Faculty honored for research, creativity

By Steve Koppes

Faculty and graduate students representing a range of academic disciplines were honored for their research, creativity and scholarly achievements at the 19th annual Research Awards Banquet May 20.

Creative Research Awards
Donna E. Alvermann and Loch K. Johnson received the William A. Owens Award, which recognizes an outstanding body of scholarly or creative activity that has gained national and international recognition in the social and behavioral sciences.

Alvermann, Research Professor of Reading Education, received the award for her contributions to solving literacy problems. Her work has broken new ground in the field by helping to demonstrate how factors such as gender, race, ethnicity and social class influence adolescent literacy. She has used new and innovative research methods and has collaborated with teachers, involving them directly in her research.

Last year, Alvermann received the two highest honors from the National Reading Conference, the premier professional society for literacy researchers. It was the first time in NRC's 48-year history it conferred the two honors on one member in a single year.

Johnson, Regents Professor of Political Science, received the Owens Award for contributions to the understanding of U.S. intelligence activities. He was introduced to the field while serving as an aide to the late Sen. Frank Church of Idaho, who chaired a 16-month Senate investigation of the U.S. intelligence community in 1975-76.

Since then Johnson has conducted numerous interviews with intelligence professionals and other government officials, sifting through declassified documents and serving as a White House staff aide with responsibilities for intelligence oversight. Johnson is the author of three books, A Season of Inquiry (1985), America's Secret Power (1989) and Secret Agencies (1996).

Judith Ortiz Cofer, professor of English, received the Albert Christ-Janer Award for her outstanding contributions to the creative arts. Cofer's widely acclaimed fiction, poetry and essays explore the feelings and experiences of growing up on the cusp of two cultures in Puerto Rico and the United States.

Her first novel, The Line of the Sun (1989), was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. In 1994, Cofer was awarded the O. Henry Prize for her story "Nada." HBO has optioned one of the stories in Cofer's The Latin Deli for a feature-length cable television movie. Her work has been translated into Spanish, Dutch and Italian, and six publishers have selected her writings for their textbooks and anthologies.

Creative Research Medals
For outstanding research or creative activity on a single theme, conducted in association with UGA within the past five years, five Creative Research Medals were given to David J. Benson, Timothy P. Denny, Mark A. Schell, Richard Fayrer-Hosken, Elissa R. Henken and Charles Q. Yang.

Benson, professor of mathematics, has made startling contributions to several areas of algebra, particularly group coho-mology and representation theory. Groups capture the abstract idea of symmetry, and representation theory is the concrete expression of this symmetry. Cohomology is the glue that holds representations together.

In a series of eight papers on the algebra of infinite dimensional representations, Benson has solved some important and notoriously difficult problems. These papers have opened areas for further research, and already they are yielding important applications within mathematics.

Benson delivered an invited talk on his work at a major conference on representation theory of infinite groups at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology this past fall.

The work also was the subject of several lectures at the Summer School on Representation Theory held in Wille-badessen, Germany, this past October.

Denny, professor of plant pathology, and Schell, professor of plant pathology and microbiology, have made landmark contributions to understanding the mechanisms by which Ralstonia solanacearum and other plant-pathogenic bacteria attack, colonize and kill host plants. R. solanacearum is one of the world's most important plant-pathogenic bacteria, causing a lethal wilting disease of several hundred species in more than 40 plant families.

Denny and Schell have discovered that R. solanacearum's complex sensory network is the bacterium's most important system for causing disease. The components of this regulatory network now may be used as prime targets for the development of novel chemical and biological control strategies.

Fayrer-Hosken, associate professor of large animal medicine, has developed a protein-based contraceptive vaccine that since 1995 has prevented the killing of 2,000 elephants in South Africa's Kruger National Park.

Following increased efforts to prevent elephant poaching in Africa, the elephant population in Africa's wild animal parks has increased dramatically.

This population increase has caused serious ecological problems within the parks, forcing the park service to selectively kill hundreds of elephants each year. In an effort to control elephant numbers more humanely, Fayrer-Hosken has developed and tested a contraceptive vaccine in Kruger's free-roaming elephant population.

Henken, associate professor of English, is the author of National Redeemer: Owain Glyndwr in Welsh Tradition, a case study on how folklore shapes people's perceptions of the past and how people reshape their folklore to meet the sociopolitical needs of their own times.

Henken, who teaches folklore, combines the tools of the historian with those of the folklorist to explore the development of a powerful cultural symbol. Owain Glyndwr, called Owen Glendower by Shakespeare, led the last major armed rebellion by the Welsh against the English in the early 15th century. Today Glyndwr is an important symbol of modern Welsh nationalism.

Yang, professor of textiles, merchandising and interiors, has developed a wrinkle-free finishing system for fabrics. The patented non-formaldehyde system has been licensed by the UGA Research Foundation to the Callaway Chemical Company of Columbus, Ga.

The new finishing system provides the textile and garment industry with an effective and competitively priced non-formaldehyde system to replace traditional formaldehyde-based durable-press finishes, which expose garment workers to high concentrations of this volatile chemical and reduce fabric strength.

Research Professors
Five faculty members were named Research Professors, an honor reserved for scholars whose work is recognized by international leaders in the discipline to be at the highest levels of creativity.

