Two professors have been named department chairs.
Alan Feduccia, S.K. Heninger professor, was appointed chair of the Department of Biology for a five-year term effective July 1, and Jeffrey A. Frelinger, Sarah Graham Kenan professor, was reappointed chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the School of Medicine for a seven-year term effective May 1.
Feduccia
Feduccia, a faculty member since 1971, is an evolutionary biologist interested in vertebrate evolution--especially the origin of birds from reptiles, avian evolution and paleontology. Last year, he chaired the Division of Natural Sciences at Carolina and won a Favorite Faculty Award from the senior class.
The author of more than 125 scientific publications dealing primarily with the evolution of birds and other vertebrates, embryology, comparative morphology and evolutionary systematics, Feduccia also has published 10 books and five monographs.
The Age of Birds, published by Harvard University Press, was translated into Japanese and German and appeared in a paperback edition, and his latest book, The Origin and Evolution of Birds, published by Yale University Press, won the 1996 Scholarly and Professional Publishing Award of the Association of American Publishers.
Feduccia's research has taken him to Central and South America as well as Africa. He is known for his revolutionary theories on the early evolution of avian flight and feathers and for writing the first modern synthesis of avian evolution.
He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Ornithologists' Union. He recently has been interviewed on National Public Radio, Voice of America and BBC Magazine, and he has appeared on the "McNeil/Lehrer Report" as well as television programs in Japan and Australia.
Frelinger
Chair of microbiology and immunology since 1991, Frelinger specializes in immunogenetics and molecular immunology. He has been on the Carolina faculty since 1983 and has served as program leader of the Immunology Program at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The author or co-author of more than 160 scientific papers and book chapters, Frelinger has received numerous awards, including a National Institutes of Health MERIT award from the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease and an American Cancer Society Faculty Research Award.
He has been a visiting professor at Tokyo University in Japan, a visiting fellow at Trinity College, Oxford, England, and a visiting investigator of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.
His current research focuses on immune response, including methods to generate improved vaccines for HIV and other infectious diseases.
Recent journal articles he has written or co-written include "Fas-dependent CD4+ Cytotoxic T-cell-Mediated Pathogenesis During Virus Infection," "A Point Mutation in HLA-A*0201 Results in Failure to Bind the TAP Complex and to Present Virus-derived Peptides to CTL" and "The Role of Peptide Specificity in MHC Class I-restricted Allogeneic Responses."
To UNC-CH Home Page