2006 Honors and Awards: Creative Research and Creative Research Medals
Exceptional faculty and graduate students were honored March 29 at the university’s 27th annual Research Awards Banquet. The awards program is sponsored by the nonprofit UGA Research Foundation. Winners of the Creative Research Awards receive $2,500; Creative Research Medal winners receive $500.
By Carole VanSickle
Three Creative Research Awards are presented annually to UGA faculty in honor of outstanding creative activity and research that received national and international recognition. Gail M. Williamson received the William A. Owens Award for research in the social and behavioral sciences; William D. Davis received the Albert Christ-Janer Award for the creative arts and humanities; and Stephen P. Hubbell received the Lamar Dodd Award for research in the sciences.
Williamson, a professor of psychology, is a health psychologist. She was among the first to document the interconnected challenges confronted by the elderly and their caregivers, and has led the way in determining factors that contribute to neglectful and abusive care.
Her research is theoretically, methodically sophisticated and provides clear directions for effective new interventions to promote well-being among caregivers and recipients.
Her model of the social and psychological consequences of restricted activity has attracted the sustained interest of researchers in the field of aging, and the impact of her work has extended beyond aging and the care-giving relationship to issues in a range of life-threatening and incapacitating health disorders.
Her publications have appeared in the most respected disciplinary journals of psychology, social sciences, sexuality, health, rehabilitation, Alzheimer’s disease and gerontology, and her works are cited widely.
Davis, a professor of music, is a world-renowned bassoon performer who has created an imaginative and popular body of compositions for the instrument. Although the bassoon is not typically associated with solo performance, Davis has established an international reputation as a solo recitalist and as a soloist performing with a range of orchestras and concert bands.
While his repertoire includes music from the last four centuries, his most widely recognized contribution is to the field of new music. As a composer, Davis has produced works for many instrument and vocal combinations, including solo and ensemble works for bassoon. His superb bassoon performance ability gives him an advantage when composing for this instrument. He uses avant-garde techniques integrated with musical textures that possess interest and clarity. The outcome has been an important contribution to the contemporary music repertoire.
He has performed on four continents and is also a recording artist with works released on eight compact discs.
Hubbell, a Distinguished Research Professor of Plant Biology, has created a mathematical theory to explain general patterns in the distribution of biological diversity on Earth from local to global scales. Originally published as The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography (2001), the theory unifies previously unconnected theory in population biology and island biogeography with speciation theory.
The theory has generated great excitement but also consternation among ecologists. The controversy is because, despite the theory’s simplified neutral approach, it works remarkably well, accurately describing many observed patterns of species diversity that had previously resisted theoretical explanation.
Hubbell’s book already has become a citation classic and his theory has spawned a significant growth industry in theoretical ecology, resulting in a spate of derivative publications in leading scientific journals such as Nature and Science.
Hubbell is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also a Pew Fellow in Conservation Biology and in 2004 was awarded the prestigious Marsh Global Prize in Ecology by the British Ecological Society.
Inventor’s 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 Michael Adang.
A professor of entomology, biochemistry and molecular biology, Adang studies insects that have natural tolerance for or an acquired resistance to toxins that are typically used to protect crops.
As an inventor in this field, he created technologies resulting in 12 patents. While conducting research at UGA with funding from the Georgia Research Alliance, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Institutes of Health, Adang discovered a new protein that increases the effectiveness of the bioinsecticide Bacillus Thuringiensis (Bt).
His discovery, which he calls “Bt-Booster,” expands the range of insects that Bt works against and reduces the amount required to be effective. The benefits are higher crop yields and less environmental impact. InsectiGen, a new biotech company based at UGA’s Georgia BioBusiness Center, has been formed to commercialize Bt-Booster as a biological control agent.
Creative Research Medals
recognize outstanding research projects and creative activities with a single theme carried out at UGA. This year’s medal recipients are: Lisa Alayne Donovan, Jacek Gaertig, Michael R. Geller, Andrea G. Hohmann and Claudio Saunt.
Donovan, a professor of plant biology, approaches the concept of evolution from an ecological perspective by exploring how traits and adaptations enable newly formed hybrid plants to survive. She is one of the founders of ecological-evolutionary functional genomics.
Donovan has applied her novel approach to the study of a hybrid sunflower that evolved in desert habitats and has more extreme versions of its parent-plants’ traits than either of the original two plants, allowing it to survive where its predecessors cannot.
Gaertig, an associate professor of cellular biology, studies microtubules, structures found in all cells that—among other things—regulate cell shape and movement.
Gaertig and his colleague, Bernard Edde, identified a group of enzymes that make structural marks on the surfaces of microtubules, functioning as a code that tells different proteins where to bind to microtubules and where to go once they have done this. This enables microtubules to perform a vast array of functions without modifying their basic underlying structure.
Geller, an associate professor of physics and astronomy, conducts research in nanomechanics—the study of designing three-dimensional structure on the scale of micrometers and smaller.
In collaboration with experimental physicist Andrew Cleland of UC Santa Barbara, Geller has designed a new type of quantum computer that combines superconductors with nanometer-size resonators, which results in unprecedented computing power.
This research has lead to an entirely new branch of physics call phonon quantum optics, which involves control and manipulation of tiny “heat packages” known as phonons. Geller also has developed a new theory for a scanning probe that can be used to identify individual biomolecules like chromosomes.
Hohmann, an associate professor of psychology, focuses on the role of cannabinoids —the brain’s own marijuana-like system—in suppressing pain.
She combines multiple techniques to study pain modulation from a neuroscience perspective and is interested in improving the understanding of how an edogneous cannabinoid system contributes to mechanisms of pain suppression. She has identified an enzyme that deactivates a marijuana-like compound in the brain called 2-AG as a therapeutic target for pain and stress-related disorders.
This new peripheral technique could result in treatments that do not have the adverse side effects often associated with treatments that directly involve the central nervous system.
Saunt, an associate professor of history, is the author of Black, White and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family.
The book relates the multi-generational story of a Native American family based on the never-before-studied 44-volume diary of G.W. Grayson, the principal chief of the Creek Nation in the early 20th century.
Saunt reconstructed Grayson’s family tree and pieced together thousands of scraps of information gleaned from document collections around the country to fill in the family’s history.
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