Madison Reporter

Extraordinary members of the University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty and staff were recognized over the past year with awards funded by the estate of William F. Vilas, a distinguished professor, U.S. Senator, and UW Regent.

Sixteen professors received Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professorships. This award recognizes distinguished scholarship in addition to notable contributions to teaching and service. "The professorship provides five years of flexible funding — two-thirds of which is provided by the Office of the Provost through the generosity of the Vilas trustees and one-third provided by the school or college whose dean nominated the winner."

The awardees for the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professorships are Helen Blackwell from Chemistry, Julie Chen from Art, Azadeh Davoodi from Electrical & Computer Engineering, Ankur Desai from Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Felix Elwert from Sociology, Anthony Garcia-Prats from Pediatrics, Carl Grant from Curriculum and Instruction, Sigan Hartley from Human Development & Family Studies, Greg Nemet from the La Follette School of Public Affairs, Rajiv Rao from Spanish & Portuguese, Kumar Sridharan from Nuclear Engineering & Engineering Physics, Pallavi Tiwari from Radiology, Beth Weaver from Cell and Regenerative Biology, Claire Wendland from Anthropology, Xinyu Zhao from Neuroscience, and Xiaojin (Jerry) Zhu from Computer Sciences.

The Vilas Faculty Early Career Investigator Award honored twelve professors for excellence in research and teaching early in their academic careers. This recognition comes with three years of flexible research funding. The awardees are Kaiping Chen from Life Sciences Communication, Hilary Dugan from Integrative Biology, Dominic Groß from Electrical and Computer Engineering, Tomiko Jones from Art, Luca Mastropasqua from Mechanical Engineering, Peter McDonald from Curriculum and Instruction, Natascha Merten from Population Health Sciences, Lauren Schmitz from the La Follette School of Public Affairs, Reid Van Lehn from Chemical & Biological Engineering, Aja Watkins from Philosophy, Filiz Yesilkoy from Biomedical Engineering, and Zhou Zhang from Biological Systems Engineering.

The Vilas Faculty Mid-Career Investigator Award was given to fourteen professors, recognizing their excellence in research and teaching. This award also includes funding for three years of flexible research. The recipients include Stephanie Budge from Counseling Psychology, Michael Cardiff from Geoscience, Tessa Conroy from Agricultural & Applied Economics, Jenny Higgins from Obstetrics and Gynecology, Jiaoyang Jiang from Pharmaceutical Sciences, Michael Massoglia from Sociology, Muhammed Murtaza from Surgery, Andrew Quanbeck from Family Medicine and Community Health, Susan Ridgely from the Religious Studies Program, David Rothamer from Mechanical Engineering, Prashant Sharma from Integrative Biology, Christy Tremonti from Astronomy, Michael Xenos from Life Sciences Communication, and Wei Xu from Oncology.

In addition, two members of the academic staff from the Center for Healthy Minds, Christine Wilson-Mendenhall and Daniel Grupe, were awarded the Vilas Researcher Awards, recognizing their high-quality and significant research efforts. This award includes two years of research funding.