Regents Distinguished Research Award winners announced

Friday, December 18, 2020

Honoring research excellence

Oklahoma State University has honored seven faculty members with the 2020 Regents Distinguished Research Award.

The winners must demonstrate a distinguished record of past and continuing excellence in research and be recognized nationally and internationally.

“Research excellence is the hallmark of a great land-grant university,” said Kenneth Sewell, OSU’s vice president for research. “These seven honorees are great examples of the amazing impact our faculty have on their disciplines and society at large, not to mention the transformative effect they have on their students here on campus.”

The award program includes one award per college, except the College of Arts and Sciences, which has two.

These winners will be formally honored at Convocation during the spring 2021 semester:

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Ronald B. Cox Jr., Ph.D. Research Professor and Extension Specialist, George Kaiser Family Foundation Endowed Chair in Child and Family Resilience, Associate Director of Community Engagement, Center for Family Resilience in the College of Education and Human Sciences Cox is a recognized national leader in translational research that promotes family health and resilience, with an emphasis on Latino adolescent health and academic achievement. Cox’s work has garnered over $8 million in federal research funding and has led to the development of the Unidos Se Puede (United We Can) program that has been shown to improve academic performance and reduce drug use initiation among Latino immigrant youth. Cox was also recently recognized by the Association of Public Land Grant Universities’ Board on Human Sciences for his outstanding work engaging underserved communities.

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Bryan Edwards, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Joe Synar Chair, Department of Management in the Spears School of Business Edwards’ research is focused on human resources, research methods and organizational behavior. Since earning his doctorate in 2003, he has published more than 30 articles, including multiple pieces on research methods and in the top journals in business. He has earned over $2 million in grant funding from sources such as NSF and the Department of Defense.

 

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Haobo Jiang, Ph.D. Regents Professor, Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology in the Ferguson College of Agriculture Jiang’s research focuses on insect biochemistry and molecular biology. His work identifies and characterizes proteins and factors that regulate the innate immune response in insects. Jiang has maintained an impressive record of obtaining external grant funding for his research program with nearly $5 million in continuous NIH funding.

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Igor Karača, DMA Professor, Michael and Anne Greenwood School of Music in the College of Arts and Sciences Karača is a Bosnian American pianist and composer of classical and jazz music. As part of his work at OSU, he has written several publications, including a textbook, Introduction to Music Technology, the first music technology book available in south Slavic languages. Karača also has several full-length and partial commercial recordings on multiple labels. He is one of the foremost experts in algorithmic music composition in the United States.

 

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Susan Little, Ph.D. Regents Professor, Krull-Ewing Professor in Veterinary Parasitology at the Center for Veterinary Health Sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine Little is a central figure in the world of veterinary parasitology. Her research focuses on ticks and tick-borne diseases of companion animals. She also has expertise on arthropod, protozoan, helminth, rickettsial and bacterial pathogens shared between humans and animals. Little also established, and now co-directs, the National Center for Veterinary Parasitology.

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Yingmei Liu, Ph.D. Professor, Noble Foundation Chair, Department of Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences  Upon arriving at OSU in 2009, Dr. Liu began building a world-class ultracold quantum gases laboratory studying Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), one of the five states of matter. Her research group at OSU has achieved the first sodium BEC in Oklahoma, implemented a highly programmable quantum simulator using sodium BECs in optical lattices, and investigated novel applications of ultracold atoms in quantum information science.

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James Stine Jr. Ph.D. Professor, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology Stine’s work has been repeatedly funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory, Google, NSF, Semiconductor Research Corporation, and the DoD in excess of $6 million in research awards since joining OSU in 2005. He is one of the nationwide leaders in the development of electronic design automation software for semiconductor hardware and leads the nation in producing research articles in computer arithmetic and memory architectures.

MEDIA CONTACT: Harrison Hill | Research Communication Specialist | 405-744-5827 | harrison.c.hill@okstate.edu