Early career awards

• Daniel Amador-Noguez, an assistant professor of bacteriology and researcher at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC), was one of 84 young faculty nationwide who received a 2018 Early Career Research Program Grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The five-year, $750,000 grant will support Amador-Noguez and his team in their effort to create new tools that will aid the metabolic engineering of microbes for the production of biofuels and bioproducts. Read more

• Assistant professor of biochemistry Srivatsan “Vatsan” Raman received a $2.2 million Director's New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which supports “unusually creative early stage investigators” whose research can have a broad impact on biomedical sciences. Raman’s work focuses on understanding how changes in a protein’s shape, such as those caused by DNA mutations or interactions with other molecules, can regulate the protein’s function, a process known as allostery. Read more

• Mikhail Kats, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Jason Kawasaki, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering, received prestigious CAREER awards from the National Science Foundation. Kats’ award will support his efforts to tweak how substances emit light as they change temperatures, work that could someday offer a no-power means of heat regulation for satellite components and space-going vehicles or help create materials that can hide from infrared cameras. Read more about Kats
• Kawasaki is devising new strategies to create material interfaces to be able to harness the unusual properties that can arise at the boundaries between crystalline materials. Read more about Kawasaki

Campus professorships

• Biochemistry professor Richard Amasino was named a Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) Professor in recognition of his long history of extraordinary research, teaching, and service to UW–Madison, the state of Wisconsin, and the worldwide scientific community. He is part of the Department of Energy-funded Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) and his research as a plant biochemist is exploring how to increase yield of grasses used for biomass production and how plants use seasonal environmental cues to regulate flowering. Read more

• Chemistry professor Shannon Stahl was named the Steenbock Professor in Chemical Sciences. His research focuses on catalysis, with an emphasis on aerobic and electrochemical oxidation reactions and oxygen chemistry related to energy conversion. His work includes several approaches to replace the use of toxic, rare, or expensive catalysts with cleaner, abundant alternatives for chemical synthesis and energy production. Read more

• Genetics professor Audrey Gasch, associate professor of genetics Chris Hittinger, and assistant professor of engineering physics Raluca Scarlat received Vilas Investigator awards for excellence in research and teaching. Read more

Notable recognitions

• Five WEI researchers were named to Clarivate Analytics’ 2018 list of “Highly Cited Researchers.”

• Robert Landick, the Charles Yanofsky Professor of Biochemistry and Bacteriology, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

• Assistant scientist Rebecca Smith was awarded the American Society of Plant Biologists Robert Rabson Award.

• Paul Wilson, the Grainger Professor of Nuclear Engineering, was elected to the board of directors of the American Nuclear Society.