Don Estep

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don Estep, chair of and professor in the Department of Statistics in the College of Natural Sciences, has been named a University Distinguished Professor.

This award is the highest academic recognition awarded by Colorado State University. The award was given to Estep for his outstanding scholarship and achievement and will be recognized for the remainder of his time working with CSU.

Estep, who received his B.A. from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics at the University of Michigan in 1987, was the first at Colorado State University to become a University Interdisciplinary Research Scholar.

Estep’s work symbolizes a commitment to CSU and all he has achieved thus far. Estep is recognized nationally and internationally for his research on the influence of uncertainty quantification for differential equations modeling biological, engineering system, and physical systems. He has also contributed significant research in error estimation and solution of complex scientific models.

Along with the University Distinguished Professor title, Estep has received numerous professional honors including: the Computational and Mathematics Methods in Science and Engineering Prize, the College of Natural Sciences Teaching Award for Graduate Education, the Oliver P. Pennock Distinguished Service Award, the CSU Scholarship Impact Award, the Chalmers University Jubilee Professorship, and appointment as fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

“Professor Estep is one of the most outstanding faculty members at Colorado State University,” wrote College of Natural Sciences Dean Jan Nerger in her nomination letter. He is “a standout among a very elite group of scholars,” she noted, adding that, “the impact of his research is substantial.”

Estep has been with CSU since 2000, first with an appointment in the mathematics department before transitioning full-time to the Department of Statistics in 2014. He was named chair of the department in January.

Alan Knapp

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When it comes to the checking all of the boxes required to be named University Distinguished Professor, Alan Knapp has more than met the standard. Twice.

Knapp, a professor of Biology in the College of Natural Sciences, is part of the six-person 2017 class of UDPs being honored by Colorado State University. If that title sounds familiar next to Knapp’s name, consider that he won the same honor while a professor at Kansas State University prior to coming to CSU in 2004.

It’s difficult to imagine anyone more qualified to bear the prestigious title than Knapp. He is one of the world’s most-respected ecosystems ecologists and has compiled a noteworthy career in teaching and research that stretches more than 35 years.

Knapp came to CSU after being named Senior Ecologist for the Graduate Program in Ecology. Prior to that he had established a reputation for tireless research on grassland ecology both in the U.S. and abroad.

Knapp’s best-known work came at the National Science Foundation-funded Konza Prairie Long-Term Ecological Research program in the grasslands of northeastern Kansas. Knapp spent more than 10 years on that project while at Kansas State, helping establish Konza as one of the top LTER sites for the study of how prairie fires and bison grazing impact grasslands.

Knapp, who still maintains research projects at Konza, added grassland studies at Kruger Park in South Africa and in the vast steppes of Mongolia, providing scientists a chance to view grassland impacts in different geographical areas. He has written more than 200 peer-reviewed papers during his career, and they have been cited hundreds of times by other researchers. He was named an Elected Fellow in the Ecological Society of America in 2016, and he has been a featured speaker in more than a dozen countries.

In addition to his research, which has been supported by more than $20 million in research grants, Knapp has earned a reputation as an outstanding teacher who values student research. He has graduated 13 students with advanced degrees since arriving at CSU, and two-thirds of his published works were co-authored by students.

Keith Paustian

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keith Paustian, professor in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, has been named a University Distinguished Professor, which is the university’s highest honor for faculty.

Paustian is internationally renowned as a carbon sequestration, global climate change expert. He has received two of the highest awards from the leading professional society for soil science, the Soil Science Society of America: the Soil Science Research Award in 2015 and Fellow in 2007.

Paustian, who is also a member of CSU’s Natural Resources Ecology Laboratory, joined the faculty in 1993. His scholarly achievements have had a lasting impact on his field of research, colleagues, and students. His work has substantially contributed to better understanding a fundamental ecosystem attribute – the dynamics of organic matter in soils. Paustian has helped to establish CSU as a global leader in inventory and assessment technology of greenhouse gas emissions from land use activities.

Paustian actively engages and inspires the next generation of scientists with his boundless energy and wisdom. He has a strong sense of responsibility toward providing research and scientific mentoring of the highest caliber.

