April 26, 2007
University’s rising stars to shine in Early Career Award Recognition Symposium
On May 4, the University will give some of its rising stars a chance to shine. The Early Career Award Recognition Symposium, sponsored by the Office of Research, features five assistant professors who have won prestigious national awards.
The honorees are Clark Lombardi, assistant professor of law, a Carnegie Foundation Scholar; David Marcinek, research assistant professor of radiology, an Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholar in Aging; David Ginger, assistant professor of chemistry; winner of a Research Corp Cottrell Scholars Award; Charles Asbury, assistant professor of physiology and biophysics, a Packard Fellow and a Searle Scholar; and Suzie Pun, assistant professor of bioengineering, winner of a Presidential Award in Science and Engineering.
This is the first year the symposium has been offered. It is, according to Associate Vice Provost for Research David Eaton, an attempt to give scholars early in their careers some attention on their own campus.
“Every year the Office of Research looks at national competitions for grants and fellowships, and every year we find our junior faculty are very successful,” he said. “It’s great for them to get the research support, and perhaps they’ll get some recognition in their departments, but we wanted to extend that recognition campus-wide.”
The office also elected to make the event a symposium, so that the five honorees could share their research with colleagues outside their departments. They’ve been asked to keep their presentations to 15 minutes and to gear them to a general audience. The symposium will convene in Turner Auditorium, D-209 of the Health Sciences Center, at 2:30 p.m., with welcoming remarks by Provost Phyllis Wise at 2:45. The presentations are:
- Lombardi: Muslim Judges and the Emergence of a New Islamic Law, 3 p.m.
- Marcinek: Problems at the Power Plant: Inefficient Mitochondria in Aged Skeletal Muscle, 3:20 p.m.
- Ginger: Novel Imaging Tools for Nanostructured Plastic Solar Cells, 3:40 p.m.
- Asbury: How are Chromosomes Separated During Cell Division? Biophysics at the Kinetochore-Microtubule Interface, 4:00 p.m.
- Pun: Synthetic Gene Delivery Systems for Non-Dividing Cells, 4:20 p.m.
A reception in the University of Washington Club will follow the presentations.
“We’re hoping the presentations will promote collegiality, and maybe even spark some interdisciplinary collaborations,” Eaton said. He said the Office of Research plans to make the symposium an annual event.
The symposium is open to anyone who is interested. No pre-registration is required.
