Newswise — Florida Atlantic University recently announced the 2006 "Researchers of the Year." Each year, FAU's University Research Committee selects FAU faculty to be recognized by the University for their outstanding research, scholarly and creative contributions. Awards are presented at the academic ranks of full professor, associate professor and assistant professor in two categories: sponsored and project-oriented research, and creative and scholarly activities research.
"Florida Atlantic University has an outstanding team of world-class faculty and researchers who are making significant contributions in numerous areas including medicine, science, engineering, education, nursing and the humanities. I am delighted that we at FAU are able to honor these outstanding research leaders and scholars in this way," said Dr. Larry F. Lemanski, vice president for Research at FAU.
2006 Researchers of the Year:
Professor, Sponsored/Project-oriented Category - Gregg Fields, Ph.D.
Dr. Fields is professor and chair of FAU's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, a professor in FAU's Department of Biomedical Science, and an adjunct professor of Scripps Florida. He has made numerous contributions in peptide chemistry and matrix biology for the development of novel anti-cancer therapeutics. Fields' research examines the mechanisms by which tumor cells spread through the body and how proteins in the body provide information to the tumor allowing it to change behavior and facilitate metastasis. His team has been developing new drugs that prevent enzymes from aiding tumor cells, and they have created delivery vehicles that specifically target drugs to tumor cells. This process may significantly reduce the side effects of chemotherapy and improve selectivity of the drug for the tumor. Through these findings, Dr. Fields and his team have been able to better understand melanoma tumor metastasis and apply some of these new molecules to tissue engineering. Dr. Fields also received FAU's Professor Researcher of the Year award in 2001.
Professor, Creative and Scholarly Category - Rozzano Locsin, Ph.D.
Dr. Locsin is a professor in FAU's Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing and a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Global and Public Health. For more than 20 years, he has focused on providing a caring and holistic approach to research, teaching and nursing. Locsin's creation of an "Arts in Healing Institute" provides an important venue for the use of arts in practice, education and research, and uses art as an integral mode for student learning. Since 2000, his scholarly and creative works have been cited 51 times on the "Web of Science." In 2003, Locsin received the prestigious Edith Moore Copeland Excellence in Creativity Award from the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing. He received the Fulbright Scholar Award to Uganda in 2000, and the Fulbright Scholar Initiative Award in 2004. Dr. Locsin's research projects are helping to shift the perception of patients as "objects of care" to "participants in their care."
Associate Professor, Sponsored/Project-oriented Category - Iris Berent, Ph.D.
Dr. Berent is associate professor of psychology and a member of FAU's Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences. She examines the mechanisms of processing language and its interaction with reading ability. Berent's research seeks to explain why language is specific to humans. She addresses this question by investigating whether people (including both adults and infants) are equipped with inherent preferences regarding linguistic structures—structures that are absent in their own language. Another area of Berent's research examines the effect of people's linguistic knowledge on their reading ability, which is a question that is highly relevant to the design of reading instruction and the treatment of dyslexia. Her research was recently awarded a major grant for $1.3 million by the National Institute for Deafness and other Communications Disorders of the National Institutes of Health.
Associate Professor, Creative and Scholarly Category - Andrew Furman, Ph.D.
Dr. Furman is associate professor and chair of FAU's Department of English in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters. He teaches in various programs in the college including the undergraduate English major, the English MA and MFA programs, the Jewish Studies program, and the Ph.D. program. Furman has written across a variety of genres including scholarly and literary essays, op-ed pieces, personal essays and book reviews, publishing his work in several high-circulation magazines and newspapers, and in top-tier journals. In addition to writing two books of literary criticism on Jewish-American writers, he published his first novel in 2005, entitled Alligators May Be Present.
Assistant Professor, Sponsored/Project-oriented Category - Salvatore Lepore, Ph.D.
Dr. Lepore is assistant professor of FAU's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Dr. Lepore's research focuses on the synthesis of natural or novel compounds that could be used to improve existing drug discovery efforts. One of Lepore's projects funded by the National Institutes of Health involves pioneering a new class of chemical reactions to facilitate the synthesis of improved anti-HIV and anti-tumor agents. He and his team are also investigating efficient and creative methods to incorporate short-lived radioactive nuclei into small molecules for use as medical imaging agents in positron emission tomography or PET. This project led to an FAU patent in 2005.
Assistant Professor, Creative and Scholarly Category - Christopher Strain, Ph.D.
Dr. Strain is assistant professor of history and American studies in FAU's Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College. His expertise and research interests include U.S. history, particularly in the 1960s, American studies, African-American history, ethnic studies, race relations, the American South, and theories of violence and non-violence. Strain's book, Pure Fire: Self Defense as Activism in the Civil Rights Era, published in the spring of 2005, discusses the role of self-defense in the struggle for black equality during the 1950s and 1960s. This book is expected to become a significant part of the emerging literature about black militancy in the Civil Rights years, and provides scholars with a new avenue by which to study and teach African-American history, Civil Rights and the Black Power movement.
Florida Atlantic University opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, the university serves 26,000 undergraduate and graduate students on seven campuses strategically located along 150 miles of Florida's southeastern coastline. Building on its rich tradition as a teaching university, with a world-class faculty, FAU hosts eight colleges - the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts & Letters, the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing, the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, and the Colleges of Business, Education, Engineering & Computer Science, and Architecture, Urban & Public Affairs.
RSS