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Two UO faculty selected as 2008 Guggenheim Fellows
Shawn R. Lockery, biology, and Philip W. Scher, anthropology, are among 190 U.S. & Canadian artists, scientists and scholars chosen this year
EUGENE, Ore. -- (April 8, 2008) -- Two University of Oregon faculty members -- anthropologist and folklorist Philip W. Scher and neuroscientist Shawn R. Lockery -- are among 190 Canadian and U.S. artists, scientists and scholars selected as Guggenheim Fellows for 2008.
Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past or exceptional promise for future accomplishment. The 2008 winners were chosen from a pool of 2,600 applicants. In all, 75 disciplines and 81 different academic institutions are represented by this year’s fellows. Since 1925, the New York-based John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has granted more than $265 million in fellowships to almost 16,500 individuals.
To date, including the awards to Lockery and Scher, 62 Guggenheim Fellows have gone to 58 UO faculty, with four honorees being selected twice. The first UO winner was Frederick Malcolm Combellack, professor emeritus of Greek literature, in 1942. UO chemist Geraldine Richmond was named a 2007 Guggenheim Fellow. (The full list of UO winners, as listed in Guggenheim records, can be found by clicking here.)
Amounts of individual awards for 2008 vary according to projects and needs, but the average award is about $43,150. Scher's and Lockery's awards are about average.
Scher was one of four scientists chosen from applicants in the social sciences whose concentration is on anthropology and cultural studies. Scher, also a Fulbright scholar, will use the Guggenheim funds while on sabbatical to explore "political and economic processes that lie behind the protection and preservation of cultural heritage in the Caribbean, specifically the World Heritage site proposed for Bridgetown, Barbados, the capital city, and its historic military garrison."
"My goal is to examine the ways cultural heritage sites are chosen by state and non-state agencies and what, if any, consideration is placed upon tourism," said Scher, who earned a joint doctorate in anthropology and folklore in 1997 from the University of Pennsylvania. "I hope to understand the potential impact on local culture made by such state and international interventions."
Lockery, who studies how the nervous system controls behavior by analyzing neural networks in the nematode C. elegans, was one of two chosen in the neuroscience field in the natural sciences. "The ability to record neuronal activity and behavior simultaneously is perhaps the last remaining obstacle to the goal of a comprehensive understanding of the C. elegans nervous system," said Lockery, who earned a doctorate in biology in 1989 from the University of California, San Diego.
"Such recordings, arguably the most definitive experiment in systems neuroscience, have not so far been achieved with high resolution in unrestrained, freely moving nematodes, because the target neuron moves through the field of view in a fraction of a second," he said. '"I have been working on this problem under the auspices of a competitive, five-year career development award from the National Institutes of Health. This project is now bearing fruit."
His research has led to a new imaging method that now allows for research that he will pursue next academic year while on sabbatical in the laboratory of one of the founders of micro fluidics at Harvard University. He will work on a new device for studying the relationship between neuronal activity and behavior in freely moving animals. "This model will, in turn, show the way forward for comprehensive nervous system models in higher organisms," Lockery said.
For more information on the award and the list of this year’s winners, visit http://www.gf.org/index.html.
About the University of Oregon
The University of Oregon is a world-class teaching and research institution and Oregon's flagship public university. The UO is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an organization made up of 62 of the leading public and private research institutions in the United States and Canada. Membership in the AAU is by invitation only. The University of Oregon is one of only two AAU members in the Pacific Northwest.
Contact: Jim Barlow, director of science and research communications, 541-346-3481, jebarlow@uoregon.edu
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