determined that plants have many expansin genes with diverse roles. By isolating and characterizing the genes that control expression of expansins in the cell, the Cosgrove lab is helping to explain how plants control their growth under a variety of conditions and how they adapt to environmental stresses. Cosgrove's research accomplishments have received numerous awards and honors. They include: the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award in 1996, the Penn State Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the Life Sciences in 1996, the Charles A. Shull Award for Outstanding Investigations in Plant Physiology in 1991, Fulbright Travel Awards to Israel and the United Kingdom in 1990, the Fulbright Senior Professor Award in 1989, and the McKnight Foundation Award in 1986. In 1993, he was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In addition, Cosgrove has served as a visiting professor in Germany at the University of Goettingen and the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology. He earned his doctoral degree in biological sciences at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, in 1980 and his bachelor's degree in botany at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1974.
Back to Science Journal Fall 2002 Index Benkovic Elected as Member of American Philosophical Society Founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743, the American Philosophical Society is the oldest society in the United States established for the advancement of scientific and scholarly inquiry. Current members of the prestigious society include 742 scholars in the United States and 140 in other countries. Benkovic was elected in recognition of his extraordinary accomplishments in biochemical research on the mechanisms of enzyme reactions. He is perhaps best known for his quantitative analysis of enzyme catalysis and resulting chemical transformations. As a result of his insightful analyses of enzyme mechanics and his innovative approach to enzyme design, he for many years has been at the forefront of the research effort to manipulate the properties of enzymes. Benkovic’s research has led to the development of a new generation of antifolates for cancer therapy, to insights into how the protein machinery for DNA replication is organized, and to the creation of a novel class of antibiotics. A 1960 magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Lehigh University with a bachelor of arts degree in English literature and a bachelor of science degree in chemistry, Benkovic earned a doctoral degree in organic chemistry with minors in physical chemistry and biochemistry at Cornell University in 1963. From 1964 to 1965 he was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He joined the Penn State faculty as an assistant professor of chemistry in 1965 and was promoted to associate professor in 1967 then to professor in 1970. The University honored him with the title of Evan Pugh Professor of Chemistry in 1977, holder of the University Chair in Biological Sciences in 1984, and holder of the Eberly Family Chair in Chemistry in 1986. Benkovic is the author or coauthor of more than 455 scientific papers and has given invited talks and has held many lectureships worldwide. He is a member of the Board of Reviewing Editors of the journal, Science, and is a member of editorial or advisory boards of nine additional scientific journals, including Accounts of Chemical Research, Biochemistry, Biocatalysis and Biotransformation, Bioorganic Chemistry, BMB Biochemistry, ChemBioChem, Chemistry and Biology, Current Drugs, and Organic Letters. He serves as a member of the external advisory group of the Geisinger Hospital and the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. Benkovic is a member of the American Chemical Society, the Federation of American Biologists, Sigma Xi, and the Chemical Society. His previous awards include the Eastman Kodak Scientific Award in 1962, the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship from 1968 to 1974, the National Institutes of Health Career Development Award from 1969 to 1974, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1976, the Pfizer Enzyme Award in 1977, the Gowland Hopkins Award in 1986, the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award in 1988, the National Institutes of Health Merit Award in 1988, the Repligen Award in 1989, the Bicentennial Scientific Achievement Award of the City College of New York in 1990, and the Alfred Bader Award of the American Chemical Society in 1994, an honorary doctorate of science degree from Lehigh University in 1995, the Wellcome Visiting Professorship at the Massachusetts Medical Center in 1996, the Chemical Pioneer Award of the American Institute of Chemists in 1998, and the Christian B. Anfinsen Award in 2000. Benkovic was named a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1984, a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1985, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1987, and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1995. Back to Science Journal Fall 2002 Index Wolszczan
