April kudos

Honors and awards of every stripe have been announced for faculty, staff and students. 

Vincent Starai was awarded $1,503,565 by the National Institutes of Health to investigate how the bacterium that causes Legionnaires’ disease, Legionella pneumophila, overcome the body’s defenses. Starai is an assistant professor who holds a joint appointment with the departments of microbiology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and infectious diseases in the College of Veterinary Medicine.

The Department of Energy announced today that it has renewed funding for three bioenergy research centers at $25 million per year, including the BioEnergy Science Center and the Complex Carbohydrate Reseach Center, directed by Regents Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Plant Biology Alan Darvill. In addition, principal investigators for BESC projects include Michael Adams, Distinguished Research Professor of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Microbiology; Maor Bar-Peled, professor, plant biology; Jeffrey Bennetzen, Giles Professor of Molecular Biology and Functional Genomics, department of genetics; Katrien Devos, professor, crop and soil sciences; Michael Hahn, professor, plant biology; Debra Mohnen, professor, biochemistry and molecular biology; Janet Westpheling, professor, genetics; William York, professor, biochemistry and molecular biology; and Ying Xu, professor and the Regents-Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, department of biochemistry and molecular biology.

Academic advisors Wanda Wilcox and Annemarie Hitchcock were announced as two of the three recipients of UGA's Outstanding Advisor Awards for 2013, presented each spring to faculty and staff members for excellence in advising undergraduate students on class selection and course of study, assisting them with academic problems, and providing guidance on related matters such as decisions about graduate school and careers.

Associate history professor Stephen Berry and English professor William Kretzschmar are among seven recipients nationally of the 2013 American Council of Learned Societies Digital Innovation Fellowships.

Earlier this academic year, the NSF awarded a multi-year grant of nearly $750,000 to a group of researchers that includes co-principal investigator J. Marshall Shepherd, to study and advance the understanding of the Urban Heat Island Network phenomenon. The study will examine how they can be "ameliorated through engineering and design practices, and share these insights with a wide array of stakeholders."

The UGA Atmospheric Sciences Program, directed by Marshall Shepherd, was featured in the March 2013 issue of the American Geophysical Union newsletter.

Thiab Taha, a professor of computer science, received $18,000 from the National Science Foundation in support of the eighth IMACS international conference on nonlinear evolution equations and wave phenomena. IMACS is the acronym for the International Association for Mathematics and Computers in Simulation.