Kudos

Perspectives: Research and Creative Activities at SIUC, Spring 2008

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Kudos

Mathematics professor Salah Mohammed did research in residence at the prestigious Mittag-Leffler Institute in Stockholm during fall semester 2007. In addition, the Mathematical Association of America has named him as the David Blackwell Lecturer for the group's 2008 meeting.

An invention previously described in Perspectivess won first place in the medical division of the international Create the Future Contest sponsored by NASA Tech Briefs, SolidWorks Corp., and others. Mechanical engineering professor Ajay Mahajan and co-inventor Dr. Sumeer Lal, a neurosurgeon, won for a highly accurate 3-D ultrasonic navigation system they developed for image-guided brain surgery.

Fulbright Awards recently went to radio-TV faculty Lisa Brooten and Leo Gher for work in Thailand and the Philippines, and in Azerbaijan, respectively, while journalist-in-residence William Recktenwald received a Fulbright Senior Specialists Award to teach in Uganda.

Creative writing professor Pinckney Benedict won a 2008 Pushcart Prize—his third such award—for "Mercy," a story published in the Ontario Review. Pushcart Prizes honor the best literary works that appear in small-press publications. Benedict also received a $7,000 Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship, as did theater professor David Rush.

Geology professor Jack Crelling received the Reinhardt Thiessen Medal from the International Committee for Coals and Organic Petrology. Crelling, an international expert in coal characterization, is one of only a handful of Americans to receive this award, a top honor in the study of fossil fuels, during its 50-year history.

Architecture professor Robert Swenson received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Illinois State Historical Society in April for his work in historical and archaeological preservation and fostering community/student partnerships.

Assistant professor of piano Junghwa Lee will make her debut at Carnegie Hall in a solo performance in June. And in March the SIUC Wind Ensemble played there to good reviews as part of the 2008 New York Band and Orchestra Festival. The group was one of only two showcase ensembles selected by competitive audition to give an exhibition performance at the conclusion of the festival; the other was from England.

Geography professor Leslie Duram has been elected to the National Council of the Association of American Geographers, and Coal Research Center director John Mead is serving on the National Coal Board, advisory to the secretary of energy.

Marketing professor Gordon C. Bruner II has been named one of the "Most Cited Internet Advertising Authors" by the Journal of Advertising, and two papers by Wallace "Dave" Davidson, Henry J. Rehn Professor of Finance, are among the most downloaded articles on the Social Science Research Network.

Chemistry professor Punit Kohli, whose nanotechnology research was featured in our fall 2006 issue, has received a five-year, $568,000 National Science Foundation CAREER award to develop "nano-pen" arrays to control deposition and patterning of molecules on surfaces at the submicron level. He also has received a two-year, $216,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to engineer artificial antibodies that can bind with and indicate the presence of deadly microbes.

—by Marilyn Davis