Kellett Mid-Career Awards presented to seven professors

Seven professors have received Kellett Mid-Career Awards that promote the continued scholarly efforts of established faculty.

Sponsored by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, honorees receive a $60,000 flexible research fund. Eligible candidates must be five to 20 years past their first promotion to a tenured position, and they are chosen by a committee from the Graduate School.

Honored this year are:

• Paul Bertics, professor, biomolecular chemistry. Bertics has established an active research program aimed at elucidating fundamental mechanisms of hormone action with applications to the treatment of cancer, endotoxic shock and asthma. He has shown a commitment to teaching and service activities and has received numerous teaching awards. He also is chair of many campus committees, and he participates on multiple national and international grant review panels and as a reviewer for leading scientific journals.
• Robert Landick, professor, bacteriology. Landick and his lab co-workers have made key discoveries about the inner workings and regulation of RNA polymerase, the central enzyme responsible for expression of genetic information from DNA. His group has studied both human and bacterial RNA polymerases with applications ranging from human diseases to antibiotic discovery.
• Thomas Loeser, professor, art. Loeser has been head of the wood/furniture program since 1991. He designs and builds one-of-a-kind functional objects that are often carved and painted and always are based on the history of design and furniture making as a starting point for developing new form and meaning. His artwork has been included in more than 200 national and international exhibitions since 1981.
• Maryellen MacDonald, professor, psychology. MacDonald studies the mental processes that underlie humans’ abilities to use language. Her work is recognized internationally for its innovative integration of four distinct research fields: how people comprehend language, how people plan and produce speech, how children acquire language, and how human memory is inextricably intertwined with language use. MacDonald is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.
• Joseph Salmons, professor, German. Salmons’ research and teaching focus on testing theories of sound patterns against classic problems in sound change. Alongside work on changes under way in American English, he is co-authoring the “Cambridge History of the Germanic Languages.” He also edits “Diachronica,” the international journal of historical linguistics, and co-directs the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures.
• Mary Vernon, professor, computer sciences and industrial engineering. Vernon has been a UW–Madison professor since 1983. She has made significant contributions to the memory system design methods used in industry, Internet video-streaming protocols and sensor network security. She received the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1985, the ACM Fellow award in 1995, and a Vilas Associate award in 2000.
• Karl Zimmerer, professor, geography. Zimmerer is the author of numerous articles and has authored and edited four books, including “Changing Fortunes: Biodiversity and Peasant Livelihoods” and “Globalization and New Geographies of Conservation.” He is appointed editor of the nature-society section of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers. His research interests include environment-development interactions and humanized landscapes; environmental issues and international relations of Latin America; and global environmental change, biodiversity, and water resources in tropical agriculture.