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Category: Creative Research Medal

Qing Zhang

on March 2, 2016

Creative Research Medal 2000

Qing Zhang and his team have developed a new mathematical theory to assist manufacturers in optimizing production. The research focuses on stochastic manufacturing systems, which will experience random events that affect production such as changes in market demand, employee strikes and machinery failure. Dr. Zhang’s theory can help management anticipate and compensate for these events while maintaining cost efficiency and profit. The theory includes elements of hierarchical decision making (decisions whose impact may be felt relatively quickly or much more slowly, and the people who make those decisions), Markovian systems (decisions based on a relatively recent experience versus past experiences), and changes to those systems, as well as production and marketing rates, inventory and other variables. His work combines mathematics, control engineering, scientific computation and management sciences.

Clay A. Calvert

on March 2, 2016

Creative Research Medal 2000

Clay A. Calvert studies the epidemiology, natural progression, diagnosis and treatment of cardiomyopathy in Doberman pinschers. Cardiomyopathy is a disease of the heart muscle found in both dogs and humans. By analyzing more than 30 years of pedigree records, Dr. Calvert established the Doberman’s genetic predisposition for the disease. Studies are now underway to identify the gene(s) responsible for this fatal condition. Prior to Dr. Calvert’s studies, cardiomyopathy was recognized only at very late, terminal stages. Dr. Calvert has focused on finding ways to detect and treat affected dogs before clinical signs appear. He has developed novel methods to detect the heart rhythm abnormalities that cause sudden death including long-term ambulatory electrocardiography, signal-averaged electrocardiography and heart rate variability analysis.

Tricia Lootens

on March 2, 2016

Creative Research Medal 2000

Tricia Lootens is author of the book Lost Saints: Silence, Gender and Victorian Literary Canonization. In her book she argues that during the Victorian period literary canonization is surprisingly analogous to the process by which the Roman Catholic Church identified saints. Both processes immortalized a person by erasing the historical aspects of his or her self. Literary canonization, particularly of women, paradoxically acted to silence the full range of the authors’ literary achievement, even as it elevated them to realms of transcendent genius.

Frank Gherardini

on March 2, 2016

Creative Research Medal 2000

Frank Gherardini has discovered that the bacterium that causes syphilis and the bacterium that causes Lyme disease do not require iron to survive in their human host as previously believed. Instead, he found that these pathogenic bacteria require manganese for survival and for gene expression, and that manganese is prevalent in the central nervous system where these pathogens reside. These findings are important because of the central role iron plays in the growth and regulation of bacterial pathogenicity and the unique mechanism by which these bacteria have circumvented this limitation.

Dr. Gherardini joined the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories in 2000.

Nancy Manley

on February 24, 2016

Distinguished Research Professor 2015

Nancy Manley, professor of genetics and director of UGA’s Developmental Biology Alliance, is internationally recognized as an expert on the development, function and aging of the thymus and parathyroid organs. These areas are highly relevant to the function of the immune and endocrine systems. Manley has carved a unique niche at the intersection of development, immunology and aging. By using molecular genetic approaches to investigate the biology of the thymus across the entire lifespan, she has been able to uncover fundamental principles of organ development and aging, including mechanisms regulating stability of cell fate and degeneration of the immune system with aging. These principles have particular relevance to developing therapeutic interventions aimed at improving the immune system in the elderly by rejuvenating or replacing an aged thymus. She was recently part of a research team that was the first to grow a fully functional thymus in a living animal from transplanted cells. This discovery could one day aid in the development of laboratory-grown replacement organs, and it may form the basis of a thymus transplant for people with weakened immune systems.

Previous Award

Creative Research Medal 2011

Lisa Donovan

on February 24, 2016

Lisa DonovanDistinguished Research Professor 2014

Lisa Donovan, professor of plant biology, has a clear record of outstanding and creative research that harnesses a unique fusion of ecology and evolution with genomics. Much of her early work focused on the evolution of water use efficiency in desert plants. In a series of carefully-crafted field experiments, she showed that, contrary to expectations, increased water use efficiency is associated with larger plant size in desert shrubs. These studies have provided a guide for many ongoing studies of adaptation in desert plants, as well as for general hypotheses about how plants adapt to harsh conditions. Over the last decade, Donovan’s research focus has shifted to the adaptive differentiation of many wild species in the sunflower genus Helianthus. For example, one desert adapted hybrid species has more extreme traits than either of its ancestral parent species, allowing it to survive where it predecessors cannot. Donovan is currently leveraging her ecological and evolutionary genomics perspective to address the potential for breeding crops for greater stress tolerance.

