Six faculty members receive Kellett Mid-Career Awards

Six UW–Madison faculty have been honored for their research with Kellett Mid-Career Awards.

The awards, which includes $60,000 in unrestricted research support, are given annually by the Graduate School. They recognize faculty with five to 20 years of work beyond their first promotion to a tenured position. Supported by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), the awards are named for William R. Kellett, a former president of the WARF board of trustees and retired president of Kimberly-Clark Corp.

This year’s honorees are:

• Leonard Abbeduto, educational psychology, one of the leading scholars investigating the language problems of children with fragile X syndrome, the most common inherited cause of intellectual disabilities. He received a Distinguished Teaching Award in 1996 and is a past chair of the Department of Educational Psychology. He also is associate director for behavioral sciences at the Waisman Center.
• Harry Brighouse, philosophy, a political philosopher who works on issues related to children, education and family life. His work on the demands of social justice on education policy has been influential on philosophers and policymakers, as has his work with Oxford political theorist Adam Swift concerning the rights of children, the rights of parents and the place of the family in the just society.
• Mark Ediger, chemistry, who studies how molecular motions influence the properties of materials such as polymers and glasses. His lab recently discovered a method for preparing extremely stable glasses. Ediger is a fellow of the American Physical Society and a recipient of the James Taylor Teaching Award.
• William Engels, genetics, who uses fruit flies to study the ways in which cells repair broken DNA and is renowned for his many contributions to understanding the behavior of mobile genetic elements. He teaches general and advanced genetics, creating artful animations to show how genes are transmitted in families and populations.
• Kenneth Goldstein, political science, whose diverse set of scholarly publications have appeared in major political science, medical and law journals, as well as major university presses. Goldstein directs the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project, the authoritative source of campaign advertising data for scholars, journalists and policymakers. Goldstein is a member of the UW–Madison Social Studies Divisional Committee and the Athletic Board.
• Kenneth Raffa, entomology, who investigates the population dynamics and ecology of forest insects and the application of underlying mechanisms to natural resource challenges. He teaches courses in forest protection, plant-insect interactions and scientific presentations. Raffa also has served in many advisory capacities for federal and state agencies in the areas of invasive species, pesticides, global climate change and transgenic plants.