Recognized worldwide for his outstanding record of research accomplishments and scientific leadership, Paustian has a prolific publication record, with over 240 publications in refereed journals and books. His significant influence in the field is evidenced by over 14,000 total citations. Many of his publications involve international collaboration.

Paustian’s influence extends far beyond his scientific record. He was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.  The IPCC developed the methods and procedures for quantifying greenhouse gas emissions that are the standard for inventory reporting by all 197 signatory countries of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.  He also served on a 12-member National Academy of Sciences panel to assess capabilities for verifying greenhouse gas emissions as part of international climate agreements.

“Dr. Paustian’s contributions place him in the ‘upper echelon’ of Earth System scientists worldwide,” wrote College of Agricultural Sciences Associate Dean for Academic Programs Ken Barbarick in his nomination letter. “He exemplifies the superior scholarly excellence and promise of continued achievement required of a University Distinguished Professor.”

A.R. Ravishankara

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A.R. “Ravi” Ravishankara, professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Atmospheric Science, has been named a University Distinguished Professor, which is the university’s highest honor for faculty.

Ravishankara has had a long research career spanning both government and university positions. Over four decades, he has studied the chemistry of Earth’s atmosphere as it relates to stratospheric ozone, climate change and regional air quality. His experiments have contributed to deciphering ozone layer depletion, and to quantifying the role of chemically active species that affect climate. His research has advanced our understanding of the formation, removal and properties of pollutants in the atmosphere.

Ravishankara joined the CSU faculty in 2014 after a lengthy career at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder. His Ph.D. in physical chemistry is from the University of Florida, and he also holds an M.Sc. in physical chemistry, and a B.Sc. in physics and chemistry, both from the University of Mysore, India.

Since his arrival at CSU, Ravishankara has contributed to new scientific directions in atmospheric chemistry, taking a leadership role in the Partnership for Air Quality, Climate and Health (PACH) and participating in the CSU Global Grand Challenge sponsored by the Office of the Vice President for Research. He has also actively contributed to the mentorship of students, postdocs and young faculty.

Ravishankara’s many honors include membership in the National Academy of Sciences, American Geophysical Union, Royal Society of Chemistry, International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, and American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has authored more than 350 peer-reviewed research papers and has received awards from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, American Chemical Society, Department of Commerce, NOAA and the National Academy of Sciences.

“There are few faculty on the CSU campus that have achieved the scientific impact and world-wide recognition of Dr. Ravishankara,” wrote Department of Chemistry Chair Chuck Henry in his nomination letter. “He is a brilliant scientist and steadfast advocate for science who epitomizes the ideals of the UDP.”

Ellen Wohl

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ellen Wohl, a geosciences professor specializing in fluvial science and geomorphology, is now a University Distinguished Professor. Wohl has made a formative impact on her field, and is widely known in her department, Warner College of Natural Resources and CSU as a phenomenal faculty mentor to students and an outstanding teacher.

Wohl has sustained an exceptional level of scholarly international service and recognition, including 18 years on the editorial board of the key journal in her field, Geomorphology, and as a multiple society fellow, in both the Geologic Society of America and the American Geophysical Union. She has previously won CSU’s Scholarship Impact Award and Warner College’s Outstanding Mentor award. She is the only person to receive the G.K. Gilbert Award from the Association of American Geographers twice. Recently, she received the Ralph Alger Bagnold medal from the European Geosciences Union for her outstanding contributions to the field of geomorphology.

Wohl’s extensive research impacts include 175 CV-listed publications, 29 book chapters, and 14 books or other special publications, 12 of which she is the first author on. Her work is broad and prominent across fluvial sciences and beyond, with contributions that include interactions between river profiles and tectonism, the influences of woody debris on river flow and geomorphology, historic benchmarking of flooding in rivers, debris flows, carbon cycling and biogeochemistry, ecological river restoration, and the historic role of beavers in post-glacial floodplain development. Her work appears in a number of prestigious journals including Nature Communications and Nature Climate Change.

She’s an exceptional mentor to both graduate and undergraduate students, routinely receiving high marks on student evaluations for her knowledge of the subject, effectiveness of teaching and overall ratings. Her work with graduate students is nothing less than prolific, having been an advisor to 43 master’s students and 23 doctoral students during her 27-year career at CSU.

