Seven honored with Romnes awards

Seven of UW–Madison’s rising faculty have received H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellowships. The award, supported by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), recognizes great potential in faculty who have earned tenure within the last four years. Award-winners receive a $50,000 award to be used in support of research.

A Graduate School committee chooses the winners. The award is named for H.I. Romnes, former chair of the board of AT&T and former president of the WARF board of trustees.

This year’s honorees are:

• Jennifer Angus, human ecology. Angus has inspired design studies students since 2001. She received an Emily Mead Baldwin Bascom Professorship in the Creative Arts in 2007 and has earned many other awards, including Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council grants. Three of her pieces are in the permanent collection of the Canadian Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand.
• Michel Guillot, sociology. Guillot has established himself as one of the leading young demographers in the world, producing a body of research in formal demography (the study of mathematical and statistical methods for measuring population characteristics and changes) and the analysis of health and mortality in developing countries, including India.
• Alexandru Ionescu, mathematics. Ionescu joined the faculty in 2002 after earning his Ph.D. from Princeton and holding postdoctoral positions at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology and the Institute for Advanced Study. He has contributed to the solutions of a variety of deep mathematical problems, with expertise in nonlinear partial differential equations, harmonic analysis and ergodic theory.
• James Schauer, civil and environmental engineering. Schauer is a leader in the development of advanced chemical analysis methods to understand the sources and fate of air pollutants. His research has been applied to study human health, urban air pollution, ecosystem changes and global climate change throughout the U.S. and in many other regions of the world.
• Laura Schwendinger, music. Schwendinger’s music has been performed by leading artists, and her honors have come from the American Academy in Berlin, the Radcliffe Institute, the Rockefeller Foundation, Copland House, the Koussevitzky and Fromm foundations, the Harvard Musical Association, and MacDowell and Yaddo Colonies. Her Miller Theater commission will be premiered by Jennifer Koh this month.
• Emily Stanley, zoology. Stanley’s research focuses on management and restoration practices for streams, rivers and their watersheds. She teaches Introductory Zoology, Limnology, and Ecology of Rivers and Streams, and is associate editor for the journals Ecological Applications and the Journal of Geophysical Research-Biogeosciences. Stanley also is a 2006 fellow of the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program.
• Jeremi Suri, history. Suri has established himself as a leading authority on the international history of the late 20th century. He also has excelled as a teacher and mentor — winning a campus teaching award — and is one of the university’s most popular speakers.