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Columns::June 17, 2002
University receives $3.5 million grant from Goizueta Foundation to improve Hispanic education
Dunn, Institute of Higher Education director, is named VP for instruction
Staff Council elects four new officers
Update: Private Giving
Big Man on Campus
Foundation Fellows meet Delta Prize recipient
Bulldog bests
Campus News
Two prominent scientists join UGA as Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholars
By Larry B. Dendy
ldendy@uga.edu
Two prominent scientists--a specialist in stem-cell research and an expert in the development of new drugs to fight  diseases--are joining the UGA faculty as Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholars.
Stephen Dalton, a lecturer and researcher in molecular biosciences at the University of Adelaide in Australia, is joining the animal and dairy science department in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. He will be the GRA Eminent Scholar in Molecular Cell Biology.
Vasu Nair, who came to UGA from an endowed chair at the University of Iowa, is new head of the pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences department in the College of Pharmacy. Nair is the William Henry Terry Sr. GRA Eminent Scholar in Drug Discovery and director of the pharmacy college’s Drug Discovery Division.
The Georgia Research Alliance, started in 1990, is a consortium of state government, private industry and six research universities in Georgia, including UGA. As part of its mission to leverage university research for economic development purposes, GRA provides the universities with funds to help recruit scientists, known as Eminent Scholars, whose research can yield economic benefit to the state.
The appointments of Dalton and Nair, approved last week by the University System Board of Regents, raise to nine the number of GRA Eminent Scholars at UGA. The regents also approved creation of another Eminent Scholar position at UGA to be filled later.
Both scientists will play important roles in UGA’s burgeoning biomedical initiative, says Gordhan Patel, vice president for research.
“Stephen Dalton’s research involves fundamental aspects of cellular biology, which impacts normal and abnormal embyronic cell development, and diseases such as cancer,” Patel says. “Vasu Nair works on drug discovery and drug design using information based on X-ray structural analysis. Both work at the fundamental research level, but their work is crucial to our overall research efforts to improve human and animal health.”
Dalton’s research deals with the cycle that cells go through as they grow and divide. He specializes in embyronic stem cells, which can grow into different tissues of the body. Scientists believe stem cells hold great promise in treating cancer and other diseases, and they are also essential for cloning and transgenic technology.
Dalton will be a colleague of Steven Stice, another GRA Eminent Scholar in the animal and dairy science department and an international cloning authority. Dalton is scientific director for a cell therapy program conducted by BresaGen, an Australian firm that has relocated its stem-cell work to Athens. Stice is a vice president of the company, which owns four of the embyronic stem cell lines approved for federal research funding.
Nair’s research is focused on the chemistry and chemical biology of molecules that may help fight diseases caused by viruses. His University of Iowa laboratory received international recognition for the discovery of a chemical in the body that appears to inhibit the HIV virus. A University of Iowa chemistry faculty member since 1969, Nair held a Foundation Distinguished Professorship there since 1993. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Patel notes that the Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholars program has spawned the creation of a number of biotechnology companies in Georgia. “This has become a model program for translating university research into economic gains, and many other states are trying to emulate it,” Patel says. “We’re very fortunate that Sen. Zell Miller, when he was governor, along with other state leaders, had the foresight to make Georgia a pioneer in this movement.”
The board of regents also approved creation of the Norman Giles/Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Molecular Genetics and Functional Genomics at UGA. Giles, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and former president of the Genetics Society of America, helped create UGA’s genetics department in the 1970s. A search is under way to fill the position. |
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