Research professors are approved by the University System Board of Regents. Each first-time appointee receives a $7,000 permanent increase in base salary. All appointees receive $10,000 a year for five years for research and creative endeavor. First-time appointments went to Chung K. David Chu, Richard S. Hussey and Michael K. Johnson. Donna E. Alvermann and Peter C. Hoffer were reappointed.

Chu, the Millikan-Reeve Professor of Pharmacy, has had a significant impact on the treatment of AIDS, hepatitis B infection and cancer. He is among the leading academic investigators involved in the synthesis and discovery of antiviral agents. His work on the antiviral agent called the L-FMAU compound, which was presented at the 1997 International Conference on Antiviral Research, has emerged as possibly the most significant breakthrough for hepatitis B virus infection to date.

Other compounds that Chu has discovered are undergoing various stages of clinical trials for the treatment of AIDS, HIV, hepatitis B and cancer. Chu holds 26 patents, has received more than $6 million in grants and is the author of more than 170 scholarly publications.

Hoffer, Research Professor of History, is the author of two recent books on the Salem witchcraft trials of the late 17th century. The first, The Devil's Disciples, was published in 1996. His second book on the Salem trials has just appeared as the third volume in his own series of Landmark Law Cases and American Society.

One of Hoffer's two books-in-progress, The Brave New World: A History of Early America, will be published in 1999 by Houghton Mifflin. His other work-in-progress seeks to recapture in words and pictures the sights, smells and sounds of the American colonial period.

Hussey, the D.W. Brooks Distinguished Professor of Plant Pathology, specializes in nematology, the study of parasitic worms. His research examines nematode diseases of economically important crops in Georgia, with an emphasis on soybeans. He focuses on non-chemical management strategies to reduce crop losses caused by plant-parasitic nematodes.

He maintains parallel research programs in fundamental and applied nematology and collaborates in a soybean-cultivar development program. This joint program with Roger Boerma, of the department of crop and soil sciences, has culminated in the release of 10 new high-yielding soybean cultivars with multiple resistance to several important species of pathogenic nematodes.

Johnson, professor of chemistry, biochemistry and molecular biology, is co-director of the Center for Metalloenzyme Studies. During the past 10 years, he has created one of the world's premier biophysical laboratories for investigating metallic biological molecules.

Transition metals such as iron, copper, nickel, cobalt, zinc, manganese and molybdenum are essential components of all fundamental life processes. How these processes work and how nature uses transition metals as catalysts are significant questions to agriculture, energy and health-related research. Johnson's work has provided unique insights into the way transition metals regulate a vast array of metabolic processes.

Inventor's Award
Renee Kaswan, professor of veterinary medicine, received the Inventor's Award, which is given to an individual whose creative invention has made an impact on the community. Kaswan has discovered a breakthrough therapy using the immunosuppressant cyclosporine for keratoconjunctivitis sicca (KCS), better known as "dry eye," in humans and dogs.

Topical treatment with cyclosporine enables the tear glands to regenerate and resume their normal functions. The drug has been approved in 10 countries for use in dogs and is the established treatment of choice for canine KSC. Allergan Pharmaceuticals recently completed phase III trials for human patients with KCS, including those who have Sjogren's Syndrome, an autoimmune complex disease.

Anderson Memorial Awards
Former UGA graduate students Suzette R. Grillot and Keith L. Knutson received Robert C. Anderson Memorial Awards for outstanding research conducted as graduate students and immediately thereafter. The award is named for the former vice president for research and president of the UGA Research Foundation, Inc.

Grillot, a 1997 doctoral graduate of the department of political science, led a group of colleagues in developing original theoretical tools and methods that have brought about a major breakthrough in arms and export controls research. Her successful proposal to the prestigious and highly competitive National Council for Soviet and East European Research resulted in the first council grant awarded to graduate students. Grillot and her UGA colleagues used the funding to conduct field research throughout the former Soviet Union. She was instrumental in writing and editing the resulting book, Arms on the Market: Reducing the Risk of Proliferation in the Former Soviet Union, to be published by Routledge this month. Grillot now is assistant director of UGA's Center for International Trade and Security.

Knutson, a 1995 doctoral graduate of the department of physiology and pharmacology, has contributed significantly to the understanding of protein kinase C (PKC), an enzyme that plays an important role in the secretion of pancreatic beta cells, which produce insulin. Since the discovery of PKC in 1982, many investigators have attempted to unravel its role in the insulin secretory process, but with conflicting results. Knutson's work has provided an explanation as to why an increase in fatty acids, which precedes type-2 diabetes mellitus, leads to a deterioration of beta cell function. He is now a postdoctoral fellow in the department of medicine at the University of British Columbia.

James L. Carmon Award
María S. Sánchez received the James L. Carmon Award, which is presented to a UGA graduate student who uses computers in an innovative way. The award is named for a 36-year UGA faculty member who helped make the university a leader in computer research and development.

Sánchez, a doctoral student in the department of genetics, is working on a project that could have a major impact on all fields of parasite control, including wildlife management, animal science, forestry, agriculture and public health. She is using computer methods to better understand the genetic dynamics between rabbits and the myxomatosis virus.