Romnes early-career awards go to seven faculty

Seven faculty have received 2003 Romnes Fellowships from a program that helps younger faculty further establish their scholarly careers.

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation supports the $50,000 fellowships. Recipients of the awards, which recognize exceptional faculty members who have attained tenure within the prior four years, are selected by a committee from the Graduate School. The awards are named for the late H.I. Romnes, former chair of the board of AT&T and former president of the WARF Board of Trustees.

The recipients are:

David Beebe, associate professor, biomedical engineering, is known for research in microsystems for applications in medicine and biology, including controlled microenvironments for cell culture, micromixers and autonomous microbiodetection systems. His work with bovine embryos for embryo research and bioproduction is being commercialized.

Edwin Chapman, associate professor, physiology, leads a laboratory that studies neuronal communication, with an emphasis on mechanisms mediating and regulating exocytosis of neurotransmitters. Chapman is a highly regarded teacher in graduate and undergraduate physiology courses.

Sonya Clark, associate professor of environment, textiles and design, is an artist who uses textiles to celebrate community and identity. Her sculptural headdresses explore African concepts of the head as the locus of identity. Her community collaborative artwork, “The Beaded Prayers Project,” is based on amulets found throughout Africa and the shared etymology of the words “bead” and “prayer.”

Cary Forest, associate professor, physics, experimentally investigates topics ranging from transport of electrical current and energy in fusion plasmas, to understanding how astrophysical and geophysical magnetic fields are generated from flows of liquid metals (or plasmas) in planets and stars.

Philip Gorski, professor, sociology, is an internationally acclaimed historical sociologist. His latest book, “The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe” (2003), fuses theoretical arguments with historical analysis to provide new insights into the links between the Protestant Reformation and European state formation. A gifted teacher and mentor, Gorski has founded the Max and Marianne Weber Center for Comparative Social Analysis in the Department of Sociology.

Gerhard Richter, associate professor, German, studies the relationship between aesthetics and politics in literary and cultural texts. His books and articles focus on such topics as the Frankfurt School, Eurocentrism and the theoretical difficulties that inhere in the act of inscription. Richter’s teaching includes courses on intellectual history, literature and photography, theories of interpretation and the politics of memory.

Jon Thorson, professor, pharmaceutical sciences, is a leader in natural product biosynthesis in the post-genomic era. His research involves the elucidation of novel biosynthetic pathways and associated resistance mechanisms in microorganisms leading to new drug development. He also is developing new methodologies in natural product glycosylation.