Four earn Faculty Scholar medals for 2007

Four earn Faculty Scholar medals for 2007

University Park, Pa. -- Four Penn State professors have received the 2007 Faculty Scholar Medals for Outstanding Achievement: Matthew Restall, professor of Latin American history, the arts and humanities medal; Ottar Bjornstad, associate professor of entomology, the life and health sciences medal; David S. Weiss, professor of physics, the physical sciences medal; and Darrell Steffensmeier, professor of sociology and crime, law and justice, the social and behavioral sciences medal.

Established in 1980, the award recognizes scholarly or creative excellence represented by a single contribution or a series of contributions around a coherent theme. A committee of faculty peers reviews nominations and selects candidates.

Restall receives his medal for scholarship that has revolutionized our understanding of Colonial Latin America and of the Spanish Conquests in the Americas. By acquiring and using linguistic skills in indigenous languages including Yucatec Maya and Nahuatl, he has helped open up Native American perspectives on the events that dramatically changed the history of our hemisphere.

He transformed our knowledge of colonial Mayan history through a series of books published in the late 1990s, based on hundreds of Mayan-language manuscripts that he discovered. His 2003 book, “Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest,” addressed popular misconceptions about this period in Latin American history, portraying the complex multiple levels of interactions between the Spanish and the indigenous peoples. Since then, he has published books on African-Native relations in Colonial Latin America and on Native Language writings from Central Mexico, Oaxaca, Yucatan and Guatemala. In the coming year, he will publish groundbreaking books on the conquest of Guatemala and on Colonial Afro-Mexico.

The recipient of both Guggenheim and National Endowment for Humanities fellowships, he received his B.A. in modern history, an honorary master’s from Oxford University and M.A. and Ph.D. in Latin American history from University of California, Los Angeles. He also has courtesy appointments in anthropology and women’s studies. He is director of Latin American studies and currently is director of graduate studies in history.

Bjornstad is recognized for his research in the area of modeling disease and animal populations. One of the best statistical ecologists in the world, he has conducted cutting-edge application of statistical modeling combined with ecological theory and experimentation.

His work is focused on statistical techniques such as time series and analysis of spatial data with recent focus on transportation networks, risk mapping and geographic dissemination of acute diseases such as measles, influenza and whopping cough. In addition, he collaborates with the epidemiological unit of Doctors Without Borders on optimizing their vaccination campaigns in sub-Saharan Africa.

His B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees are from University of Oslo and he was a postdoctoral scholar at the universities of Oslo and Cambridge and University of California, Santa Barbara. He currently is co-director of the Penn State Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics.

Weiss receives his award for his work with ultra-cold atomic gases. His experiments trap atoms in optical lattices, which are crystals made of light, to address a wide range of physical problems, including quantum simulations, quantum computation and precision measurements. Along with testing fundamental theories in condensed matter physics, high-energy physics and statistical mechanics, this research could revolutionize our understanding of such important materials as high-temperature superconductors and quantum magnets and lead to new classes of materials with unprecedented properties.

He received his B.A. in physics from Amherst College and M.S. and Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University.

Weiss has received a Churchill Scholarship, a Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research, an Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation and both Sloan and Packard Fellowships.

Steffensmeier is honored for his work on criminal careers and organized and professionalized crime. As one of the most influential scholars in criminology, he has made scholarly contributions to the demography of crime; criminal courts and sentencing and influential factors; gender, work and crime; criminal business enterprise; and criminological theory.

He has published three books, including “Confessions of a Dying Thief” and “The Fence,” as well as many journal articles and book chapters. His funding support has come from National Science Foundation, National Institute of Justice and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, the U.S. Sentencing Commission and the Pennsylvania Crime Commission.

Steffensmeier was elected Fellow of the American Society of Criminology and received the Distinction in the Social Sciences Award from Penn State in 1989. He served as president of the International Association for the Study of Organized Crime from 1992 to 1994.

He received a B.A. in philosophy and history from St. Ambrose College and M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Iowa.