Walter Toki

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walter Toki, professor in the Department of Physics, has received the Scholarship Impact Award, one of the highest faculty honors at Colorado State University.

A member of the CSU faculty since 1992, Toki is an internationally recognized researcher in experimental high-energy physics. Work in this field uses accelerators and particle detectors to study the identities and properties of fundamental particles and forces in the universe. Over the past decade, Toki has focused on subatomic particles called neutrinos. Serving as a link to the physics that determines how one particle can transform itself into another, the study of neutrinos has become a critical element to understanding the most basic constituents of the physical universe.

Since 2007, Toki has been a key contributor to the international neutrino experiment called T2K. He has performed important tasks in particle detector construction, characterization, installation and operation. During sabbaticals, Toki managed the construction of critical T2K components at CSU in 2008; final assembly at Stony Brook University in 2008; and setup at the JPARC accelerator in Japan in 2009. In the last five years, Toki has coordinated data-taking operations of the neutrino monitoring detectors near the accelerator. Among the T2K collaboration’s most prominent accomplishments has been the measurement of the size of neutrino oscillations that will allow the study of matter-antimatter asymmetry.

Toki has co-authored 351 peer-reviewed publications throughout his long career. In 2016, he shared with CSU research group members in the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for contributions in the T2K neutrino experiment. Before coming to CSU, Toki was co-spokesman of particle physics experiments on charm and tau particles performed at Stanford and in Beijing. As part of his collaborative research with Beijing and U.S. scientists, he initiated the first internet in China.

Toki holds a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in particle physics, as well as an A.B. in physics from University of California at Berkeley, where he graduated with Great Distinction and Phi Beta Kappa honors. He a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Japan Society for Promotion of Science.

“It is not often that one looks at a set of contemporary scientific results and knows that they will be discussed in textbooks and become the basis of a field of study for generations to come ­– but that is the case with recent results in neutrino physics in the past decade or so,” wrote Department of Physics Chair Jake Roberts in his nomination letter. “Professor Toki and his co-workers at CSU have played an integral and important role in landmark scientific studies in this area of physics.”

Shrideep Pallickara

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shrideep Pallickara, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science, has received one of the university’s highest accolades for the skill and dedication involved in teaching: the Board of Governors Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Pallickara, an accomplished scholar in the area of cloud computing and big data, was awarded a Monfort Professorship last year in support of his research. This year, a university-level honor has been extended to Pallickara for his exceptional performance and passion in teaching. No other faculty member in CSU’s history has received both awards.

Pallickara is one of CSU’s top-rated instructors. His senior-level Distributed Systems class is quickly filled to capacity each year. Some of the innovative ways Pallickara teaches include: directly engaging students, conducting “microsurveys” at the end of each class to help calibrate and customize his instruction for the next class; using guest lectures and term paper assignments to hone students’ writing skills, and giving students projects that are modern, timely and extremely challenging.

In testimonial after testimonial, students have expressed their enthusiasm for Pallickara’s teaching, and the time he spends to keep class material relevant and challenging. “Your 455 class is by far my favorite class I’ve taken to date,” one student wrote. “Perhaps not coincidentally, it was also the hardest class I’ve taken…it was in no small part due to this preparation that I was offered a full-time position at Amazon following my graduation next spring. In short, your classes helped me get a dream job at Amazon.”

Wrote another student: “I can, without question, say you are the best instructor I’ve had. Your efforts are visibly genuine, and very much appreciated by everyone I know who has taken your courses.”

Between his course load and research projects, Pallickara also engages in outreach efforts for much younger students. Since 2013, he has directed a weeklong summer camp, “Math in Action in Computer Science,” for underprivileged, Native American middle school students from Cortez, Colorado.

Pallickara’s previous teaching awards have included the College of Natural Sciences Faculty Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award (2014) and the Department of Computer Science Effective and Innovative Teaching Award (2012). In his letter nominating Pallickara for the Board of Governors award, computer science Department Chair Darrell Whitley wrote: “There are professional computer scientists working today who do not have a deep working knowledge of cloud computing, because the technology is so new. Dr. Pallickara passes on a deep, and even profound, knowledge of cloud computing and operating systems to the students who take his classes.”

