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Michael Heckenberger is an associate professor of anthropology whose research in the Amazon redefined anthropology’s outdated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.
