KU News Release

LAWRENCE — Two professors from the University of Kansas and two from Kansas State University are recipients of prestigious Higuchi-KU Endowment Research Achievement Awards for 2009.

The awards, now in their 27th year, honor outstanding accomplishments in research by faculty members at KU and other Kansas Board of Regents institutions. The recognition program was established by Takeru Higuchi, a distinguished professor at KU from 1967 to 1983, and his late widow, Aya.

Four individual awards are given annually. They are named for former leaders of KU Endowment who played key roles in recruiting Higuchi to KU. Their longtime financial support of KU helped enhance university research throughout the state of Kansas.

Each award includes a plaque and a $10,000 grant for ongoing research efforts. The award money can be used for research materials, summer salaries, fellowship matching funds, research assistants or other support related to research.
The 2009 Higuchi Award winners will be recognized at a ceremony and reception Nov. 2 at the Adams Alumni Center.

Balfour Jeffrey Award in Humanities and Social Sciences
Arienne Dwyer is an associate professor of linguistic anthropology at KU. She joined the faculty in 2001 and is one of the best known and most respected scholars working on the languages of inner Asia, especially Chinese minority languages. Much of this work has involved extensive and difficult field research along the eastern Silk Road, in collaboration with local communities. Dwyer is a preeminent specialist on language, ethnicity and ideology in Xinjiang, China’s restive westernmost region. She regularly advises national and international agencies and organizations on China and central Asia, language vitality assessment and the creation of multimedia archives.

Dolph Simons Award in Biomedical Sciences
Steven Barlow is a professor of speech-language-hearing at KU. He joined the faculty in 2000 and is an internationally recognized scholar in orofacial and laryngeal neurophysiology and biomedical aspects of speech sensorimotor processing across the life span. His work with at-risk premature newborns led to inventions designed to assess the emergence of oromotor patterning and a new treatment to promote the development of a normal pattern of sucking behavior. This enables this fragile population to feed naturally before discharge from the neonatal intensive care unit. His NTrainer System technology is being developed for commercialization by KC BioMedix of Shawnee.

Irvin Youngberg Award for Applied Sciences
Charles Rice is a University Distinguished Professor of Agronomy at K-State. He joined the faculty in 1988 and is ranked among the premier soil scientists in the world. His research in the area of soil carbon and nitrogen cycling is especially well-known. The focus of his work is how soil management influences microbiological processes and how that affects crop productivity, the release of greenhouse gases and global climate change. He served as lead author of the chapter on agriculture in Mitigation of Climate Change, a 2007 assessment report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (co-recipient that year of the Nobel Peace Prize). In addition, he is president-elect of the Soil Science Society of America.


Olin Petefish Award in Basic Science
Duy Hua is a University Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at K-State. He joined the faculty in 1982 and is a world-renowned expert in organic synthesis. His research interests include studies of bio-based polymers and the synthesis of bioactive molecules, including anti-cancer, anti-norovirus, anti-malarial and anti-Alzheimer’s agents. It is an especially complex field, one that has been described as “a giant puzzle coupled with the game of chess.” He is respected for his fruitful collaborations with biochemists and biological scientists, which have given him an even greater opportunity to synthesize biologically important molecules.

KU Endowment is the independent, nonprofit organization serving as the official fundraising and fund-management organization for KU. Founded in 1891, KU Endowment is the first foundation of its kind at a U.S. public university.