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Author: ovprweb

Yajun Yan

ovprweb on April 2, 2018

Portrait of Yajun Yan in labEntrepreneur of the Year Award 2018

Yajun Yan, associate professor in the College of Engineering, leads UGA’s research in microbial production of biofuels and high-value chemicals. His work has led to six issued U.S. patents and several pending patent applications. In 2014, he and his colleague, Yuheng Lin, co-founded BiotecEra Inc., which is developing and commercializing innovative microbial technologies to achieve sustainable, economically viable and eco-friendly production of industrially valuable pharmaceuticals and commodity chemicals. Located in the UGA Innovation Gateway incubator, BiotecEra Inc. has secured state funding through the Georgia Research Alliance, federal funding through the Small Business Innovation Research program and private funding from an angel investor. His research also formed the basis for a second startup, HGG Research LLC, which is developing methods to synthesize various natural compounds in probiotic strains. Since joining the UGA faculty in 2010, he has been an advocate for entrepreneurism among faculty colleagues while leading the Biosynthetic Engineering and Biocatalysis Laboratory.

Darrell Sparks

ovprweb on April 2, 2018

Portrait of Darrell Sparks with pecan in handInventor of the Year Award 2018

Darrell Sparks, professor in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, is widely known as “Mr. Pecan” for his research in the physiology, management and development of new cultivars that contributed in large part to making Georgia No. 1 in pecan production. Over the last 10 years, he has patented eight cultivars in the United States—the first in more than 50 years—that are grown under 24 license agreements. A Georgia-based licensee said, “Dr. Sparks without a doubt has made the greatest contribution to the pecan industry of all the scientists devoted to pecan research … bar none.” He was named Outstanding Researcher of the Year and was elected as a fellow by the American Society of Horticultural Sciences. The College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences awarded him the D.W. Brooks Award for Excellence in Research in 2001. Sparks has published over 500 scientific and popular articles and authored Pecan Cultivars: The Orchard’s Foundation.

Laurie Reitsema

ovprweb on April 2, 2018

Portrait of Laurie Reitsema outdoorsCharles B. Knapp Early Career Scholar Award 2018

Laurie Reitsema, assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and a leading scholar in the field of bioarchaeology, studies how ecological and cultural processes affect human health and lifestyle. She explores human diet and disease in regions that experienced large-scale colonization, one of the most significant transitions in terms of evolution, health and inequality in human prehistory and history. She is co-director of two bioarchaeological research programs with principal fieldwork sites on the Georgia coast and in Sicily, Italy. Reitsema studies stable isotope tracers in mineralized and soft tissues of skeletal remains to recreate patterns of human diet and learn how nutrition and various stressors influence mortality. She uses a life history perspective, focusing on developmental as well as political and economic influences on human biology and behavior. Her work provides insights into how colonization’s cultural disruptions affected early life stage diets and affected later health.

Emily Sahakian

ovprweb on April 2, 2018

Portrait of Emily Sahakian in theaterMichael F. Adams Early Career Scholar Award 2018

Emily Sahakian, assistant professor in the Departments of Romance Languages and Theatre and Film Studies, has developed a reputation as one of the foremost experts of French Caribbean theater and is a leading specialist of Francophone theatre. Her book, Staging Creolization: Women’s Theater and Performance from the French Caribbean, illuminates previously neglected Francophone Caribbean women writers who can be considered among the best playwrights of their generation and draws from original research to document the history of their plays’ international production and reception. While scholars have generally framed “creolization” as a linguistic phenomenon, Sahakian theorizes it as a performance-based practice of reinventing meaning and resisting the status quo. Her numerous articles, invited book chapters and conference presentations contribute to the understanding of French Atlantic theatre and the cultural similarities and differences among work by artists from Africa, what is now known as “black France,” the United States, and the Caribbean.

Amy Rosemond

ovprweb on April 2, 2018

Portrait of Amy Rosemond by riverCreative Research Medal in Natural Sciences and Engineering 2018

Amy Rosemond, professor of ecology, is known for her groundbreaking studies of the effects of excess nutrients on freshwater ecosystem processes, including those across land-water boundaries. She was one of the first ecologists to predict that increased nutrient loads could have substantial effects on stream ecosystems beyond algal blooms and include effects on detrital pathways. Her experimental studies tested how elevated nutrients altered rates of detrital processing and affected energy flow in southeastern U.S. forested headwater streams. The studies revealed accelerated losses of detritus and profound changes to stream and stream-forest food web interactions. Rosemond’s whole-stream manipulations are unprecedented both spatially and temporally, offering insights that would not have been possible with experiments at smaller scales. Her work has practical applications, having been cited by the Environmental Protection Agency as evidence for the need to control both nitrogen and phosphorus in freshwater ecosystems, and provides insights into whole-ecosystem effects of nutrient pollution.

