Faculty Awards
See Also: Other Recent Faculty Awards | Faculty List | Research and Adjunct Professors
Each year the BCMB Department recognizes outstanding accomplishments in teaching and research with awards. This year the winners were:
Outstanding Teaching Award for Faculty: Jim Hall
Distinguished Scholarship Award for Junior Faculty: Jerome Baudry
Distinguished Scholarship Award for Senior Faculty: Engin Serpersu
These awards were given based on the following criteria.
Junior and Senior Faculty Outstanding Teaching AwardThe Outstanding Teaching Award recognizes a BCMB faculty member who demonstrates a commitment and excellence in teaching at the undergraduate level. Faculty members in the BCMB department are invited to nominate their colleagues for this award. Materials required include a letter of nomination that gives details of teaching approaches and effectiveness. Student evaluation surveys for each course from the past three (junior) or five (senior) years should also be submitted. Written comments from undergraduate students regarding the teaching effectiveness of the faculty member are desirable, but not required.
Former Award Recipients:
2009: Junior Faculty - Ana Kitazono; Senior Faculty - John Koontz
2010: Junior Faculty - Rose Goodchild; Senior Faculty - Gladys Alexandre
2011: Junior Faculty - Jerome Baudry; Senior Faculty - Andreas Nebenfuhr
2012: Faculty - Jim Hall
Junior and Senior Faculty Distinguished Scholarship Award
The Distinguished Scholarship Award recognizes a BCMB faculty member who has made notable achievements in scholarship and research within the past academic year. Faculty members in the BCMB department are invited to nominate their colleagues forthis award. Materials required include a letter of nomination that gives details regarding the research and publication record of the nominee. A current CV from the nominee should also be submitted.
Former Award Recipients
2009: Junior Faculty - Elena Shpak; Senior Faculty - Liz Howell
2010: Junior Faculty - Mariano Labrador; Senior Faculty - Bruce McKee
2011: Junior Faculty - Brad Binder; Senior Faculty - Albrecht von Arnim
2012: Junior Faculty - Jerome Baudry; Senior Faculty - Engin Serpersu
Gladys Alexandre was contacted by NSF recently asking to include her as one of the NSF “highlights”. They wish to highlight her broader impacts section of her NSF award and have asked for some information and pictures for their highlight.
Jerome Baudry was QUEST's Scholar of the Week, December 31, 2010, for his work in adapting a widely used existing software to allow supercomputers to sift through immense molecular databases and pinpoint chemical compounds as potential drug candidates. His research was published in the Journal of Computational Chemistry as “Task-parallel MPI implementation of Autodock4 for docking of very large databases of compounds using High Performance Super-Computers.”
Dan Roberts was recently honored with an award from the Tennessee Junior Science and Humanities Symposium acknowledging his efforts to foster pre-collegiate research and science education throughout Tennessee. The award was presented at the 46th annual Tennessee Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (TJSHS).
Governor’s Chair Jeremy Smith is bringing supercomputer simulations and experimental results closer together by identifying common “fingerprints.” Smith collaborated on devising a method — dynamical fingerprints — that reconciles the different signals between experiments and computer simulations to strengthen analyses of molecules in motion. The theoretical technique was first developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Smith’s research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “To learn more about Dr. Smith and his work, see the Featured Scholar Spotlight that was published on the UTK website on October 26, 2010: http://quest.utk.edu/2010/uncovering-lifes-secrets/”
Two of our faculty members were recognized with awards at the 2010 Winter Convocation for the College of Arts and Sciences. Dan Roberts received the Senior Faculty Teaching Award from the college and Gladys Alexandre was recognized swith a Junior Faculty Teaching Award.