Scott Phillips, an assistant professor of chemistry at Penn State and holder of the Martarano Career Development Professorship, has been honored with an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow award in recognition of his research accomplishments. Sloan Research Fellowships are intended to enhance the careers of the very best young faculty members in seven fields of science: chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience and physics. (more)
Raymond Schaak, a professor of chemistry at Penn State, has been selected to receive the 2012 Penn State Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the Physical Sciences. 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. (more)
Raj Mittra, professor of electrical engineering and director of the Electromagnetic Communication Lab at Penn State, visited Singapore during the week of Jan. 24-30, where he spoke at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Singapore Chapter. (more)
Scott Phillips, assistant professor of chemistry at Penn State and holder of the Martarano Career Development Professorship, has been honored with a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The CAREER award is the most prestigious award given by the NSF in support of junior faculty members who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent teaching, and the integration of education and research. The CAREER award provides five years of funding and is given to assistant professors by the NSF directorates at different times during the year. (more)
Andrew F. Read, a professor of biology and entomology at Penn State, has been named the Alumni Professor in the Biological Sciences. Read perhaps is best known for his research on how natural selection shapes the virulence of malaria and how the "unnatural" selection imposed by medicine shapes the evolution of disease-causing organisms. This evolution causes drugs to fail and can create "super-bugs" that are resistant to pharmaceuticals. Since evolutionary responses to drugs, insecticides, and vaccines are the main causes of problems in preventing and treating infectious diseases, Read sees potential to use an improved understanding of pathogen evolution to inform public-health decisions. (more)
A Penn State faculty member with more than 35 years of experience in the field of telecommunications has been elected to lead the governing board of the Pacific Telecommunications Council. (more)
M. Kathleen Heid, distinguished professor of mathematics education at Penn State, was an invited keynote speaker at Matematikbiennalen, the 2012 Mathematics Biennial Conference held Jan. 26-27 in Umea, Sweden. The biennial conference hosts approximately 3,000 mathematics teachers from that country. (more)
Fran Arbaugh, an associate professor of mathematics education at Penn State, has been elected president of the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE), the country's largest professional organization devoted to the improvement of mathematics teacher education. (more)
Gonzalo Rubio, associate professor of classics and ancient Mediterranean studies and history and religious studies at Penn State, has been awarded a 2012 National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship to conduct research about the earliest literary compositions in any Semitic language, a language family that includes Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic. The College of the Liberal Arts faculty member will pursue a detailed study, editions and translations of the earliest literary writings in Semitic languages, found on cuneiform clay tablets from Ancient Syria and Mesopotamia. The NEH Fellowship is widely recognized as one of the highest honors for scholars in the humanities. (more)
Ronald L. Gilliland, an adjunct professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University, has been honored with the Beatrice M. Tinsley Award from the American Astronomical Society. The Tinsley Prize recognizes outstanding, exceptionally creative, and innovative research contributions to the fields of astronomy and astrophysics. Gilliland is being honored for his innovative work on the study of ultra-high signal-to-noise observations related to time-domain photometry -- a technique of measuring an astronomical object's changes in electromagnetic radiation over time. (more)