Wolszczan Receives Humboldt Award The award includes a monetary grant and support for research at German universities of the recipient's choice for a period of one year. Wolszczan became the first person to discover planets outside our solar system in 1992, when he used the 1,000-foot Arecibo radiotelescope to detect three planets orbiting a rapidly spinning neutron star. His discovery, which suggested that planets might be plentiful throughout the universe, opened the door to the current intense era of planet hunting. That distinction, plus the breadth and depth of his accomplishments, recently led to his being honored by the country of Poland in having his likeness featured on a special set of 16 postage stamps celebrating the past millennium. Also featured on the stamp with Wolszczan are Nicolaus Copernicus, considered by many to be the founder of modern astronomy, and the Arecibo radiotelescope, which Wolszczan used in his discovery of the planets. Among Wolszczan's previous honors is the Marian Smoluchowski Medal—the highest prize awarded by the Polish Physical Society, awarded in 2001. Previously, he was presented with the Gold Medal Award of the American Institute of Polish Culture in 2000, the Commander Cross of the Order of Merit Award from the president of Poland in 1997, the Casimir Funk Natural Sciences Award from the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America in 1996, and the Beatrice M. Tinsley Award from the American Astronomical Society in 1996. He also received the Penn State Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement in 1994, the Popular Science Award for “Best of What’s New” in 1994, the Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation award in 1993, and the Annual Award of the Foundation for Polish Science in 1992. Wolszczan was named an Evan Pugh Professor in 1998, the highest distinction Penn State can bestow upon a faculty member. Back to Science Journal Fall 2002 Index Wolszczan
Featured on Polish Millennium Stamp with Nicolaus Copernicus “I have been told that the design of the stamp is intended to celebrate a continuation of a good tradition in astronomy in my homeland,” Wolszczan said. “Copernicus moved us from the center of the universe to where we are now. Since then, many important steps have been taken to understand our position in the universe. My discovery is just one of many steps that have been taken.” Wolszczan’s pairing with Copernicus is particularly apt, considering both lived in Torun, Poland, both are pioneers in astronomy and Wolszczan earned his master’s and doctoral degrees from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun. Copernicus, who lived from 1473 to 1543, developed the Copernican system, which placed the sun at the center of planetary orbits. Wolszczan became the first person to discover planets outside our solar system in 1992, when he used the 1,000-foot Arecibo radiotelescope to detect three planets orbiting a rapidly spinning neutron star. His discovery, which suggested that planets might be plentiful throughout the universe, opened the door to the current intense era of planet hunting. Wolszczan said his honor can inspire future scientists all over the world. “Certainly it immediately tells you that if you work hard enough, make good progress, and have a little bit of good luck, you can go pretty far in science just as you can in other domains,” he said. “In countries such as my homeland where it is more difficult to achieve something, such encouragement is especially inspiring to young people.” The Polish 16-stamp set, titled “Polish Millennium,” summarizes the last 1,000 years of history, culture, and science in Poland. Each stamp represents a different field of life, including: Christianity; parliamentarism; history of political publications; theater; independence; internationalist traditions of the polish military forces; astronomy; education; traditions of the Polish army; the struggle for independence; art; music; Poland in the European system; Polish symbols; Polish sport; and, language, letters, and literature. Other prominent figures featured on individual stamps in the set include Pope John Paul II and popular labor leader Lech Walesa, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 and elected his country's president in 1990. “I’m very pleased to be on the stamp and it also feels a
little bit strange because I never expected it would go that far,”
Wolszczan said. “I feel happy and a little bit embarrassed.”
Back to Science Journal Fall 2002 Index Brewster
Receives Staff Award Brewster is the administrative assistant for the Center for Gravitational Physics and Geometry in the Department of Physics. Her responsibilities include the planning, organization and coordination of the Center’s administrative functions, management of the Center budgets, the Center visitor program, and the organization of international workshops and conferences. She served as the chairperson of the Staff Advisory Committee for the Eberly College of Science in 2000. She recently served as chairperson of a Quality Circle team, which painstakingly designed a Postdoctoral Information Guide for postdoctoral fellows and scholars in the Eberly College of Science, most of whom are foreign nationals. The informational packets and website developed by Brewster and her team represent the only comprehensive guide for both the faculty who hire postdoctoral fellows/scholars and for the postdoctoral fellows/scholars themselves at Penn State. This effort has been recognized in the Office of the Vice President for Research, which is seeking to use the website as a central information resource for the entire university. Back to Science Journal Fall 2002 Index Mahan
Elected a Councillor of the American Physical Society The American Physical Society is the largest physics organization in the world. With about 40,000 members, it holds the largest conferences in physics and is the largest publisher of physics research journals. Councillors serve on the governing board of the organization and also are expected to participate in planning and organizing some of many initiatives of the society. Mahan is a theoretical physicist with a specialty in condensed-matter physics. He has wide research interests on such topics as gases, liquids, and solids; on abstract topics involving many-electron phenomena; as well as on such practical devices as solid-state refrigerators. Mahan is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1995. He joined the Penn State faculty in the fall of 2001. Since 1984, he had held a joint appointment as a distinguished professor of physics at the University of Tennessee and as a distinguished scientist in the Solid State Division of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Prior to that, he was a faculty member at Indiana University from 1973 to 1980, and at the University of Oregon from 1967 to 1973. Mahan was a research physicist at the General Electric Corporate Research and Development Center from 1964 to 1967. He earned his doctoral degree in theoretical physics at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964 and his bachelor’s degree at Harvard College in 1959. He has authored or coauthored more than 200 technical papers and several books, including what is considered by many to be the essential reference for learning advanced techniques in solid-state theoretical physics, Many-Particle Physics. Back to Science Journal Fall 2002 Index Zhang