Maggie Snyder

ovprweb on April 2, 2018

Portrait of Maggie Snyder with violaCreative Research Medal in the Humanities and Arts 2018

Maggie Snyder, associate professor of viola in the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, is an influential champion of contemporary artistic opportunities for her instrument. She has commissioned five original works for viola from four outstanding composers over the last nine years and further deepened the repertoire through live performance, sharing these works at local, national and international venues. Her three CDs produced since 2013 contain a variety of music for three distinct chamber configurations: viola and harpsichord, viola and piano, and solo viola. These discs feature the works that she has commissioned and premiered, including the most recent, Stunned for solo viola, from Libby Larsen, one of the most celebrated composers of our time. These recordings, well produced and brilliantly performed, provide insight for all listeners, especially students, into the capabilities and possibilities of the viola as a solo and chamber instrument.

Sonia Altizer

ovprweb on April 2, 2018

Distinguished Research Professor 2025

Sonia Altizer, Martha Odum Distinguished Professor in the Odum School of Ecology, is a global leader in infectious disease ecology. Her research explores how host behavior, environmental change, and migration patterns shape pathogen dynamics in wildlife populations. She is best known for pioneering work on monarch butterflies, demonstrating how long-distance migration reduces infection risk through migratory escape and culling, reshaping ecological understanding of host-pathogen interactions. Altizer’s interdisciplinary approach integrates field studies, citizen science, and mathematical modeling, revealing how climate change, resource provisioning, and habitat fragmentation influence disease spread. With over 120 peer-reviewed publications, including in Science and Nature, her research has been cited more than 22,000 times. She has received continuous NSF funding since 2002 and secured over $7 million in grants. A Fellow of the Ecological Society of America and American Association for the Advancement of Science, Altizer has also served as interim dean of the Odum School and leads impactful outreach through Project Monarch Health, engaging volunteers in large-scale disease monitoring.

Andrew Zawacki

ovprweb on April 2, 2018

Distinguished Research Professor 2021

Portrait of Andrew Zawacki

Andrew Zawacki, professor in the Department of English, has gained distinction as a poet, translator, editor and critic. He has published five celebrated books of poetry, numerous chapbooks and limited-edition books, and critical essays in prestigious literary journals and a highly visible Poetry Foundation blog. Four of his poetry books have appeared in France in French translation, and another is forthcoming. For many years, he served as co-editor of the international journal Verse, arguably the most important poetry magazine of the last decade. He has edited and translated several volumes of contemporary French and Slovenian poetry. Awarded a National Endowment for the Arts translation fellowship, a Howard Foundation poetry fellowship and many other honors, he has secured a reputation for his wide knowledge of European history and poetic forms. He continues to innovate, including new explorations of text and image, as photography has become a significant part of his creative practice.

Previous Award

  • Albert Christ-Janer Creative Research Award 2018

Michael Tiemeyer

ovprweb on April 2, 2018

Portrait of Michael Tiemeyer in labDistinguished Research Professor 2018

Michael Tiemeyer, professor and associate director of the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, has catalyzed advancements in a broad range of areas including neural development, neural dysfunction, neurodegeneration, respiratory inflammatory diseases and analytic carbohydrate chemistry. His research addresses the biological function of cell surface carbohydrates (glycans) in mediating cellular interactions that underlie normal development and human disease progression. His laboratory builds on the understanding of biological function in model systems, especially the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, by creating novel tools to detect dynamic changes in glycan biosynthesis. His studies in Drosophila have made use of the powerful genetic approaches provided by this model system to make groundbreaking discoveries related to the roles of glycans in neural development. His contributions to glycan analysis and glycomic toolmaking have significantly enhanced the understanding of glycan functions in cellular differentiation, tissue development and inflammatory disease progression, while simultaneously expanding the appreciation of glycan structural diversity across animal species.

Silvia J. Moreno

ovprweb on April 2, 2018

Portrait of Silvia Moreno in labDistinguished Research Professor 2018

Silvia J. Moreno, professor in the Department of Cellular Biology and director for an NIH Training Grant at the Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases, is recognized internationally for her studies on calcium signaling in parasitic protozoa. Her work defined the link between calcium signaling and pathogenesis of infectious organisms. Her research focuses on Toxoplasma gondii, a pathogen that infects one-third of the world population. She and her team discovered mechanisms of calcium signaling in parasites and novel compartments that store calcium that are different from those present in mammalian cells. Her laboratory developed new genetic tools to study calcium that could be used for high-throughput assays to find new pharmacological agents for the potential treatment of parasitic diseases. Based on another fundamental discovery from her lab—that Toxoplasma takes specific nutrients from its host—she proposed the development of therapeutics that combine host-encoded and parasite-encoded functions as a novel approach for chemotherapy.