Faculty and staff news
Robert S. Alley, professor emeritus of humanities, received the Virginia First Freedom Award from the Richmond-based Council for America's First Freedom. The organization gave its international award to Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic, and its national award to Chet Edwards, seven-term Democratic U.S. representative from Waco, Texas.
Alley is an author and scholar of religion, government and education.
Rafael de Sá, professor of biology, will be part of an international team studying the biodiversity of frogs in the tropical Andes, mostly in Peru.
The team, which includes a German scientist and two Spanish scientists, received a grant of $175,000 euros from the National Science Council of Spain to study the Andes frogs, which are declining and in danger of extinction.
"Amphibians are subject to two opposite trends," de Sá says. "On the one hand, they are disappearing at a faster rate than any other group, as a consequence of habitat destruction, water pollution, climatic change and emerging infectious diseases. On the other hand, the number of new species described every year is increasing steadily since the 1950s."
The tropical Andes is considered the important hotspot of biodiversity, and amphibians are extremely diverse there. de Sá probably will join the team there next summer and during his 2006-07 sabbatical year.
As part of the project, a Spanish doctoral student from Madrid will come to Richmond to work with de Sá.
Carol A. Parish, associate professor of chemistry, has received a $60,000 Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. Parish was one of seven faculty members across the country who received the award, which is based on accomplishments in scholarly research with undergraduates, as well as compelling commitment to teaching.
Parish is working on two projects: using computational chemistry to design new small molecule drugs that inhibit the HIV protease enzyme, which will help in AIDS research, and using quantum mechanics to study cyclization of anti-cancer drugs.
The teacher-scholar awards program was begun in 1993 by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation to support the teaching and research careers of talented young faculty in the chemical sciences.
The Thomas F. Jeffress and Kate Miller Jeffress Memorial Trust has presented five Richmond professors grants totaling $75,000 to support faculty and student research in 2006.
Carol A. Parish, associate professor of chemistry, was awarded a $25,000 grant. C. Wade Downey, assistant professor of chemistry, was awarded a $20,000 grant. Receiving $10,000 renewal grants were Jonathan D. Dattelbaum, assistant professor of chemistry; Gary P. Radice, associate professor of biology; and John M. Warrick, assistant professor of biology.
Parish's grant is for her research into potential anti-cancer warhead drugs. Downey is working with new chemical reactions that potentially could make it easier for the pharmaceutical industry to discover new drugs or more efficiently produce existing drugs.
Radice is studying lymphatic hearts in amphibians, birds and reptiles. Humans don't have the tiny hearts, but Radice's research may have implications for human stem cell research.
Dattelbaum is developing new ways of studying glutamate, an important neurotransmitter in the human brain. Glutamate has implications in such diseases as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's.
Warrick's research is examining Machado-Joseph disease, a neurodegenerative disease in the same family as Huntington's disease. Working with laboratory fruit flies, he is looking into ways to slow down or stop the disease's progress at the genetic level.
The Thomas F. Jeffress and Kate Miller Jeffress Memorial Trust was established under the will of Robert M. Jeffress, a Richmond business executive and philanthropist.
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