Receives American Chemical Society Award Zhang’s research is designed to facilitate the development of efficient, high-yield processes for the manufacture of pharmaceutical compounds known as chiral drugs—a broad category of medications whose therapeutic effectiveness is dependent on the shape and configuration of a drug molecule in addition to its chemical composition. Though chemically identical, chiral molecules may take either of two mirror-image forms and are therefore said to be either “left-handed” or “right-handed,” depending upon the configuration of the molecule in space. The effectiveness of pharmaceuticals often is based on the precise matching of the drug molecule with the structure of receptors inside the body. As a result, only one of the two mirror-image forms of a molecule typically provides therapeutic results. Among the goals of Zhang’s research are to understand the factors that control the formation of these molecules and to develop catalytic techniques for producing them in quantities sufficient for industrial applications in the agrochemical, electronics, food-additive, fragrance, and pharmaceutical industries. Techniques for producing useful molecular configurations have the ability to increase the efficiency and lower the cost of the manufacturing process. Zhang was presented with the University's Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement and received the Physical Science Medal in 2001. Zhang was selected as a Guggenheim Fellow in 2000. In 1998, he received the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and in 1994 the New Faculty Award, both from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. In 1996, Zhang was honored with the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award and the DuPont Young Faculty Award. Zhang earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry at Wuhan University in China in 1982 and a master's degree in physical and organic chemistry at the Chinese Academy of Science in 1985. Also in 1985, he joined the chemistry department at the University of California at San Diego as a research and teaching assistant, and in 1987, he received a master's degree in organometallic chemistry there. Then he moved to the chemistry department at Stanford University, where he earned a doctoral degree in organic and inorganic chemistry in 1992. After a two-year postdoctoral appointment at Stanford, he joined Penn State in 1994 as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in 1999. Back to Science Journal Fall 2002 Index Rao
Awarded Two Honorary Doctoral Degrees and High Honor by University in
India Rao also was named the first Visiting Professorial Fellow of the Wollongong University's Institute for Mathematical Modeling and Computational Systems. Rao also has been awarded the highest honor bestowed by the University Visva-Bharati in India (D.Litt. Honoris Causa). The "Desikottama" award, whose translation in English is "Ideal Person of the Country," was given to Rao in recognition of his "enormous contributions in the field of statistics and its applications" by the prime minister of India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the chancellor of the university. Among his numerous previous awards, Rao was honored by President George W. Bush in June 2002 with the National Medal of Science, the highest award given to an American scientist for lifetime achievement in fields of scientific research, for his "pioneering contributions to the foundations of statistical theory and multivariate statistical methodology and their applications, enriching the physical, biological, mathematical, economic and engineering sciences." In addition, Rao is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States, a Fellow of the Royal Society in the United Kingdom, and a member of the Indian National Science Academy, the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, and the Third World Academy of Sciences. He has authored or co-authored 14 books and more than 300 research papers published in scientific journals. He has supervised the doctoral research of approximately fifty students, most of whom now are employed in universities and other research organizations worldwide and many of them have become research leaders in their areas of their specialization. See Honoris Causa for more information about Rao's distinguished career
Back to Science Journal Fall 2002 Index Collins
Earns Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Research Collins is recognized for his path-breaking theoretical work on factorization theorems, calculations that guide the analysis of high-energy physics research into the interactions of subatomic particles. His ability to find ways to mathematically separate uncalculable, but universal and measurable, quantities from calculable quantities allow particle physicists to predict the outcome of scattering experiments and probe the fundamental building blocks of matter. He joined the Penn State faculty in 1990 as professor of physics. In 1986-87 he had a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 2000-01 he received a Humboldt Research Award for Senior U.S. Scientists. Collins is the author of Renormalization: an introduction to renormalization, the renormalization group and the operator product expansion, (Cambridge Press, 1984) and numerous scientific papers, book chapters and presentations.
