Faculty recipients of the 2022 awards for excellence in campus-wide research and creative activities, as well as the recipients of active early career awards, were recognized by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Partnerships during an awards banquet on April 20, 2022.
Vice President for Research and Partnerships Tomás Díaz de la Rubia gave the introduction and closing remarks. He along with, Senior Associate Vice Presidents for Research and Partnerships, John Antonio and Janet Ward, as well as Associate Vice President for Research Development, Ann West, presented the awards.
Forty-five faculty were recognized for their active early career grants from agencies such as the National Science Foundation, and the Departments of Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, as well as comparable accolades and awards for early career research and creative activities.
The Annual Award for Excellence in Research Grants was awarded to 20 tenured or tenure-track OU investigators or research teams who obtained extramural sponsored research awards totaling $1 million or more in 2021.
The Award for Excellence in Research in Engineering and Applied Science honors exceptional translational research contributions that address major technical, social, and/or economic problems in today’s society and garner international visibility and recognition. The 2022 recipient is Wei R. Chen, Ph.D., the Stephenson Chair and Professor in the Stephenson School of Biomedical Engineering in the Gallogly College of Engineering.
Using his physics training, Chen has taken a unique bioengineering approach to developing cancer therapies, leading his research team in the development of laser immunotherapy, or LIT, a novel therapy that combines local laser ablation and local administration of immunostimulants. This pioneering work has made a long-lasting impact on several fronts, inspiring many similar technologies and most importantly, has saved and prolonged the lives of many cancer patients.
The Award for Excellence in Research in the Natural Sciences recognizes contributions made at a level of importance and impact that garner international visibility and recognition. The 2022 recipient is Laura-Isobel McCall, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences.
McCall is a nationally recognized innovative investigator who uses unique bioanalytical methods, called chemical cartography, to understand the role of host-pathogen-microbiome interactions in infectious disease pathogenesis. This innovative approach combines analytical chemistry with microbiological methods, computational analysis, and 3D modeling. She has been extremely productive as a junior faculty member, with 14 publications as corresponding or co-corresponding author, with two more as preprints. These results are already leading to pre-clinical drug development for Chagas disease with two R21 grant awards from the National Institutes of Health and funding from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. Further, she has gained widespread recognition in her field, including receiving the designation as one of the American Chemical Society’s Chemical and Engineering News “Talented 12” for 2020 – a list of the dozen young rising stars who are using chemical know-how to change the world and recognition by the journal Infection and Immunity as a “future leader in the field of host-microbe interaction.”
The Award for Excellence in Research, Design, and Creative Expression in the Humanities and the Fine Arts honors work that offers a transformative new direction in humanistic or creative development. The 2022 recipient is Caroline Schroeder, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies in the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences.
Schroeder is noted for her research that has made an exceptional impact on the collective understanding of late antiquity. She has published two high-impact monographs, for which she conducted exciting new research in the largest library of documents from an early monastery. Despite the library’s extensive holdings, it is underresearched due to the dispersal of manuscripts out of Egypt into primarily European and American collections as a result of the legal and illegal antiquities trade. Schroeder’s work, as a result, brings to light research on previously unpublished manuscripts and documents that had never before been translated into English. She also published the first monograph ever to examine children’s lives in Egypt, one of the birthplaces of Christian monasticism. The rigor of her analysis and methods in these impactful works has resulted in widespread acclaim.
The Award for Excellence in Research in the Social Sciences recognizes outstanding publications with pioneering research impacts that offer broad societal and community-oriented applications for the common good. The 2022 recipient is Samuel Perry, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Sociology in the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences.
Perry is a spectacularly prolific scholar in sociology and religious studies and has simultaneously made key and innovative contributions in both disciplines and at their intersections. Since his arrival at OU, he has accomplished the extraordinary achievement of publishing his 100th peer-reviewed article and has also published three well-received and award-winning books. His 2020 book authored with Andrew Whitehead, “Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States,” has won multiple national awards. The research design that served as the basis for this book is rigorous and original. The module of questions that he and his co-author developed for this research was accepted for placement on the 2020 General Social Survey, the gold standard for social scientists doing survey research since 1972. The measures from this book additionally became the foundation for a national study from the Pew Research Center.
The Award for Excellence in Transdisciplinary, Convergent Research recognizes leadership in the creation of collaborative initiatives of teams of tenured or tenure-track OU faculty on projects that both demonstrate a deep integration of disciplines toward new configurations of knowledge production and strive toward creating a positive and meaningful societal impact.
The 2022 recipient is the University of Oklahoma Sewage Surveillance Team: Jason Vogel, Ph.D., and Keith Strevett, Ph.D., both of the School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science, in the Gallogly College of Engineering; Kara Bowen De León, Ph.D., Bradley Stevenson, Ph.D., and Ralph Tanner, Ph.D., with the Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology in the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences; Bryce Lowery, Ph.D., with the Division of Regional and City Planning in the Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture; and Katrin Kuhn, Ph.D. and Halley Reeves with the Hudson College of Public Health.
The team further includes faculty, staff, and students from across five colleges and seven departments on both the Norman and Health Sciences Center campuses who offered an eclectic mix of expertise that allowed for a myriad of perspectives. Together, they made cutting-edge innovations in sampling, laboratory analysis, epidemiological analysis, and public health communication that are contributing to the state of the science in wastewater-based epidemiology. The team formed partnerships at the local, state, and national levels to provide actionable data and analysis that impacts public health response. Since August 2020 and as of the date of their nomination letter, the team had submitted 21 proposals, with over $5.2 million funded and $5.7 million in review. While the team emerged as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, its cross-disciplinary communication, internal and external relationship building, and problem solving not only enhanced critical COVID surveillance activities – it created a team uniquely positioned to have a significant impact on public health surveillance across Oklahoma and the world.
In a surprise announcement, Díaz de la Rubia presented the inaugural Award for Excellence in Research Service and Administration to VPRP Chief of Staff and Associate Vice President for Research and Partnerships Melany Dickens-Ray, for her commitment to core purpose and values of the Office of the Vice President for Research and Partnerships.
In his speech, Díaz de la Rubia remarked on her vast knowledge and experience in virtually all aspects of OU’s research enterprise and the length of her experience at the university, surpassing three decades.
“Not only does she have knowledge, she openly shares that knowledge, and is always helpful in solving researchers’ problems,” he said. “Even more importantly, she helps folks avoid problems in the first place due to her proactive leadership style and approach.
“She works closely with faculty all over the Norman campus – and I can guarantee you that every faculty member here tonight knows and appreciates all that she does very much,” he added. “Whether it is spearheading the construction of new research facilities, leading space inventories, finding creative ways of acquiring and renovating research space, or helping junior faculty members find ways of acquiring that special piece of equipment that is so critical to launching their research program, she does it all. And as if all that isn’t enough, this person also serves as my Chief of Staff - a role she is perfectly suited for and in which she thrives due to her caring nature, empathy, and compassion toward all on the VPRP team.”
The annual award will henceforward be known as the Melany Dickens-Ray Award for Excellence in Research Service and Administration.
