University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: May 27, 2004

By SUE WUETCHER
Reporter Editor

Six 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 two years ago 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 are:

• Joan Copjec, professor in the departments of English and Comparative Literature in the College of Arts and Sciences, and director of the Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture.

Copjec's primary fields of research are psychoanalysis, film and film theory, feminism, and art and architecture. The Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture brings together faculty and graduate students interested in investigating the clinical and nonclinical implications of Freudian theory.

She is the author of two books: "Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists" (MIT Press, 1994) and "Imagine There's No Woman: Ethics and Sublimation" (MIT, 2002). She also has edited numerous books, and edited the influential journal October.

Copjec has taught at various schools of architecture, among them the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York City, Sci-Arc in Los Angeles and the School of Architecture, Urban Design and Landscape Architecture at CUNY.

She earned a master's degree in contemporary literature from the University of Wisconsin, Madison; a diploma in film from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College, London, and a doctorate in cinema studies from New York University.

• Paresh Dandona, professor in the Department of Medicine in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, and founder and director of the Diabetes-Endocrinology Center of Western New York at Kaleida Health.

One of the world's leading experts in the treatment of diabetes and vascular disease, Dandona joined the UB faculty in 1991 after 16 years at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine at the University of London, England.

His current research interests include insulin resistance, inflammation and atherosclerosis; pro-oxidative and pro-inflammatory effect of macronutrients, and anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory effect of insulin and insulin sensitizers, TZDS.

An adjunct professor in the UB Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology and head of the Division of Endocrinology in the medical school and at Kaleida Health/Millard Fillmore Hospital, he has authored or co-authored more than 400 publications and has presented at numerous conferences on diabetes and endocrine disorders.

He also serves as a consultant endocrinologist at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Lakeside Memorial Hospital in Brockport and Lakeshore Healthcare Center in Irving, as well as for Kaleida.

Dandona earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Allahabad University, a medical degree from All India Institute of Medical Sciences and a doctorate from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

• Jo Freudenheim, professor and interim chair of the Department of Social & Preventive Medicine (SPM) in the School of Public Health and Health Professions. Freudenheim joined the UB faculty in 1988 after serving as a postdoctoral fellow in SPM from 1987-88.

Her research focuses on the epidemiology of diet in relation to cancer risk, with a particular focus on breast cancer. She also is examining residential history as an indicator of environmental exposures to elucidate a possible role of those exposures in breast cancer epidemiology

Her work has received major funding from the National Institute of Health and the National Cancer Institute, and has been published in numerous scholarly journals.

On July 1, she will begin a two-year term as chair of the Epidemiology of Cancer Study Section, Center for Scientific Review, National Institutes of Health.

She earned a bachelor's degree in human nutrition from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, master's degrees in nutritional sciences and epidemiology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a doctorate in nutritional sciences, statistics, also from Wisconsin.

• Timothy F. Murphy, professor of medicine and microbiology, and chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. A UB faculty member since 1981, Murphy has had a long-standing interest in ear infections in children and respiratory tract infections in adults with chronic lung disease. He holds several patents involving vaccines, including the P6 protein, which Murphy discovered and has been studying for nearly 20 years. His research has been funded continuously by the National Institutes of Health since 1983 and the Veterans Administration since 1993.

He has published more than 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals, as well as more than 20 book chapters. He currently is on the editorial board of the Journal of Infection and the European Journal of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, and serves as a reviewer for numerous other professional journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association.

He earned a bachelor's degree from New York University and a medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine.

• Mulchand S. Patel, professor in the Department of Biochemistry and associate dean for biomedical research and education in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. A specialist in nutritional biochemistry, Patel joined the UB faculty in 1993. He previously spent 15 years at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, leaving as a full professor of biochemistry.

His research interests include metabolic programming and the development of obesity, and the relationship between the structure and function of components that make up an enzyme group called the human pyruvate dehydrogenase complex. A deficiency of any of the components of the complex results in severe neurological disabilities.

He sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Biological Chemistry and Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders.

He earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Gujarat University, Ahmedabad, India; a master's degree in biochemistry from the M.S. University of Baroda, Baroda, India, and a doctorate in nutritional biochemistry from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

• William Pelham, Jr., professor of psychology, pediatrics and psychiatry, and director of the Center for Children and Families. Pelham is one of the leading researchers in attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the U.S. He joined the UB faculty in 1996 after a 10-year stint on the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh, where he directed the Attention Deficit Disorder Program at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

In addition to directing UB's ADHD program, he conducts a highly successful behavior-modification summer program at the university for children with ADHD, which has been named by the American Psychological Association as a Model Program in Service Delivery in Child and Family in Mental Health.

Over the years, Pelham has studied many aspects of ADHD, including the nature of cognitive deficit; peer relationships; diagnosis; pharmacological, psychosocial and combined treatments; motivation and persistence; family factors, such as parental alcohol problems; service delivery, and outcome.

He is a principal investigator on the National Institute of Mental Health Multi-site Treatment Study for ADHD, a clinical trial investigating effective treatments for ADHD, and currently holds 10 other grants from NIMH, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and several pharmaceutical companies.

Pelham currently is on the Council of Representatives for the APA and directs the Biennial Niagara Conference on Evidence-Based Treatments for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

He received a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College and a doctorate in clinical psychology from Stony Brook University.