USF Research News

Eight USF Faculty Members Named New AAAS Fellows

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

The American Association for the Advancement of Science recognizes the world’s leading researchers.



TAMPA, Fla. - Eight University of South Florida professors whose research has set a global standard in a range of disciplines from environmental sciences to health and aging studies, and from chemistry to criminology, have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society.

The USF honorees include a faculty member whose work in pioneering a new treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder is helping save the lives of veterans; a criminologist whose research into why kids kill has helped guide criminal justice systems nationwide; a freshwater ecologist whose research has led to vital conservation efforts and sustainable policies across Florida and around the world; and a professor who led landmark research into the impact of caregiving for the families of patients with Alzheimer’s disease and other chronic conditions.

They are joined in recognition by a marine biologist who has spearheaded a global network of satellite and other observation systems to chart biodiversity and changes in ocean environments from a local to global scale; an anthropologist whose work in understanding the relationship between people and their environment is helping renew neighborhoods near USF and improve environmental management around the world; a chemistry professor whose work is helping advance drug discovery, especially for treatments for cancer and infectious disease; and a neurobiologist whose research of the brains of birds is unlocking the secrets of the evolution of the brain in mammals.

Election as a Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers. This year, 416 members from institutions around the world have been awarded the honor in recognition of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.

This year, USF again ranks fourth worldwide for institutions with the most new AAAS Fellows elected –tied with Indiana University. USF has the highest number of new AAAS Fellows among universities in Florida, and this new class brings USF's total number of AAAS Fellows to 65.

“We are incredibly proud of the career achievements of these eight faculty members and the work they have done to advance knowledge in fields that touch the daily lives of people both in the Tampa Bay region and around the world,” said Paul R. Sanberg, USF senior vice president for research, innovation and knowledge enterprise. “To be named as an AAAS Fellow is one of the highest honors in academic research, and it is one that recognizes the monumental impact these individuals have had in addressing universal problems and in creating a healthier, safer and more compassionate world.”

New Fellows will be presented with an official certificate and a gold and blue (representing science and engineering, respectively) rosette pin on Feb. 16 during the 2019 AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. The tradition of AAAS Fellows began in 1874.

The 2018 Fellows from USF are:

Thomas L. Crisman, Ph.D.
Elected AAAS Fellow in the Biological Sciences Section
Citation: For distinguished contributions to the field of freshwater ecology, management, restoration and conservation of freshwater ecosystems in Florida, Latin America, Africa, Middle East and the Balkans.

Thomas L. CrismanThomas L. Crisman
Thomas L. Crisman is a Jefferson Science Fellow and Professor in the School of Geosciences in the USF College of Arts and Sciences, and an affiliated researcher with the USF Water Institute. Dr. Crisman has been researching the ecology, management, restoration and conservation of freshwater wetlands, lakes and rivers specifically in the subtropics and tropics for more than 40 years. His work has led to significant advances in understanding subtropical limnology in Florida and subtropical regions around the globe. In addition to Florida’s freshwater ecosystems, Dr. Crisman has conducted extensive international research in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans. His research has also focused on the long-term ramifications of watershed management, transboundary water issues and landscape responses to over exploitation of groundwater resources in the Balkans and Greece. An internationally renowned researcher and expert in water management policy-making, Dr. Crisman identified the interdependent relationship between human society, water management, energy, economics, and public health. He has created sustainable policies for governments around the world looking to integrate science, social values and water management, and he is applying this novel approach in Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Jordan, as well as in the Balkans. He is currently working on interdisciplinary approaches to ecohydrology and ecohealth, ecological impacts of urbanization, and climate change. Dr. Crisman has been a Ford Foundation Travelling Scholar in Venezuela, a visiting scientist in Australia, an instructor for OTS in Costa Rica, a Fulbright Scholar in Turkey, an instructor in Uganda and Poland, and a visiting instructor for UNESCO in Zimbabwe. He also currently chairs the International Board for the International Balkan Environment Center. He has been a mission member and mission chief for UNDP/World Bank Evaluation teams for various international projects. Since 1997, Dr. Crisman has served as a board member of the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation. He has made nearly 300 presentations at scientific meetings throughout the world, and he has written 95 refereed publications, two books and 29 book chapters. Dr. Crisman earned an A.B. in Zoology and Geology, an M.A. in Zoology, and Ph.D. in Zoology-Limnology—all from Indiana University. He completed his postdoctoral research at the Limnological Research Center at the University of Minnesota.

