SUNY Distinguished Professors named
Three more UB faculty members have joined the ranks of distinguished professors appointed by the SUNY Board of Trustees.
Leonard Epstein, UB Distinguished Professor in the departments of Pediatrics and Social and Preventive Medicine, has been named a Distinguished Professor in recognition of national or international prominence in his fields.
Mark Karwan, a professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, was named a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in recognition of outstanding teaching at the graduate, undergraduate and professional levels.
H. Raghavendra Rao, professor of management science and systems, School of Management, has been appointed a Distinguished Service Professor in recognition of extraordinary service to the community, region, state, nation or world.
The rank of distinguished professor, the highest faculty rank in the SUNY system, is an order above full professorship and has three co-equal designations: distinguished professor, distinguished service professor and distinguished teaching professor.
The trio was among 24 SUNY faculty members appointed to the distinguished professor ranks by the trustees at their May 11 meeting.
An internationally recognized scholar in the fields of behavioral medicine, nutrition and therapy, Leonard Epstein is one of the world’s foremost experts in the area of childhood obesity. He developed the Stoplight Diet Plan to help families instill healthy eating habits in overweight children, and it remains one of the few plans shown to produce long-term success for obese children. He also was the first researcher to demonstrate a relationship between television watching and childhood obesity.
His most recent work explores the role of the dopaminergic system and food habitation in obesity.
A member of the UB faculty for 16 years, Epstein heads the Division of Behavioral Medicine in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, in addition to holding faculty appointments in the School of Public Health and Health Professions and the medical school.
Epstein is the recipient of numerous federal grants—most of which are from the National Institutes of Health—and has published widely in professional journals. He and his work have been featured on CBS’ "48 Hours" and have been the subject of numerous articles in the print media. He received a bachelor’s degree from Lafayette College and a doctorate from Ohio University.
The Praxair Professor in Operations Research, Mark Karwan joined the UB faculty in 1976 as an assistant professor. He served as dean of UB Engineering from 1996-2006 after filling the position for two years on an interim basis. His administrative responsibilities in the engineering school also have included appointments as associate dean for research and graduate education from 1993 to 1994 and as chair of the Department of Industrial Engineering from 1987 to 1992.
A prolific researcher, Karwan’s area of expertise includes discrete optimization, multiple criteria decision-making, multilevel systems, vehicle routing and scheduling, and visual search and industrial inspection.
He is known for using humor in the classroom to convey difficult material to his students, and has received numerous teaching awards, among them the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1989 and the Tau Beta Pi "Professor of the Year" award in 1984 and again in 1986.
Karwan earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering science and a master’s degree in operations research, both from The Johns Hopkins University, and a doctorate in operations research from Georgia Institute of Technology.
A UB faculty member since 1987, H. Raghavendra Rao is an expert in management information systems, decision support systems, e-business, emergency response management systems and information assurance. He focuses his work on computer system and network security, the outsourcing and management of information technology, and the integration of information technology in health care and electronic commerce.
He is co-director of the Center of Excellence in Information Systems Assurance Research and Education (CEISARE), which oversees graduate education and coordinates UB research in computer security and information assurance.
Among his numerous awards are prestigious Fulbright and University Lilly Teaching fellowships and a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities.
Rao is the author or co-author of more than 150 technical papers, and his work has received best-paper and best-paper runner-up awards from professional organizations in his field. He also recently was ranked No. 11 on the list of researchers for the number of articles published in the top nine information systems journals.
He earned a bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur; an MBA from the University of Delhi, India; and a doctorate from Purdue University.
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