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Awards & Honors

Four WSU Professors Named AAAS Fellows

Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2007

Maria Ortega, WSU News Service, 509/335-7209, mortega@wsu.edu

PULLMAN, Wash. – The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) awarded the distinction of fellow to four Washington State University professors. Timothy A. Kohler, regents professor of anthropology, professors of veterinary medicine Wendy Brown and David Prieur and WSU Tri-Cities professor of physics and materials science Lai-Sheng Wang were elected as AAAS fellows.

In October, the AAAS Council recognized 471 members as fellows for their contribution to science and technology.

The mission of AAAS, an international nonprofit organization founded in 1848, is to “advance science and serve society” through initiatives in science policy, international programs and science education. In addition to scientific newsletters, books and reports, AAAS publishes the peer-reviewed journal “Science,” whose readership is estimated to be one million.

Timothy A. Kohler received the award for his outstanding contributions in the applications of modeling to archaeological research, explanations of human-environment interactions and the long-term studies to link social and ecological dynamics.

Kohler’s work involves quantitative analysis of archaeological data and simulations of aspects of prehistoric behavior. This method of modeling helps archaeologists make sense of what they find in the field and provide possible explanations for data they collect.

He arrived at WSU in 1978 after receiving his master’s and doctoral degrees in anthropology from the University of Florida, Gainesville. He specializes in Southwestern (U.S.) archaeology and has collaborated with William D. Lipe on the Dolores Archaeological Program in southwestern Colorado, directed excavations in Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico and worked on an NSF Biocomplexity project devoted to understanding the causes for changes in settlement systems in southwestern Colorado between 600 A.D. and 1300 A.D.

Wendy C. Brown, professor of immunology in the Department of Veterinary Microbiology and Pathology, was named fellow for her distinguished contributions to understanding T-lymphocyte responses to obligate intracellular tick-borne protozoal and rickettsial pathogens yielding vaccine candidates and novel mechanisms used to modulate host immunity.

Brown is recognized nationally and internationally for her research on T lymphocyte responses to tick-borne pathogens of cattle and for the use of T lymphocytes to identify promising vaccine antigens. T lymphocytes orchestrate the adaptive immune response in vertebrates, endowing animals and humans with immunological memory to thwart infectious agents that have been previously encountered. T lymphocytes are critically important in assisting B lymphocytes in neutralizing pathogens, killing microbes and for directly killing pathogen-infected cells.

She received her bachelor's degree in microbiology from Smith College, master's in public health degree in infectious disease epidemiology from Yale University School of Medicine, and doctoral degree in immunology from Yale. She was a postdoctoral research associate and research scientist at the International Laboratory for Research on Animal Diseases in Nairobi, Kenya, and received tenure at Texas A & M University College of Veterinary Medicine before she was recruited to WSU.

David J. Prieur, professor and chair in the Department of Veterinary Microbiology and Pathology, received his fellowship for significant contributions to identification and characterization of animal genetic diseases as models of human diseases and for his leadership in developing an acclaimed Department of Veterinary Pathology.

Prieur's research focuses on genetic diseases of animals, especially those that are spontaneous models of similar human genetic diseases. The specific diseases studied include lysozyme deficiency of rabbits, Chediak-Higashi syndrome in multiple species, tyrosinemia in mustellids, familial canine dermatomyositis, ovine GM-1 gangliosidosis, and canine Hunter syndrome, among others.

He is the recipient of an NIH Research Career Development Award and served as the Editor of the Animal Model Section of the "American Journal of Medical Genetics" for 16 years. He received a master's degree and a doctor in veterinary medicine degree from Michigan State University and a doctoral degree from WSU. Prior to joining WSU as a faculty member he was a postdoctoral fellow and Senior Staff Fellow at NIH.

Lai-Sheng Wang, professor of physics and materials science at WSU Tri-Cities and affiliate senior chief scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, was elected as fellow for distinguished and innovative contributions to the field of atomic clusters and for pioneering work on gaseous multiply-charged anions.

He is world renowned as a leader in nanoclusters research. He and his colleagues created hollow, nanoscale groupings of 16 gold atoms in the shape of a cage -- the first-known metallic equivalent of the famous carbon fullerene or “buckyball.” The research showed that the most stable form of gold clusters undergoes shape transformations, a finding that addresses a key issue in fundamental cluster science: understanding the structural evolution of clusters from a single atom/molecule towards the bulk solid. This work also has potential applications in energy science.

Wang joined WSU in 1993. He earned his doctoral degree at the University of California – Berkeley and his bachelor's degree at Wuhan University, in Wuhan City, People’s Republic of China. He conducted graduate and postdoctoral research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, UC – Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and Rice University.

Editor's Note: On Nov. 2, WSU News Service sent a release regarding Wang's AAAS fellowship. Please note that there are four WSU faculty members named AAAS fellows, as stated in this news release.

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