Kellett awards honor seven L&S faculty members

May 10th 2016 Simon Kuran
Awards
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Ten members of the UW–Madison faculty have won Kellett Mid-Career Awards, and seven of the recipients are from the College of Letters & Science.

The Kellett awards recognize outstanding faculty seven to 20 years past their first promotion to a tenured position. A divisional committee appointed by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education chooses winners from professors nominated by departments, Ph.D. major programs and interdepartmental groups. A faculty member can win only one Kellett award.

Supported by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the Kellett award provides $60,000 in research funding to faculty members at a critical stage of their careers. It is named for William R. Kellett, a former president of the WARF board of trustees and retired president of Kimberly-Clark Corp.

The 2016 Kellett Award winners from the College of Letters & Science are:

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Qiang Cui, professor of chemistry, specializes in developing theoretical and computational methods to study the mechanism of biological processes such as enzyme catalysis, bioenergy transduction and biomembrane remodeling. His research also focuses on various structural biology problems and interfacial phenomena relevant to the development of sustainable nanotechnology and new soft materials.

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Mary Halloran, professor of zoology, works to understand how neural circuits form during embryonic development. She is a recognized leader in the field, especially for her use of in vivo imaging methods to study the mechanisms controlling neuronal axon growth. She serves as director of the Neuroscience Training Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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Jenny Saffran, a professor of psychology at UW–Madison for 19 years, studies how infants learn about the auditory world, particularly the beginnings of language acquisition and music perception, in her award-winning Infant Learning Lab at the Waisman Center. She is group coordinator of the Communication and Cognitive Sciences Group.

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Laura Schwendinger, professor of music, is the first composer to win the American Academy in Berlin Prize. Her music has been performed by Dawn Upshaw, the Arditti and JACK Quartets, Jennifer Koh, Janine Jansen, Matt Haimovitz and others in venues including the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space and the Institute for Advanced Study. She is composer-in-residence for the Richmond Symphony.

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Ananth Seshadri, professor of economics and Todd E. and Elizabeth H. Warnock Distinguished Chair in Economics, specializes in macroeconomics and public finance. He has written on the causes and consequences of demographic change, the adequacy of retirement savings and the significance of human capital in economic development. His research has appeared in leading economics journals.

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Gary Shiu, professor of physics, aims to understand the deep connection between string theory, particle physics and cosmology. His research emphasizes the relation between fundamental theory and experiment, and has yielded insights into questions like what constitutes the fundamental building blocks of matter, what is the origin of the universe, and the nature of dark energy and dark matter that comprise over 95 percent of our cosmos.

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Scott Straus, professor of political science, focuses on the causes and consequences of genocide. An award-winning teacher, Straus has authored seven books and more than 30 peer-reviewed articles and chapters. His most recent book, Fundamentals of Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention, will be published by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.


View all of the campus award winners here: Kellett awards honor mid-career faculty