Previous Award

Creative Research Medal 2006

Kelly Dawe

on February 24, 2016

Distinguished Research Professor 2011

Kelly Dawe

Kelly Dawe, professor of plant biology, has investigated the centromere-kinetochrome complex for nearly two decades. He is best known for his contributions to the understanding of kinetochore structure, and he identified the first plant kinetochore proteins. A kinetochore is the protein structure on chromosomes where the spindle fibers attach during cell division; a centromere is the region of DNA typically found near the middle of a chromosome.

Dawe’s lab has made significant contributions to understanding how the sites of centromere assembly are determined by specialized histone proteins that contact the DNA.  He is also a leading expert on meiotic drive, a phenomenon in which certain chromosomes undergo preferential segregation to the progeny.  He has mentored more than a dozen PhD students, and for 15 years has been the lead investigator on a series of NSF-funded projects totaling $13 million to understand the sequence and function of maize centromeres.

Previous Award

Creative Research Medal 2000

James T. Hollibaugh

on February 23, 2016

James T. HollibaughDistinguished Research Professor 2010

James T. Hollibaugh, professor of marine sciences, is highly regarded, both for “doing research,” and for “leading research,” where he is simultaneously shaping the field of microbial ecology as a synthesizer, coordinator, and innovator. His research provides insights into how ecosystems work and also serves as the basis for understanding and predicting the effects of climate change, manifested through shifts in temperature or precipitation, for example, on these systems. His work played a central role in developing the “microbial loop” concept, referring to a fundamental shift in ecology incorporating the realization that microbial cells—and not macroscopic organisms such as algae, fish, and mammals—determine the fate of most of the carbon in the world oceans. This, in turn, has led to a better understanding of how carbon is lost as CO 2 to the atmosphere and how much moves through the food web to larger organisms, including fish. Hollibaugh has also had an activist role in leading seemingly disparate interdisciplinary teams to approach environmental science. More recently, his research has discovered new pathways for arsenic metabolism that further our understanding of how this toxic element moves through ecosystems. The work suggests a possible role for arsenic in the early evolution of life.

Previous Award

Creative Research Medal 2003

Catherine M. Pringle

on February 23, 2016

Catherine M. PringleDistinguished Research Professor 2008

Catherine M. Pringle, professor of ecology, is a world leader in stream ecology and conservation. Her work focuses primarily on tropical rivers, with ongoing research in Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Panama and Trinidad, Georgia and North Carolina. Much of her research has centered on the questions, “What is the role of particular species in maintaining ecosystem function, and how do freshwater ecosystems change when species are lost?” Pringle found creative ways to obtain quantitative answers. For example, she developed an innovative method for examining the effects of species loss on stream ecosystems. This now-widely used in situ “electric-exclosure” technique excludes particular organisms from the ecosystem under study without the artifact of cage effects. This experimental technique has been used to predict effects of frog extinction from mountain streams in Panama and shrimp extirpation from streams in Puerto Rico. The wide range of her original research and other efforts on behalf of stream ecology have greatly expanded the field and given it a prominent place among the aquatic sciences. With more than 150 publications in top journals, leadership roles in pursuing national interests, and millions of dollars secured in competitive grants, Pringle has brought worldwide distinction to the University of Georgia.

Previous Award

Creative Research Medal 2000

Dino J. Lorenzini

on February 23, 2016

Distinguished Research Professor 2006

Dino J. Lorenzini, Professor of Mathematics, has derived novel intuitions, techniques and theory from work in difficult areas of mathematics. He produced a new mathematical structure called the Lorenzini filtration, and subsequently was able to apply this discovery to different questions in number theory. He has established himself as a central figure in the education of the next generation of Ph.D.s in number theory, and has published four consecutive articles in Inventiones Mathematicae – the mathematical equivalent of the journal Nature.

Previous Award

Creative Research Medal 2004