Back to Science Journal Fall 2002 Index Biochemist
Cameron Named Louis Martarano Professor The Louis Martarano Career Development Professorship, supported by a gift from Louis Martarano, was created to provide critical financial support and encouragement for faculty starting their careers in the Eberly College of Science at Penn State. In addition to providing recognition of the recipient's current achievements, the professorship demonstrates belief in the person's potential to achieve eminence in his or her field. As a result, it provides important support for junior faculty members. Research in Cameron's laboratory focuses on positive-strand RNA viruses, which cause diseases ranging from the common cold to chronic hepatitis. While infection by some of those viruses can be stopped by the immune system alone or with the help of vaccinations, other similar viruses change so quickly that neither approach works. "Currently, there is no effective therapy for viruses that change so rapidly," Cameron said. "The long-term goal of our laboratory is to define the molecular mechanism of RNA-virus genome replication with the hope of using this information to design strategies to treat diseases caused by this class of viruses." Cameron completed his postdoctoral work at Penn State after earning his Ph.D. degree in biochemistry at Case Western Reserve University in 1993. He earned his bachelor's degree, magna cum laude in chemistry, at Howard University in 1987. Louis Martarano, the former Director of Project Finance for Merrill Lynch International, graduated from Penn State with a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1976. He currently serves on the advisory panel of the Penn State Eberly College of Science B.A./M.B.A. Program.
Back to Science Journal Fall 2002 Index Eberly
College of Science Honors Four Four graduates of the Eberly College of Science have been honored with the Outstanding Science Alumni Award. Awards for Terence Dwyer, chief technology officer and executive vice president of engineering at BEA Systems; Louise Goeser, vice president for quality at Ford Motor Company; Daniel Nolan, Research Fellow in the Optics and Photonics Directorate of Corning, Inc.; and Robert Wilson, a professor and director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory and Interventional Cardiology at the University of Minnesota; were presented recently during a reception at the Nittany Lion Inn. The award, established in 1997 by the Board of Directors of the Eberly College of Science Alumni Society, recognizes outstanding science alumni for their leadership in science and for the impact they have had and will continue to have on their professions.
Terence Dwyer, '70 M.A. Math, heads up BEA Systems' Office of Technology and Engineering,which is responsible for providing research and software development services, including architecture review, documentation, performance analysis, interoperability verification, and internal development standards to the engineering groups within BEA's product divisions. Prior to his current position, Dwyer worked on the TUXEDO system at Novell, USL, and Bell Laboratories, now Bell Labs Innovations.
Louise Goeser, '74 B.S. Math, is responsible for ensuring superior quality in the design, manufacture, sale, and service of all Ford cars, trucks, and components worldwide. In addition, Goeser is the company's champion for customer satisfaction and is leading Ford's launch of Consumer Driven 6-Sigma, a set of techniques used to reduce variability, waste, and cost. Goeser has served as vice-chairman of the board of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which oversees the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Awards for the U.S. Department of Commerce. She also has served as a Baldridge examiner from 1991 to 1994 and as a judge from 1994 to 1997.
Daniel Nolan, '74 Ph.D. Phys, holds the highest research position at Corning, Inc., Research Fellow, in the Optics and Photonics Directorate. The position recognizes both his worldwide scientific achievements as well as the commercial success of his technology concepts, which include research accomplishments in the areas of polarizing glass, optical fiber, and components for optical modules. Nolan, who holds 42 U.S. patents, is a Fellow in the Optical Society of America.
Robert Wilson, '73 B.S. PM, serves a dual role at the University of Minnesota. He is a professor in the cardiovascular division of the university's Department of Medicine and a member of the biomedical engineering graduate faculty. He is also director of the university's Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory and Interventional Cardiology Unit. Wilson founded Acist Medical Systems in 1991 and served as chairman of its board of directors from 1994 to 2001. He now serves as the company's medical director and consultant.
