Three receive Guggenheim fellowships

Three professors have received 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship Awards, which recognize artists, scholars and scientists who show exemplary past achievement and future promise.

The professors are among 183 individuals elected by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation of New York from a pool of more than 2,700 applicants. The financial awards to this year’s winners totals $6.59 million.

UW–Madison winners are:

• Florence Bernault, associate professor of African history, selected for her studies of the invention of witchcraft in colonial and postcolonial Gabon.
• Michael Ferris, professor of computer science and industrial engineering, selected for his development of mathematical models to optimize the function of medical devices.
• Ronald Raines, professor of biochemistry and chemistry, selected for his work on automated protein assembly to mine the human genome.

Since 1925, the Foundation has granted fellowships to nearly 15,000 individuals across a wide range of professions, including writers, painters, sculptors, photographers, film makers, choreographers, physical and biological scientists, social scientists and scholars in the humanities.