2006 Convocation
UF Research Foundation Professors
Six college faculty have been named to the 2006 class of UF Research Foundation (UFRF) professors for their distinguished record of research and strong research agendas expected to lead to continuing distinction in their fields. The three-year professorships, funded by the university’s share of royalty and licensing income from UF-generated products, include a $5,000 annual salary supplement and a one-time $3,000 grant.
Leslie Anderson
Associate
Professor of Political Science Leslie
Anderson’s research specialty is the study of democratic
development in newly democratic settings, particularly in Latin America,
and her findings have proved to be globally applicable and relevant. Her
2005 book, co-written with Lawrence
Dodd, Learning
Democracy: Citizen Engagement and Electoral Choice in Nicaragua, 1990-2001,
is regarded as a model of how to do comparative research within modern
political science. She is currently writing “Politics on Faith,” exploring
the role of citizen values in furthering democratic development.
Michael Heckenberger
Michael
Heckenberger is an associate professor of anthropology whose
research in the Amazon redefined anthropology’s outdated conceptions
of “primitiveness” and its relationship to “progress.” His
2004 book, The
Ecology of Power, revealed the existence of regional chiefdoms
in the ancient Amazon that rivaled the complexity of any comparable
age across the globe—stirring debate among those with western
notions of wilderness and primitiveness. He leads the Southern Amazon
Ethnoarchaeology Project and is an affiliate curator for the Florida
Museum of Natural History.
Jonathan Martin
Associate
Professor of Geology Jonathan
Martin is a world leader in the field of hydrology and is
working to help the state better manage its water resources. He has been
appointed by Governor Jeb Bush as one of 16 scientists on the Florida
Springs Task Force and had a leadership role in the development of
the UF Water Institute.
Martin’s work focuses on understanding the chemically complex interactions between fluids and rocks in both marine and terrestrial environments. He is associate editor of the journal Ground Water.
Ata Sarajedini
Ata
Sarajedini is an associate professor of astronomy and
a world-renowned leader in the area of stellar
populations. His research is focused on understanding the star
formation and chemical enrichment histories of the local group of galaxies
to which the Milky Way belongs.
He is president of the star clusters commission of the International Astronomical Union and principal investigator on an international team of astronomers studying globular star clusters and creating an archive of images and data using the Hubble Space Telescope.
Kirk Schanze
Professor
of Chemistry Kirk
Schanze is a leader in the field of organic and inorganic
photochemistry and his research focuses on the interaction of light with
small molecules, polymers and materials. Most of his current work, funded
by the NSF, the Department
of Energy and the Air Force Office
of Scientific Research, explores the phenomenon of luminescence and
solar energy conversion. Schanze edited the premier set of books in his
field, Molecular
and Supramolecular Photochemistry, and serves as senior editor
of the American Chemical Society’s journal, Langmuir.
Pierre Sikivie
Pierre
Sikivie is a professor of physics who
has spent his long and distinguished career seeking to understand the
mysterious dark matter of the universe. He has created novel experimentation
methods to detect axions and has also helped develop a new model for
studying the structure of galactic halos and the distribution of dark
matter enveloping the luminous components of spiral galaxies.
In 1996, he was awarded the Jesse W. Beams Award from the American Physical Society for his work on dark matter detection.
