Departments
Noteworthy & New
Anthropology Chair Elected To NAS
SMU Anthropology Chair David Meltzer has been elected a
member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for his
achievements in original scientific research. Membership in the
NAS is one of the highest honors given to a scientist or engineer
in the United States.
Meltzer, the Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory in
Dedman College and director of QUEST Archaeological Research
Program, is the third SMU professor to be inducted into the NAS.
All have come from the University’s Anthropology Department:
emeritus faculty members Lewis Binford and Fred Wendorf were
elected in 2001 and 1987 respectively.
“One of the hallmarks of top universities is the election of their
faculty to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences,” says
Paul Ludden, provost and vice president for academic affairs.
“It’s an honor to be in that wonderful company,” Meltzer says.
His work centers on the origins, antiquity
and adaptations of the first Americans
– Paleoindians – who colonized the
North American continent at the end of
the Ice Age. He focuses on how these
hunter-gatherers met the challenges of
moving across and adapting to the vast,
ecologically diverse landscape of Late
Glacial North America during a time of
significant climate change.
Meltzer’s archaeology and history research
has been supported by grants
from the National Geographic Society,
the National Science Foundation, The
Potts and Sibley Foundation and the
Smithsonian Institution. In 1996, he received a research endowment
from Joseph and Ruth Cramer to establish the QUEST
Archaeological Research Program at SMU, which will support in
perpetuity research on the earliest occupants of North America.
His research has appeared in more than 130 publications, and
Meltzer has written or edited half a dozen books, including First
People in a New World: Colonizing Ice Age Americans, recently
published by The University of California Press. He received his
Ph.D. in anthropology/archaeology from the University of Washington
in Seattle and joined the SMU faculty in 1984.
For more information: smu.edu/anthro/faculty/meltzer.html
Four Dedman Researchers Receive Ford Fellowships
Four 2009 Ford Research Fellowships were awarded to the following
Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences faculty:
Ben Johnson, associate professor of history and associate director
of SMU’s Clements Center for Southwest Studies, channeled
his research interest in the environment, borderlands and
modern U.S. history into two books –
Revolution in Texas: How
a Forgotten Rebellion and Its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans
into Americans (2003) and
Bordertown: The Odyssey of an
American Place (2008). Bordertown received an award from the
Popular Culture and American Culture Association as well as
SMU’s 2009 Godbey Lecture Series Authors’ Award.
Fred Olness, professor of physics and chairman of the Faculty
Senate, specializes in elementary particle physics phenomenology
with an emphasis in quantum chromodynamics, the force that
binds nuclei. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical
Society in 2005 and has worked with the Theoretical Physics
Group at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois,
and at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland.
He is co-author of the textbook
Mathematica for Physics, now
in its second edition.
Larry Ruben, professor of biological sciences, has done extensive
research into the signal properties of
Trypanosoma brucei, which causes the lethal disease commonly known as sleeping
sickness that infects humans and livestock and potentially affects
more than 60 million people in 36 countries. His current research
looks at unique processes in the trypanosome, which can be used
to design new therapies that may prevent infection cells from successfully
dividing and reproducing.
Carolyn Smith-Morris, assistant professor of anthropology,
focuses on medical anthropology, American Indians, diseases of
development, gender and health. For more than 10 years, she has
worked with the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, researching
the diabetes epidemic among the Pima Indians and the
community response to the health crisis. She documented her
findings in
Diabetes Among the Pima: Stories of Survival (2006).
Established in 2002 through a $1 million pledge from Gerald J. Ford, former chair of SMU’s Board of Trustees, the fellowships
help the University retain and reward outstanding scholars. Each
recipient receives a cash award for research support during the year.
