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Four highly promising professors in
diverse fields have been awarded the Phillip and Ruth Hettleman Prizes for
Artistic and Scholarly Achievement by
Young Faculty.
They are James Bear, associate professor of cell and
developmental biology in the School of Medicine;Yufeng Liu, associate professor of statistics and operations research, Garyk Papoian,
associate professor of chemistry, and Krista Perreira, associate professor of
public policy, all in the College of Arts and Sciences. The recipients will be
recognized during the Sept. 10 Faculty Council meeting.
The Hettleman Prize, which carries a $5,000 stipend,
recognizes the achievements of outstanding junior tenure-track faculty or
recently tenured faculty. Phillip Hettleman, who was born in 1899 and grew up
in Goldsboro, established the award in 1986. He earned a scholarship to UNC,
went to New York and in 1938 founded Hettleman & Co., a Wall Street
investment firm.
Bear
When Bear joined the faculty in 2003, he established a
research program focused on the molecular basis of cell motility. His work,
which department chair Vytas Bankaitis called “simply meteoric,” has been
focused on a family of motility proteins, the Coronins.
In 10 papers, including two in the prestigious journal Cell,
Bear demonstrated that Coronins are instrumental in a fundamental process of
controlling the actin cytoskeleton, the cell’s internal framework. This
groundbreaking research has changed the direction of the field, Bankaitis said.
Bear, a member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer
Center, recently received a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Early Career
Scientist Award supporting his research into proteins associated with cell
motility and melanoma.
The scientist’s work has contributed significantly to the
translational research of the Lineberger Center’s melanoma and brain tumor
teams, said Shelley Earp, center director and Lineberger Professor of Cancer
Research.
“He is an exemplar of a new breed of cell biologists who are
devising new cellular and molecular biological methods to study fundamental
processes,” Earp said. “In addition to providing stunning images, these novel
techniques are often performed in live cells and allow dynamic measurements to
be made.”
Liu
With research interests in high-dimensional data analysis,
bioinformatics, cancer research and developing statistical methodologies for
general machine learning problems, Liu holds a joint appointment with the
Center for Genome Sciences. He is also a member of the UNC Lineberger
Comprehensive Cancer Center. His position was created to help foster
interdisciplinary collaboration between the mathematical sciences and genome
sciences, said faculty nominators J.S. Marron and Ed Carlstein. Carlstein is
chair of statistics and operation research.
“His work is a sterling example of how serious biological
challenges can motivate the development of novel statistical methodologies,
which in turn lead to changes in how bioinformaticians understand complex data
sets, while simultaneously generating advances in fundamental statistical
theory,” they said.
The nominators described Liu’s groundbreaking research as
truly synergistic. He has developed and analyzed cutting-edge statistical and
computational methods for prediction, classification and clustering, they said,
and he has brought current, promising tools and concepts of statistics and
computation into the “practical repertoire” of genome sciences.
Liu has been a faculty member since 2004 and received early
tenure and promotion last year. He recently earned a National Science
Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award and serves as
associate editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association.
Papoian
Since he came to Carolina in 2004, Papoian has been on what
chemistry chair Matthew Redinbo described as “the fast and certain track to
international recognition.”
With research interests in theoretical chemistry, biophysics
and signal transduction, Papoian has developed a biochemical theory research
program that uses advanced computational methods to study biological processes
at multiple scales.
His work in developing detailed computational models of the
way eukaryotic cells move around and sense their environment helps shed light
on key processes in human biology and disease such as embryonic development,
wound repair and cancer metastasis.
Papoian has already garnered some of the most prestigious
awards in the country, including the Beckman Young Investigator Award, Dreyfus
Teacher-Scholar Award, NSF Career Award and the American Chemical Society’s
Hewlett-Packard Outstanding Junior Faculty Award.
Recently he was asked to write an opinion paper for The
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science on a paper published by an
established scientist. “To be asked at this early stage in his career is a
clear indication of Garyk’s trajectory,” Redinbo said.
Effective this month, Papoian has accepted a position at the
University of Maryland with a joint appointment in chemistry and Institute for
Physical Science and Technology.
Perreira
Perreira, a health economist who is considered a pioneering
researcher on the demography of immigrant youth and families, has been a public
policy faculty member and fellow of the Carolina Population Center since 2001.
Her research focuses on disparities in health, education and
economic well-being and the interrelationships among
family, health and social policy, specifically the health and educational
consequences of migration.
Because of the interdisciplinary nature of her research and
its emphasis on original data collection, Perreira’s contributions have
extended beyond public policy to demography, education, psychology, public
health and sociology as well, said Pete Andrews, professor and department
chair.
“Dr. Perreira’s research record places her as a
groundbreaking scholar on the Hispanic immigrant population as well as on
cross-cultural research methods, as a rising star in her field and well beyond
the normal research expectations for someone at this stage of her career,” he
said.
Among her most recent national recognitions, Perreira
received an award from the American Sociological Association for her research
on mental health, and she was selected as a visiting fellow of the prestigious
Russell Sage Foundation in
New York City.
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