KU News Release

Higuchi awards honor three KU professors for outstanding research

LAWRENCE — Three professors from the University of Kansas and one from Kansas State University have been honored for groundbreaking research with Higuchi/KU Endowment Association Research Achievement Awards. This is the 25th year the awards have been presented. Winners will receive $10,000 to advance their research efforts.

The late Takeru Higuchi, a distinguished professor at KU from 1967 to 1983, and his wife, Aya, established the program to honor outstanding research accomplishments of faculty from Kansas Board of Regents institutions. The individual awards are named after four men who served in leadership roles at KU Endowment. They were instrumental in bringing Higuchi to KU, and their longtime support helped to enhance university research across the state of Kansas.

Balfour Jeffrey Award in Humanities and Social Sciences:

Ann Turnbull, professor of special education at KU, is a co-founder of the Beach Center on Disability, an internationally respected research entity that seeks to make sustainable differences in the quality of life for individuals with disabilities and their families. Her research has primarily focused on families of children and adults with disabilities. She studies ways to support families as they try to enhance the development of their special-needs family member and maintain a good quality of life for all members of the family.

Olin Petefish Award in Basic Science:
A. Townsend Peterson, University Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and curator in the Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Institute, works in the fields of species distribution, biodiversity informatics and disease geography. With KU colleagues, he directs what is now the world's most active program of sampling bird diversity, with work ongoing in China, Philippines, New Guinea, Ghana, Mexico and Argentina. In the field of disease geography, he introduced the concept of ecological niche modeling as a means of reconstructing the geography of species that participate in disease transmission, such as Ebola, monkeypox and avian influenza.

Dolph Simons Award in Biomedical Sciences:

Charles D. Little, professor of anatomy and cell biology at the KU Medical Center, studies the physical forces that shape embryos. His research group is trying to define the coordinated motion of tissues and cells, and to decipher the rules by which new features of an embryo are molded in physical space. The process Little uses to approach this task is to combine cell biology, embryology, applied mathematics, engineering and physics, resulting in an integrative “systems analysis” team effort. One of the embryonic patterns he studies is the formation of an organism's first blood vessels. His work demonstrates that most of the vascular patterning in an embryo is emergent and is caused by tissue deformations and physical, instead of genetic, rules.

Irvin Youngberg Award for Applied Sciences:

Paul A. Seib is a professor of grain science and industry at Kansas State University. His research focuses on cereal carbohydrates, wheat-based foods and stable forms of vitamin C. Seib holds 18 U.S. patents, including two involving a stabilized form of vitamin C used in animal feeds, particularly aqua-culture feed. In 2001, Seib was recognized with the Commerce Bank Distinguished Graduate Faculty Award for outstanding contributions to research and graduate education at K-State.

The 2007 Higuchi Award winners will be recognized later this year in a ceremony at the Adams Alumni Center. Recipients may use their awards for research materials, summer salaries, fellowship matching funds, research assistance or other research-related support.

-30-

The University of Kansas is a major comprehensive research and teaching university. University Relations is the central public relations office for KU's Lawrence campus.