Wayne Charles Guida, Ph.D.
Elected AAAS Fellow in the Chemistry Section
Citation: For distinguished contributions to computational biochemistry, particularly for developing MacroModel molecular modeling program, and structure-based drug discovery and design of enzyme inhibitors of therapeutic relevance.

Wayne Charles GuidaWayne Charles Guida
Wayne C. Guida is a Professor and Chair of the Chemistry Department in the USF College of Arts and Sciences, where he also directs the Guida Lab. Dr. Guida also serves as a collaborating member in the Drug Discovery Program at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute. He is also Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemistry at Eckerd College. A global leader in computational chemistry and medicinal chemistry, Dr. Guida’s research primarily involves computational biochemistry applied to enzyme inhibitor design, protein and peptide conformation studies, as well as structure-based drug design. His lab focuses on a multidisciplinary approach to the discovery of new medicines for the treatment of cancer and infectious diseases. Dr. Guida’s career spans both academia and industry. He served as Executive Director of Biomolecular Structure, Lead Finding, and Computing at the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research (formerly CIBA-Geigy Pharmaceuticals) where his work resulted in one of the first-ever successful examples of the use of Structure-Based Drug design in drug discovery. This groundbreaking application led to the development of clinically tested inhibitors of purine nucleoside phosphorylase. Dr. Guida went on to serve as President and CEO of Schrödinger, where he and his team were able to commercially develop MacroModel, a pioneering computer simulation program for molecular modelling of organic compounds and biopolymers that he helped to develop as a Senior Research Associate at Columbia University. He continues to serve on Schrödinger’s Scientific Advisory Board. Dr. Guida has authored or co-authored over 90 publications, and he holds 12 U.S. Patents. He has received over $1.2 million in research funding. Dr. Guida earned a B.A. in chemistry and Ph.D. in organic chemistry, both from the University of South Florida. He went on to complete his postdoctoral research in synthetic organic chemistry at Duke University, and he served as a Senior Research Associate of Computational Chemistry at Columbia University.

William E. Haley, Ph.D.
Elected AAAS Fellow in the Psychology Section
Citation: For advancing understanding of the psychological, social, and health impacts on family members providing care for relatives with Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, cancer and terminal illness.

William E. HaleyWilliam E. Haley
William E. Haley is a Professor in the School of Aging Studies in the USF College of Behavioral and Community Sciences, who holds joint appointments in the Department of Psychology, Division of Geriatric Medicine, and College of Nursing. He is also a member of the USF Center for Hospice, Palliative Care, and End-of-Life Studies; the USF Global Center for Hearing and Speech Research; and an affiliate of the USF Florida Mental Health Institute. He previously was Director of the Education and Information Transfer Core of the Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. He is a pioneer in research focused on studying cultural diversity in family caregiving for individuals with dementia and other conditions. He was project leader on a 10-year study funded by the National Institutes on Aging, and co-principal investigator on a landmark multisite caregiver intervention project, and through that project published research on White, African-American, and Hispanic dementia caregivers. His recent research, in collaboration with his longtime colleague Dr. David Roth of Johns Hopkins University, has used population based research methods and demonstrated that many caregivers are resilient in the face of stress, and that caregiving is associated with psychological benefits and reduced mortality. He has published more than 200 articles and book chapters, receiving more than 16,000 citations, and an h-index of 69. He is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, American Psychological Society, American Psychological Association, and Association for Gerontology in Higher Education. His many awards include the USF President’s Award for Faculty Excellence, USF Outstanding Faculty Research Achievement Award, Minority Mentorship Award from the Gerontological Society of America, and USF Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award, among others. He earned his B.A. from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale (Magna Cum Laude), and both his Master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Kathleen M. Heide, Ph.D.
Elected AAAS Fellow in the Social, Economic and Political Sciences Section
Citation: For distinguished contributions to the field of criminology, particularly with respect to juvenile homicide and parricide.

