This article is from the archives of the UB Reporter.
News

Three named UB Distinguished Professors

  • Paschalis Alexandridis

    Venugopal Govindaraju

  • Daniel Kosman

By SUE WUETCHER
Published: March 11, 2009

Three faculty members from across the university have been named UB Distinguished Professors.

The UB Distinguished Professor designation—not to be confused with the SUNY Distinguished Professor designation, a rank above that of full professor awarded by the SUNY trustees—was created by the Office of the Provost to recognize full professors who have achieved true distinction and who are leaders in their fields.

It is open to faculty members who have been a full professor for at least five years and who have achieved national or international prominence and a distinguished reputation within their field through significant contributions to the research/scholarly literature or through artistic performance or achievement in the fine arts.

The new UB Distinguished Professors, who will be recognized at the Celebration of Academic Excellence on April 7, are:

• Paschalis Alexandridis, professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Alexandridis conducts pioneering research on the self-assembly and directed assembly of polymers, supramolecules and nanoparticles. One third of his total research funding—more than $2.4 million to date—has come from industry, including Bausch & Lomb and Xerox. His research papers, published in high-impact factor, peer-reviewed journals, have received more than 3,000 citations.

He has received numerous awards, including the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Award, the Bodossaki Foundation Academic Prize in Applied Science, the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and the UB Exceptional Scholar Award for Sustained Achievement.

He joined the UB engineering faculty in 1997 after serving as a postdoctoral associate and assistant professor at Lund University, Malmš, Sweden. He holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and a master's degree in chemical engineering practice from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

• Venugopal Govindaraju, professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, SEAS.

The founding director of UB's Center for Unified Biometrics and Sensors (CUBS) and the associate director of the Center for Document Analysis and Recognition (CEDAR), Govindaraju has been the co-author of more than 300 scientific papers and principal or co-principal investigator of more $50 million dollars in research projects.

A fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and International Association for Pattern Recognition, Govindaraju has served on the editorial boards of five premier journals, including IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. He is the recipient of a SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities.

He is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and earned master's and doctoral degrees in computer science from UB.

• Daniel J. Kosman, professor in the Department of Biochemistry, School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

A UB faculty member since 1970, Kosman’s research interests include genetics and biochemical mechanisms of iron and copper metabolism in yeast, cellular iron metabolism as a target in DNA virus pathogenesis, enzyme kinetics and mechanism in multicopper oxidases.

He has authored or co-authored nearly 100 scholarly publications and currently is writing a book, to be published by Garland Press, on protein structure and function to be used by upper-level undergraduates and first-year graduate students.

He has been an invited speaker and/or chairperson at numerous national and international symposia, a reviewer for some of the top journals in his field and a member of numerous study sections for the National Institutes of Health.

A former acting chair and associate chair of the Department of Biochemistry, Kosman has been appointed to more than 25 university or School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences committees, including search and promotions committees, and panels on teaching and curriculum development.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Oberlin College and a doctorate in physical organic chemistry from the University of Chicago.