2001-2002 UFRF Professors
This article was originally published in the June 2001 issue of CLASnotes.
The University of Florida Research Foundation (UFRF) recently recognized its annual class of UF Research Foundation Professors. The three-year professorships were created by UFRF to recognize faculty who have established a distinguished record of research and scholarship that is expected to lead to continuing distinction in their field. Six CLAS professors received the awards this year, which include a $5,000 annual salary supplement and a one-time $3,000 research grant.
Since it was founded in 1986 to enhance research at UF, UFRF has become the primary vehicle for handling research and intellectual property interactions with private companies and foundations. Today, it manages more than 800 grants and some 60 licensed technologies.
Alexander Dranishnikov
Alexander Dranishnikov, professor of mathematics, works in the field of topology,
which is an offshoot of geometry. The great mathematician David Hilbert defined
a topologist as a person who does not see the difference between a doughnut
and a beer mug, since each has one hole in it. These holes are "visual" topological
invariants. Many geometric objects have less visual topological invariants.
One of them is dimension. The dimension of a line or a plane is easy to see,
but seeing the dimension of general topological spaces is not easy.
Dranishnikov's most prominent research achievement to date is solving the Alexandroff problem, first stated in the 1920s, which concerns the equivalence between geometric and algebraic approaches to the definition of dimension. Several prominent mathematicians were unable to solve the problem, and by the 1970s it had gained the reputation of being unbreakable. Using a unique application of a mathematical tool called the K-theory, Dranishnikov solved the Alexandroff problem in 1988. The K-theory, which has been around for more than 30 years, is an evolutionary step in the development of the idea of homology (the classification of configurations into distinct types that imposes an algebraic structure on families of geometric figures). For his solution of the problem, Dranishnikov received an award from the Russian Academy of Science as well as the Bing Award, presented to Dranishnikov in 1990 at Southwest Texas State University.
His current research is connected with one of the central problems in topology, the Novikov Higher Signatures Conjecture. He has discovered that the Novikov Conjecture, from a completely different part of topology, resembles the Alexandroff Problem when considered from a macroscopic point of view.
David Evans
David Evans, professor of zoology, is a comparative physiologist
who studies how the gills of fishes play a vital role in such important processes
as gas exchange, salt and water regulation, excretion of nitrogen waste, and
regulation of blood acidity (pH). Each summer since 1978, Evans' research
has taken him to the Mt. Desert Island Biological Laboratory in Maine to work
on such exotic species as dogfish sharks, lampreys, hagfish, and eels. His
work has been funded continuously since 1970 by the National Science Foundation.
Evans has given numerous invited talks in the US, Canada, and Europe and has published over 200 refereed papers, abstracts, and articles. In addition to the NSF, his research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association. His edited book, The Physiology of Fishes, is now in its second edition and was considered a best seller by CRC Press when the first edition passed the 2,500 sales mark. The book is used throughout the world in university courses on fish biology and by numerous research scientists.
Evans is currently serving on the Integrative Animal Biology Panel of the NSF and also sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Comparative Physiology, the American Journal of Physiology, and Physiological and Biochemical Zoology.
Anna Peterson
Anna Peterson is an associate professor of religion and an affiliate
of both the Center for Latin American Studies and the College of
Natural Resources and the Environment. Her research examines the
mutual shaping of religion and politics. She has worked extensively
in Latin America, exploring the ways that religious communities
interpret and live out ideas. In her recent research, Peterson participated
in a comparative study of Latino and Latin American churches, and
collaborated with Manuel Vasquez (religion) and Philip Williams
(political science), as well as Latin American scholars. This research
has resulted in a co-edited volume, Christianity, Globalization,
and Social Change in the Americas, to be published by Rutgers
University Press in July.
In addition to working on religion and society in Latin America, Peterson has written extensively on social and environmental ethics. In her most recent book, Being Human: Ethics, Environment, and Our Place in the World, she draws on ethnographies, the natural sciences, and other sources to build an argument about the ways that ideas about non-human and human nature are intertwined in various religious and philosophical worldviews [see Bookbeat]. Peterson's different research interests are united by an overarching concern with the ways religious communities articulate ethical ideas and the ways those ideas in turn have consequences in concrete social and historical conditions.
Alan Spector
Alan Spector, professor of psychology and assistant director
of the UF Center for Smell and Taste, studies the sense of taste. As he likes
to point out, "although frequently taken for granted, the sense of taste is very important in guiding feeding and drinking. The taste buds stand guard over the rest of the alimentary tract and anything that is ingested must first pass their scrutiny." Spector pursues his study of taste in part by manipulating the gustatory system of laboratory rats and mice in order to understand better the neurobiology of taste function. He uses a specially designed rodent taste-testing apparatus, which he refers to as his "behavioral microscope," in
many of these experiments.
Spector is currently funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) to study the functional consequences of oral nerve injury and regeneration on taste perception. With the aid of his students and colleagues, he has discovered several severe and unequivocal impairments in performance on various taste-related behavioral tasks as a result of nerve damage. He has also recently received a grant from the NIDCD to study gustatory function in selected inbred strains of mice suspected of having specific abnormalities in taste perception. Once the exact nature of the taste-related behavioral phenotypes are identified, the strains can be used in a comparative manner by biomedical investigators in the search for the underlying anatomy and physiology associated with the perceptual abnormality.
Kenneth Wald
Religion and politics may be two subjects best avoided
in conversations with strangers, but their volatile mix provides Kenneth Wald,
professor of political science and director of the Center for Jewish Studies,
with an expansive research agenda.
One of the first scholars to call attention to the importance of religion in contemporary political behavior, Wald has examined the role of churches as institutions that form political ideas, the significance of religious differences in voting, and the behavior of religious activists in public office. Together with UF colleagues, he has pioneered the study of value-based urban conflicts over school-based health centers and gay rights ordinances. Most recently, he has investigated how the political outlooks of religious groups differ across national borders.
He helped found the Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. His widely cited text, Religion and Politics in the United States, is now undergoing revision for a fourth edition and has been published in Chinese and Indian editions. He also served on the editorial board of the Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion, and he has twice assisted the American National Election Study, the largest NSF grantee in political science, in developing better ways of measuring religious attitudes and behavior. Wald has received Fulbright fellowships on two occasions and serves on the screening committee for the Fulbright program in Israel.
James Winefordner
James Winefordner is a graduate research professor in chemistry. He has been
at UF since 1959 and has published more than 800 scientific articles, reviews,
and books. To date, 144 PhD students and 41 MS students have received their
degrees under his direction. Over the past 40 years, he has obtained an average
of $500,000 per year to carry out research in the ultratrace analysis of atoms
and molecules (the analysis of very low concentrations of atoms or molecules
in samples) in industrial, biological and environmental materials. He has also
worked extensively in fundamental, instrumental and application research involving
atomic absorption, emission, fluorescence and ionization spectrometry, as well
as molecular fluorescence, phosphorescence and Raman spectrometry.
His current research involves working with a group of 20 PhD and post-doctoral students on laser breakdown spectrometry (a science dealing with the interaction of light and matter) for the rapid measurement of atoms and characterization of materials. Winefordner and his students are also working on a unique method of imaging moving objects, including possible biological imaging (the area of science where the human body is imaged in surface area and depth, such as MRIs, X-rays and CAT-scans) based on laser ionization or fluorescence of mercury or cesium atoms in a special cell.
Credits
Editor
Compiled by Bill Hardwig
Photos
Jane Dominguez
