Recipient Bios: University of Oregon Fund for Faculty Excellence Awards Academic Year 2008-09

Li-Shan Chou, Associate Professor of Human Physiology
Li-Shan Chou is a biomechanical engineer who works on decreasing the chances of falls in people whose locomotive abilities are impaired due to injury, surgery or age. He has an impressive funding and publication record, and the latter has further improved during each funding period. His work is held in high regard by both academics and clinicians, as demonstrated by the Excellence in Clinical Research Award he was awarded by PeaceHealth in 2007.

Howard Davis, Professor of Architecture
Howard Davis is known for his contributions to understanding the social and cultural frameworks within which buildings and cities are made and how this understanding can point toward ways to improve the built world as a whole. He is best known for his prize-winning book, “The Culture of Building” (1999, reprinted in paperback 2006). He is also co-editor of “Buildings & Landscapes” the Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, and is a member of the editorial boards of the “Journal of Architectural Education” and “Urban Morphology”.

Scott Frey, Associate Professor of Psychology
Scott Frey is a world leader in the fields of cognitive neuroscience, motor skills, tool use and neurorehabilitation. He studies these topics in humans and other primate species using behavioral and brain imaging (fMRI and TMS) methods. He has a substantial record of extramural funding and an impressive list of publications in the best journals in psychology and neuroscience. Frey also serves as director of the Lewis Center for NeuroImaging.

Karen Guillemin, Associate Professor of Biology
Karen Guillemin's field is cell and developmental biology. She works on bacterial pathogenesis and host-pathogen interactions and has gained national and international recognition for her research. She holds two major grants from the National Institutes of Health and has received two prestigious awards; the Irving S. Segal Memorial Award given by the American Society for Microbiology, and a Burroughs-Wellcome Investigatorship. In 2007, the year Guillemin received the latter honor, there were only 16 awards given worldwide.

Ehud Havazelet, Professor of Creative Writing
Ehud Havazelet writes short fiction and novels. He published his first novel, "Bearing the Body," to great acclaim and awards in 2007. He also published two short stories (“Bill and Arlene” and “Law of Return”), an essay (“Old Man on Campus”) in the New York Times Magazine, and a piece of cultural criticism, “Hero Worship,” which places him as an important contemporary cultural analyst. All of his writing exhibits his characteristic reflections on contemporary life in a post-Holocaust America and consummate craftsmanship. Havazelet is author of two volumes of stories, "Like Never Before" (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux) and "What Is It Then Between Us?"(Scribners). He has been the recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and a Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation Fellowship. He was also a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. He is the winner of both the California Book Award and the Oregon Book Award for fiction.

Douglas J. Kennett, Associate Professor of Anthropology
Douglas Kennett is an archaeologist specializing in human-environment interaction and isotope ecology. Since his arrival at the UO in 2001, he has proven to be a prolific researcher with an international reputation. His work on the human effects of global climate change and the environmental impacts of expanding populations has received international attention. Kennett’s active field and laboratory programs have brought in funds to support a variety of faculty and student research projects at the UO. He has been supported by the National Geographic Society and the National Science Foundation.

Tom Lininger, Associate Professor of Law
Tom Lininger is an expert on the prosecution of domestic violence and child abuse. The U.S. Supreme Court has cited his scholarship on this subject, as has the New York Times. Sen. Joseph Biden’s staff invited Lininger to take part in a task force advising the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on strategies for the effective prosecution of violence against women and children. Bonnie Campbell, the former director of the U.S. Violence Against Women Office, commended Lininger as a “national leader in the prosecution of domestic violence.” Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski appointed Lininger to chair the Criminal Justice Commission, a $12 million agency that plans criminal justice policy for the state. Lininger’s scholarship appears in the nation’s top law journals, and he is updating the foremost treatise on evidence law. Lininger directs the Public Interest/Public Service Program at the UO School of Law. An excellent teacher, Lininger won the Ersted Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2006. The graduating classes at the law school have elected Lininger to speak at commencement in three of the last six years.

Harry E. Price, Professor of Music Education
Harry Price is a nationally and internationally renowned scholar, author, teacher and leader in the field of music education. He has served as editor of the oldest and best-known journal in his field, the Journal of Research in Music Education. He has served on the editorial board of the International Journal of Music Education as well as been the U.S. representative and chair of the six-member Research Commission of the International Society for Music Education. Price’s work has appeared in every major journal within the field and his research presentations around the globe have established him as an international authority.

McKay Moore Sohlberg, Associate Professor of Communication Disorders and Sciences
McKay Moore Sohlberg is nationally recognized for her pioneering work in the field of cognitive rehabilitation. She has worked as a clinician, researcher and administrator in the development of programs to assist individuals with brain injury to reintegrate into the community at maximal levels of independence. Her research focuses on the development and evaluation of methods to manage acquired deficits in attention, memory and executive functions. Sohlberg is responsible for a number of federally funded grants that focus on the development and evaluation of assistive technology to increase the social integration of people with chronic and severe cognitive impairments.

Eric Torrence, Associate Professor of Physics
Although Eric Torrence is a recently promoted associate professor he has already built a global reputation with his well-known and highly regarded work on particle physics experiments. Torrence serves as convener (collaboration leader) and co-convener, respectively, on experiments at both the SLAC linear collider facility at Stanford University and at the European Center for High Energy Physics in Geneva, Switzerland. Torrence also plays a leading role on beam instrumentation for the International Linear Collider project and is frequently invited to present at international conferences.

Hailin Wang, Professor of Physics
Hailin Wang has been called one of the top scientists working on semiconductor optics in the world today. His research spans two areas. One is his pioneering development of a new cavity quantum electrodynamics system. The second is the realization of electromagnetically induced transparency in semiconductors. He and his students have published an impressive number of publications over the past several years, and he is frequently invited to present at national and international conferences.

Yuan Xu, Professor of Mathematics
Yuan Xu is a leader in the field of approximation theory, with special expertise in multivariable polynomial approximation. He is on the editorial boards of East J. on Approximations and J. Approximation Theory, and is executive editor of Numerical Mathematics : Theory, Methods and Applications. His book on this topic with Charles F. Dunkl, mathematics professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, in 2001 has become required reading for everyone in the field. Xu’s work has been described as showing the level of rigor required by pure mathematicians, but it is of equal interest to applied mathematicians, which is a rare combination. Xu and co-authors hold a number of patents that promise to lead to higher-quality CT scans at a much lower radiation dose.

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