Kudos

Kudos

Plant biologist Joshua Der won the 2005 SIU Alumni Association's Outstanding Thesis Award for his work on the evolutionary relationships of species in the sandalwood family, which includes parasitic plants such as mistletoes. Der's work, done in conjunction with his advisor, Daniel Nickrent, used DNA sequence data to revise the classification of the major groups within the family. (See "Freeloaders" in the Fall 2005 issue of Perspectives.) Der also was one of three winners of the 2006 Midwest Association of Graduate Schools Outstanding Thesis competition.

Anthropologist Matthew Tornow was the winner of SIUC's 2005 Outstanding Dissertation Award. Tornow traveled around the world to gather data on the fossils of a group of early primates called omomyids that lived from 55 to 25 million years ago in North America, Europe, Asia, and possibly Africa. He used new measurements, and new types of measurements, of nearly 800 specimens to arrive at a comprehensive assessment of how the various groups of North American omomyids were related to each other and evolved. His study, which includes illustrations that he did himself, is a "major advance in our understanding of primate evolution," says John Fleagle, a distinguished professor of anatomy at Stony Brook Health Sciences Center in New York.

Morris Cooper, professor and chair of medical microbiology, immunology, and cell biology, has received a five-year, $975,249 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study HIV transmission rates in individuals who have other sexually transmitted diseases. The research, part of a multi-center project led by the University of California at San Francisco, may lead to the development of new strategies to treat sexually transmitted diseases.

The sixth SIUC winner of a prestigious CAREER award from the National Science Foundation is physicist Shane Stadler, who will receive $483,271 over five years to support his research toward the synthesis of half-metallic alloys. Such materials would have important uses in magnetoelectronic devices, in fields from medicine to computing.

Several SIUC faculty were recently named fellows of professional associations for their scholarly contributions: physics professor Aldo Migone, American Physical Society; College of Engineering dean William Osborne, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers; psychology professors Ann Fischer and Michael Young, American Psychological Association; and College of Education interim dean Patricia Elmore, American Counseling Association. Only a small percentage of each organization's membership is so honored.

SIUC's Outstanding Scholar for 2006 is mathematics professor Salah Mohammed, who was featured in the cover story of Perspectives in Fall 1997. Mohammed's work, in an area of math called stochastic analysis, allows better predictions about randomly evolving systems, from weather to the stock market. The National Science Foundation and NATO have funded Mohammed's research, and he has held several international fellowships.