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Columns::September 22, 2003
Root of the problem: Researchers plant trees that help clean up toxic waste site
UGA, MCG study long-term impact of schizophrenia drugs
New digital library collection looks at architectural sites, landscapes
Song sung blue: Proposed water projects are bigger threat to local songbirds than timber harvesting
Law professor briefs his students on legal ethics, civil procedure
Retirees
Kudos
Primary messages: Political scientist studies campaign communication strategies of presidential candidates
Movers and shakers
Campus News
Two new faculty members are named Eminent Scholars in molecular genetics, biochemistry
By Phil Williams
phil@franklin.uga.edu
Two new faculty members at the university have been named Eminent Scholars by the Georgia Research Alliance.
Jeffrey Bennetzen has been named the first recipient of the Norman and Doris Giles/Georgia Research Alliance Professorship in Molecular Genetics, and Ying Xu is Regents/GRA Eminent Scholar in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Bennetzen comes to UGA from Purdue University, where he was the Edwin Umbarger Distinguished Professor of Genetics, while Xu was most recently at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
“We are extremely fortunate and pleased to have Dr. Bennetzen join our faculty,” says John McDonald, head of the department of genetics. “He is universally recognized as one of the top plant genomicists in the world, and he will be a tremendous addition to UGA’s growing strengths in the field of bioinformatics.”
David Puett, head of the department of biochemistry and molecular biology, similarly expresses pleasure at Xu joining his department.
“We are delighted to have someone of Dr. Xu’s stature join our faculty and lead a major effort in bioinformatics and computational biology at UGA,” he says. “He arrived with a tremendous research team that is currently being expanded in several areas to meet the ever-growing demand of this emerging discipline.”
Giles, the Callaway Professor of Genetics Emeritus, is one of the most-honored scientists in UGA’s history. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. He was instrumental in the creation of the department of genetics at the University of Georgia. Recruited to UGA from Yale University in 1972, Giles oversaw the recruitment and development of an interdisciplinary program in genetics, which became a department in 1980.
The University System of Georgia Board of Regents approved the creation of the Giles/GRA Eminent Scholar at UGA in the summer of 2002.
“The recruitment of Dr. Bennetzen and Dr. Xu will add immensely to our programs at the University of Georgia,” says Arnett Mace, senior vice president for academic affairs. “Their international reputations significantly enhance the quality of our faculty.”
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.
“To date the University of Georgia has recruited 12 GRA Eminent Scholars from prestigious institutions around the country,” says Gordhan L. Patel, vice president for research. “These scholars are attracted to our university by the strength of our research programs. In addition to bringing thriving research programs to the university, these scholars also help energize the research programs of many junior faculty members.”
“We are delighted to welcome these fine scholars to our programs and very much look forward to the rich intelligence they will bring to the University of Georgia,” says Wyatt Anderson, dean of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.
Bennetzen has been a professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., for two decades. He received his bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of California at San Diego in 1974 and his doctoral degree in biochemistry from the University of Washington in 1980.
After earning his Ph.D., he served as a postdoctoral fellow at Washington University, Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley. From 1981 to 1983 he was a research scientist at the International Plant Research Institute in San Carlos, Calif., before joining the department of biological sciences at Purdue.
The author of dozens of publications in peer-reviewed journals, Bennetzen has won numerous awards, including a Presidential Young Investigator Award, a Fulbright Award and the Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Centenary Professorship at the University of Hyderabad in 2002.
Xu received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science from Jilin University in China, and his doctoral degree, also in computer science, from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Apart from a stint as a visiting assistant professor in the Colorado School of Mines, Xu spent his entire career at Oak Ridge before coming to UGA.
He is generally considered to be one of the country’s leading experts on computational biology and bioinformatics. He has worked regularly with the Southeastern Structural Genomics Consortium, which is based at UGA. His work in predicting protein structures has been recognized internationally. |
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