Kathleen M. HeideKathleen M. Heide

Kathleen M. Heide is a Professor of Criminology in the USF College of Behavioral and Community Sciences. She is also a licensed mental health professional. Dr. Heide previously served as the Interim Dean of the USF College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Heide is one of the nation’s leading scholars on parricide (when children kill their parents) and juvenile homicide (youths under 18 arrested for murder). She has been retained by the state and the defense to evaluate defendants charged with murder in 16 states and Canada. Her book, Why Kids Kill Parents: Child Abuse and Adolescent Homicide, was the first scholarly book on the subject and is considered a seminal publication. She is also an expert on understanding family violence and treating trauma. Dr. Heide is the author/co-author of four books, more than 70 peer-reviewed journal articles, 30 additional publications, and more than 120 papers presented at professional conferences. Her work has received more than 3,100 citations, with an h-index of 31. Her research has also been featured by major news outlets around the world; and she has served as a consultant to the National Institute of Justice, National Institute of Health, many state agencies, and several law firms. Dr. Heide has served on more than a dozen community boards or councils, has held two gubernatorial appointments to the Florida Sentencing Commission, and is a court-appointed expert in matters relating to homicide, violence, and children and families. She has received several major awards from USF for teaching excellence, including the Jerome Krivanek Distinguished Teacher Award and President’s Award for Faculty Excellence. Dr. Heide was elected to full membership in the American Psychological Association in recognition of her contributions to the field of psychology. She was invited by Queen Sofia of Spain to present her research at the International Meeting on the Biology and Sociology of Violence: Youth Violence (2004). She holds a B.A. from Vassar College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and earned both her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University at Albany, State University of New York, School of Criminal Justice, where she was recognized as a distinguished alumna in 2007.

Kevin E. Kip, Ph.D.
Elected AAAS Fellow in the Medical Sciences Section
Citation: For pioneering and groundbreaking research in the fields of interventional cardiology and psychotherapy, particularly for development of new treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Kevin E. KipKevin E. Kip

Kevin E. Kip is a Distinguished Health Professor in Epidemiology and Professor in the Morsani College of Medicine, Department of Cardiology, at USF. He also holds a joint appointment with the James A. Haley VA Hospital in Tampa. He previously served as executive director of the Research Center and interim associate dean for research for the USF College of Nursing, as well as interim chair for the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics for the USF College of Public Health. Dr. Kip is the leading researcher worldwide in the study of Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) — a brief, emerging, evidence-based treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and related comorbidities. He led a $2.1 million Department of Defense grant that, to date, included the nation’s largest study on the effectiveness of ART for military service personnel and veterans. Dr. Kip also oversaw the training of military clinicians in ART at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Fort Hood, Fort Stewart, and Fort Drum. Leveraged in part by three studies of ART directed by Dr. Kip and subsequent peer-reviewed publications, more than 2,000 clinicians have now been trained in the ART protocol across the country and internationally. In addition, Dr. Kip’s more than 20-year career in epidemiology has had substantial impact on the fields of interventional cardiology and cardiovascular disease at large. For example, he was the first to show that in patients treated with angioplasty for coronary artery disease, those patients who also had diabetes had poorer long-term outcomes than those without diabetes. He also was Principal Investigator for the National Institutes of Health/National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Dynamic Registry of Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI), which, over a 20-year period, enrolled more than 10,000 patients and provided a comprehensive assessment of the evolution of PCI. Dr. Kip is a Fellow of the American Heart Association; and a member of the American College of Epidemiology, and Society for Epidemiologic Research. He holds a B.A. in Psychology and M.S. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Central Florida; M.S.P.H. in Epidemiology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham; and a Ph.D. in Epidemiology from the University of Pittsburgh.

Frank E. Müller-Karger, Ph.D.
Elected AAAS Fellow in the Biological Sciences Section
Citation: For distinguished contributions to marine science, particularly in advancing understanding of biodiversity and the dispersal of water from the largest rivers to the world’s oceans.

Frank E. Müller-KargerFrank E. Müller-Karger

Frank E. Müller-Karger is a Professor in the USF College of Marine Science and the Director of the USF Institute for Marine Remote Sensing. As a biological oceanographer, Dr. Müller-Karger’s research focuses on how marine ecosystems change over time. Using a time series of observations to study changes in water quality, primary production, and biodiversity in coastal marine environments, he is advancing a broader understating of the impacts of large-scale phenomena such as climate change and human activities on ecosystems, and how these changes in turn affect society. Dr. Müller-Karger has made several significant contributions to the field. He pioneered efforts to map the dispersal of water from large rivers in the ocean, including water from the Amazon, Orinoco, Magdalena and Mississippi Rivers. He led a team that established the Carbon Retention in a Colored Ocean (CARIACO) Ocean Time Series Program. This 25-yearlong study tracked the seasonal variability in phytoplankton production at the Cariaco Basin off the coast of Venezuela and documented the links between large-scale ocean changes, biodiversity of the plankton, changes in fisheries in the region, and the fine sediments that settle to the bottom of the anoxic Cariaco Basin. Dr. Müller-Karger is internationally recognized for his work using satellite observations, and among other impactful outcomes, contributed to the first high resolution global map of shallow tropical coral reefs. Dr. Müller-Karger continues to use satellites that measure ocean color and sea surface temperature to assess the importance of continental margins in the global carbon budget. As a result of his leadership across a number of national and international studies, Dr. Müller-Karger was named a Commissioner to the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy by former President George W. Bush. He has served on the Ocean Studies Board of the National Research Council/National Academies. He currently serves as a Co-lead for the Marine Biodiversity Observation Network, an initiative supported by NASA, BOEM and NOAA. He serves as an expert on panels for NASA, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, and other professional science groups. He previously received the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Award for Outstanding Contributions and the NASA Administrator Award for Exceptional Contribution and Service for supporting development of satellite technologies for ocean observation. Over the course of his career, he has published more than 250 articles, book chapters and influential reports. Dr. Müller-Karger speaks Spanish, German, and English. He received a B.S. in biological oceanography from Florida Institute of Technology; a M.S. in oceanography at the University of Alaska, and he completed his Ph.D. in marine and estuarine sciences at the University of Maryland. He also holds a M.S. in management from the University of South Florida.