Back to Science Journal Fall 2002 Index Garrison
Named Shapiro Professor of Chemistry
The professorship was established by alumnus Edward Shapiro, a 1937 graduate with a degree in chemistry, and his wife, Antoinette Post-Shapiro, a 1937 graduate with a degree in liberal arts. "I am deeply honored to have been selected as the first Shapiro Professor," Garrison said. "Mr. Shapiro's distinguished career in the chemical industry provides an inspiring example for me to follow." A physical chemist, Garrison is recognized as a pioneer in the use of computer modeling to simulate and understand chemical reactions on the surfaces of materials. "The continuing impact of Barbara's work on surface science and mass spectrometry indicates a remarkable achievement in science," said Andrew Ewing, professor and head of the Department of Chemistry. "In addition to her outstanding research record, she has exhibited tremendous responsibility in leadership positions at Penn State." Garrison uses computer models to study the effects of fast energy deposition and the resulting chemical reactions at solid surfaces. Her studies of laser ablation are applicable to the optimization of lasers for surgery, the mass spectrometry of biological molecules, and the process of thin-film deposition. Her models of energetic particle bombardment of solids have built a theoretical understanding of the complex events that lead to the ejection of molecules from surfaces. This understanding has contributed to advances in the interpretation of mass-spectrometry data for organic compounds and biological molecules, and to the development of better techniques for doping and depth profiling of semiconductors. She has received a number of honors in recognition of her research and teaching accomplishments, including a Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship in 1980, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award in 1984, the Peter Mark Award of the American Vacuum Society in 1984, the Penn State Faculty Scholar Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Physical Sciences and Engineering in 1990, and the Francis P. Garvin-John M. Olin Medal from the American Chemical Society in 1994. She was elected as a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Vacuum Society in 1994. She recently has been selected as the Vice-Chair Elect of the Physical Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society. After joining the Department of Chemistry as an assistant professor in 1979, Garrison was promoted to professor in 1986 and served as head of the department from 1989 to 1994. She earned her doctoral degree in chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley in 1975 and her bachelor's degree in physics at Arizona State University in 1971.
Back to Science Journal Fall 2002 Index Assmann
Named Waller Professor of Plant Biology A world leader in the field of plant-cell signal transduction, Assmann studies how plants receive and respond to stimuli from the environment. In particular, she studies guard cells located on the surface of plant leaves. The activity and regulation of those cells plays a vital role in drought tolerance and photosynthesis. The Louis Waller Professorship in Plant Biology was established by Louis Waller of Dunmore, Pennsylvania, and is intended to provide a faculty member with the necessary resources for research in plant electrophysiology to effect the healing and growth of plants. "Such support provides a wonderful opportunity to learn even more about plant behavior," Assmann said. "In our bodies, certain cells have specific responsibilities, but in plants, with guard cells, the same cells act and respond to carry out a multitude of tasks. The more we learn about them, the more we will learn about plant physiology in general." After joining the Penn State faculty as an associate professor in 1993, Assmann was named professor in 1997. In 2001, she earned a Penn State Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement. Among her other awards and honors was a National Science Foundation POWRE Award in 1999. She also served as co-producer for a 1999 science-education video titled "Roots of Discovery." Prior to coming to Penn State, Assmann was an associate professor at Harvard University. She earned her doctoral degree in biology from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, in 1986 and her bachelor's degree, magna cum laude in biology, from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, in 1980.
Back to Science Journal Fall 2002 Index Assistant
Professor in Eberly College of Science Receives American Heart Association
Award The award, part of the American Heart Association National Research Program, supports research by mid-level investigators— those with four to eight years of experience—based on their accomplishments as independent investigators and their potential for future contributions to cardiovascular research. Although Reese does not study heart-muscle genes directly, his model system—a regulatory protein in yeast that functions like heart-muscle-specific factors—has enabled him to understand gene expression. He has determined that a specific protein controls the expression of the genes, and that the same protein either facilitates or prevents that expression. A better understanding of the mechanism related to the regulation of this gene would provide a valuable resource for research related to cardiac health. "We are using a model system to study how proteins that regulate gene expression can function as a repressor under one circumstance and an activator under another," Reese said. "Understanding the mechanism of how these genes are controlled and what causes the switch from the repressed to the activated state is critical toward developing drugs and therapies aimed at augmenting the repair of damaged tissue." Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State in 1997, Reese conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and at the University of Illinois. He earned his doctoral and master's degrees, both in molecular physiology, at the University of Illinois in 1992 and 1990, respectively. He earned his bachelor’s degree in biology, with a chemistry minor, at Boston University in 1988.
