Five professors receive Kellett Mid-Career Awards

Five professors have received Kellett Mid-Career Awards that promote the continued scholarly efforts of established faculty.

Sponsored by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, honorees receive a $60,000 flexible research fund. Eligible candidates must be five to 20 years past their first promotion to a tenured position; they are chosen by a committee from the university’s Graduate School. The awards are one of several annual programs supported by WARF’s block grant to the university. The award is named for William R. Kellett, a former president of the WARF Board of Trustees and retired president of Kimberly-Clark Corp.

Honored this year are:

• Richard Anderson, professor, pharmacology. Anderson’s research focuses on lipid messengers that mediate cell movement and formation of cell-to-cell interactions, which are fundamental to development and the metastasis of cancers. His group discovered an enzyme that regulates these processes and is linked to cancer progression.
• Craig H. Benson, professor, civil and environmental engineering. Benson is an international leader in geo-environmental research and has played a key role in elevating the geotechnical and geological engineering programs to national and international preeminence. Benson has received the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the U.S. Department of Energy, the international Casagrande Professional Development Award and the Huber Research Prize in Civil Engineering from the American Society of Civil Engineers.
• Alexander Dolinin, professor, Slavic languages. Dolinin is one of the preeminent scholars of Russian literature in the world, especially in the areas of Nabokov and Pushkin studies. Starting in St. Petersburg as an Americanist, during the past 25 years he has produced books, edited volumes, commentaries and articles.
• Bruce Hansen, professor, economics. Hansen is a fellow of the Econometric Society, whose research focuses on practical econometric methods for the analysis of time-series data. He has developed techniques that have been applied by economists seeking answers to some of the most important economic policy questions.
• David Watkins, professor, pathology and laboratory medicine. Watkins’ research has made substantial contributions to understanding the pathogenesis of HIV that have been important in vaccine development for the pathogen. Watkins also has an impressive record in training graduate students and postdoctoral fellows; his lab numbers about 40 people with nearly $5 million in annual direct costs from the National Institutes of Health.