Toru Shimizu, Ph.D.
Elected AAAS Fellow in the Psychology Section
Citation: For distinguished contributions to the fields of comparative psychology and behavioral neuroscience, particularly for multidisciplinary research and advancing understanding of the avian brain and behavior.

Toru ShimizuToru Shimizu

Toru Shimizu is a Professor and the Chair of the Department of Psychology in the USF College of Arts and Sciences where he also leads the Comparative Cognition and Neuroscience lab. Dr. Shimizu’s research centers on comparative neuroscience and evolution of the brain and cognition in vertebrates, focusing specifically on the avian brain. An internationally renowned neurobiologist, Dr. Shimizu’s research examines the neural basis of visual and cognitive abilities in birds using behavioral, physiological, anatomical, and neurochemical research methods. Dr. Shimizu and his colleagues also conducted pioneering research using neuro-imaging techniques on the brain of live birds. Most recently, Dr. Shimizu has been involved in a collaborative research study computationally examining the extensive connection patterns of more than 50 brain structures of birds. These lines of research have led to discoveries of the similarity between non-mammalian and mammalian brain circuitry and functionality despite the lack of a neocortex in the non-mammalian brain. Dr. Shimizu’s overall contributions to comparative neural function in mammals and birds have transformed the field of comparative neuroscience and continue to provide important insights into the evolution of the vertebrate brain as well as the underlying neural mechanism for complex behavior. A highly regarded expert, he has been invited to present at dozens of scientific conferences around the world. He has led grants totaling more than $4.2 million, and has published over 100 articles and abstracts and co-authored two books. Dr. Shimizu received his B.A. in psychology from Keio University in Tokyo. He earned an M.S. in psychology as well as a Ph.D. in psychology, both from the University of Maryland, College Park. He served as a post-doctoral neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego.

E. Christian Wells, Ph.D
Elected AAAS Fellow in the Anthropology Section
Citation: For distinguished contributions to the field of environmental anthropology, particularly for research on ancient and modern soil and water systems, human and environmental health dynamics.

E. Christian WellsE. Christian Wells

E. Christian Wells is Professor of Anthropology, Director of the Center for Brownfields Research and Redevelopment, and Director of the U.S. Peace Corps Coverdell Fellows Program in Applied Anthropology at the University of South Florida, where he has served previously as Founding Director of the Office of Sustainability and as Deputy Director of the Patel College of Global Sustainability. He is an applied environmental anthropologist and conducts research on environmental justice issues, sustainable and equitable development, anthrosol formation, water/wastewater management, and science-policy interactions, with funding from the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, and other organizations. Over the past 20 years, he has undertaken social and environmental science research in Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, Mexico, Antigua, and the United States. Closer to home, Dr. Wells has been instrumental in redevelopment projects in the neighborhoods adjacent to USF through an Environmental Protection Agency-funded planning effort to convert former brownfield sites to community assets, such as the new Harvest Hope Park and community garden. He has published more than 100 scientific articles and essays, 11 books and monographs, and his work has been featured by various media outlets including The New York Times and New Scientist. He recently received the Faculty Outstanding Research Achievement Award, the Outstanding Community-Engaged Teaching Award, the Global Achievement Award for Outstanding Global Student Success, and the Jerome Krivanek Distinguished Teacher Award from the University of South Florida, along with the Black Bear Award from the Sierra Club of Tampa Bay “in recognition of outstanding dedication to sustainability and the environment.” He received his B.A. from Oberlin College, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from Arizona State University.