Back to Science Journal Fall 2002 Index Booker
Accepts National The award, which the agency describes as its highest honor for new faculty, provides five years of funding to stimulate the early development of academic careers in science and engineering and to support the critical roles played by faculty members in integrating research and education. Booker is an enzymologist whose research focuses on understanding the fundamental interactions that allow enzymes to catalyze reactions within cells. “Our laboratory is endeavoring to understand, at the detailed molecular level, the reaction mechanisms employed by various enzymes,” Booker said. “In particular, we are interested in how enzymes bind and use cofactors—whether they are simple metal ions, complex metal clusters, or small molecules—to increase their catalytic capabilities beyond that which is supported by the functional groups of the 20 naturally occurring amino acids.” Research in Booker’s laboratory focuses on enzymes that use S-adenosyl-L-methionine (SAMe) as a cofactor or cosubstrate. In most known reactions involving SAMe, the enzyme acts as a methylating agent to add a methyl group to a wide variety of biological molecules. However, Booker's research focuses on other classes of enzymatic reactions in which SAMe acts as a cofactor. In one case, the cofactor is used to insert sulfur atoms into octanoic acid to make lipoic acid, a compound that is integral to energy production in the cell and that is believed to be a free-radical scavenger, providing resistance to some types of cell damage. In another reaction, it is used to install cyclopropane rings in the fatty-acid portions of bacterial membranes. One particular enzyme under study catalyzes the formation of cyclopropane rings in the cell wall of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a reaction that correlates with the bacterium's virulence and the associated disease. A detailed understanding of this reaction might contribute to the development of pharmaceuticals for the treatment of tuberculosis. Before joining the faculty at Penn State in 1999, Booker conducted post-doctoral research at Rene Descartes University in Paris and at the University of Wisconsin. He earned his doctoral degree in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994 and his bachelor's degree at Austin College in Sherman, Texas, in 1987.
Back to Science Journal Fall 2002 Index
|
||||||||||||
|
Penn State Home Page | Eberly College of Science | Find a Person | Locate a Building | Search | Site Index Students
| Alumni
| Visitors
| Researchers
| Faculty and
Staff | Postdoctoral
Fellows | Corporate
Interests |
||||||||||||
| This page is maintained by Barbara K. Kennedy: science@psu.edu, (814) 863-4682 and Kristen Devlin: krd111@psu.edu, (814) 863-8453 -- FAX (814) 863-2246 Eberly College of Science, Office of Public Information, 427 Thomas Building, University Park, PA 16802-2112 This page was last updated on 16 February 2004 If you would like
to communicate with the keepers of the Eberly College of Science Web server,
send electronic mail to: science-web@thunder.science.psu.edu |
Nina
Fedoroff currently explores the genes that contribute to a plant's
ability to fight off disease and such environmental pollutants as ozone.
Plants have a complex reaction to both biological stresses, such as disease
organisms, and non-biological stresses, such as ozone. They produce many
protective compounds and generally reinforce the whole plants ability
to withstand further attack. The approach to understanding this complex
response is to identify the genes that are turned on and study their activation
using the new method of DNA microchip expression profiling. Fedoroff hopes
to identify which genes control other genes and how they control them.
This will allow geneticists to strengthen the ability of plants to withstand
such environmental assaults.
Alan
Walker is one of the world's foremost experts on the evolution
of primates and humans. His research involves searching for primate and
human fossils in rocks dated from about 30 million to 1 million years
ago. He pioneered the study of living primates as a basis for the analysis
of fossils and was one of the first to use scanning electron microscope
studies of enamel microwear on teeth to understand the diets of extinct
mammals.
Daniel Cosgrove, Distinguished Professor of Biology and
a member of the 
Stephen J. Benkovic, Even Pugh Professor of 
Alexander
Wolszczan, Evan Pugh Professor of 
Karen
L. Brewster, administrative assistant in the Department of 
Gerald
Mahan, distinguished professor of 
Xumu
Zhang, associate professor of 
Calyampudi
R. Rao, Emeritus Holder of the Eberly Family Chair in 
John
C. Collins, professor of 
Craig
Cameron, a member of the Penn State faculty since 1994, has been
named the Louis Martarano Professor of 
Barbara Garrison, Distinguished Professor of 
Sarah
M. Assmann, professor of biology at 
Joseph Reese, assistant professor of 
Squire
J. Booker, assistant professor of