Kim Hoke

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kim Hoke, an associate professor in the Department of Biology who has done groundbreaking work in the evolution of animal behavior, has been named a Monfort Professor, one of CSU’s highest honors.

The designation comes with $75,000 a year over the next two years to support her internationally recognized research, which involves integrating behavior, neuroanatomy and genomics of amphibians and fishes.

Beyond her research accomplishments, which have garnered her two major grants from the National Science Foundation (including a prestigious CAREER award) and publication in top journals like the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Hoke has also been recognized for excellence in teaching and mentoring. In addition to innovations in teaching, she has been instrumental in designing capstone courses in the department and has a strong undergraduate mentoring program for students in her laboratory, according to her nomination materials.

“My high regard and enthusiasm for Dr. Hoke as a scientific colleague and fellow faculty member has no bounds,” department head Michael Antolin wrote in his recommendation letter. “Her interdisciplinary research takes a familiar endeavor, the observation of animal behavior, and brings it to the highest level and cutting-edge scientific achievement. But even more, this is not a lone journey. Dr. Hoke is dedicated to bringing her younger colleagues with her in mentoring of students in classes and in her lab.”

Antolin, who nominated Hoke for the honor, and College of Natural Sciences Dean Jan Nerger also lauded Hoke’s service and outreach contributions in their recommendation letters.

“Of particular note is her dedication to interdisciplinary teams across campus, serving on multiple NSF panels, and organizing three international conferences,” Nerger wrote. “The intent of the Monfort Professorship is to support our ‘rising star’ faculty in their research and teaching careers. In my opinion, Dr. Hoke is just that … a rising star. Her trajectory is steep and heading toward the distinction of University Distinguished Professor.”

Hoke won the Research Excellence Award from the Office of the Vice President for Research in 2015 for a paper published in Nature, and this year she was named a Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Fellow by the Institute for Advanced Study in Delmenhorst,

Germany, to support her upcoming sabbatical.

Hoke intends to use the Monfort funding to extend her research on genetic and developmental contributions to behavioral diversity in Trinidadian guppies.

Melissa Reynolds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Melissa Reynolds, associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and a faculty member in the School of Biomedical Engineering, has been named a Monfort Professor at Colorado State University. The Monfort Family Foundation helps the university retain talented faculty by awarding funds to two professors each year in support of their research and teaching.

Reynolds, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and a B.S. from Washington State University, leads a research group that integrates novel chemistries into man-made medical devices for humans. One focal point of her research is the development of advanced biocompatible materials that show promise for medicinal-chemistry problems, such as catheter rejection by the body.

Since joining CSU’s faculty in 2009, Reynolds has earned many accolades in research, teaching and service. A mentor to 33 undergraduates, 26 graduate students and three postdoctoral scholars, Reynolds has also taught 11 different courses including analytical and materials chemistry, and bioengineering.

The author of 42 refereed research papers, Reynolds was the first to show that metal organic frameworks can be used as biological catalysts. She has also led the development of a new platform for antimicrobial materials that greatly exceed the efficacy of current treatments.

Reynolds was the inaugural Webb-Waring Biomedical Investigator, awarded through the Boettcher Foundation. She is the recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and was named Educator of the year by the Colorado Bioscience Association. Her research has brought in more than $3.3 million in grant funds.

Currently serving as associate chair in the chemistry department, Reynolds has also led the full reorganization of the graduate program to become more student-focused, and has served as advisor to the chemistry graduate organization. “Note that these additional, highly valuable service activities are over and above her exemplary research, classroom teaching, other teaching and student mentoring, and multiple and varied service activities already noted,” wrote Professor of Chemistry Richard Finke in nominating Reynolds.

Added Jan Nerger, dean of the College of Natural Sciences in her nomination letter: “When I consider the intent of the Monfort Professorship program is to identify, reward and retain our best younger faculty, Melissa Reynolds is clearly worthy of this distinction. Her high level of scholarly accomplishments, her excellence in the classroom, dedication to graduate and undergraduate research, and her clear success in supporting her research through external funding, places her among the most productive faculty in the College of Natural Sciences.”