Regents Professor

The title Regents Professor is the highest faculty honor awarded at Arizona State University. It is conferred on ASU faculty who have made pioneering contributions in their areas of expertise, achieved a sustained level of distinction and enjoy national and international recognition for these accomplishments. Please click on the year(s) below to read about the accomplishments of these honorees.

Sir Jonathan Bate

Sir Jonathan Bate

College of Global Futures
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Bate is a Foundation Professor of Environmental Humanities and an expert in sustainability as well as in Shakespeare and Renaissance literature, Romanticism, biography and life-writing, contemporary poetry, visual culture and theater history. He is a Distinguished Global Futures Scholar. He has written 20 books, including “Mad about Shakespeare: Life Lessons from the Bard” in 2022. He was knighted for services to literary scholarship in 2015.

Alexandra Brewis

Alexandra Brewis

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Brewis is a cultural and medical anthropologist and President’s Professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change. She researches the intersections of culture, health, environment and well-being. She focuses on how low social position and resource insecurity interact with daily experiences and emotions to exacerbate the stresses that worsen physical and mental health. She is currently focusing on the topics of obesity, water security and climate change.

Thomas Choi

Thomas Choi

W. P. Carey School of Business

Choi is a supply-chain management expert, the AT&T Professor and co-director of the Complex Adaptive Supply Networks Research Accelerator, an international research group of scholars. He researches the upstream side of supply chains, in which a buying company interacts with many suppliers that are organized in various networks, and his publication record makes him among the most prolific scholars in supply chain management in the world.

 Meenakshi Wadhwa

Meenakshi Wadhwa

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Wadhwa is a planetary scientist, Foundation Professor and director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration. She is also the principal scientist for the Mars Sample Return mission. Wadhwa researches the processes that form the planetary bodies in the solar system. Her group has developed novel approaches for using highly precise isotope analyses to measure the time scales involved in the formation of planetary bodies and study the origins of water in the solar system.

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Ronald J. Adrian

Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

Adrian's research interests are the space-time structure of turbulent fluid motion and the development of techniques, both experimental and mathematical, to explore this structure. Techniques to which he has made fundamental contributions include laser Doppler velocimetry, particle image velocimetry, and the optimal estimation method for analysis of turbulent flows.

Recognized: 2012  |   Recognition video


Barbara Ainsworth

College of Health Solutions
Emeritus

Ainsworth is a Regents Professor Emerita with expertise in physical activity assessment, including the areas of physical activity epidemiology, surveillance of physical activity, physical activity in women, and environmental supports for physical activity.

Recognized: 2013


John Alcock

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Alcock first came to ASU in 1972. He was a scholar of evolutionary biology in the School of Life Sciences and devoted his more than 40-year career to studying how animals adapted to living in the natural world and then teaching others the wonders he discovered. Early in his ASU career, he authored a widely used and engaging textbook: "Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary Approach."


Recognized: 1988


David L. Altheide

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Altheide was on the faculty of justice and social inquiry in the School of Social Transformation, where he taught for 37 years. His work has focused on the role of mass media and information technology in social control.


Recognized: 1990


 

Charles Austen Angell

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Deceased

A good part of Angell's career was devoted to exploring the properties of one of the most abundant substances on Earth — water — and transforming our understanding of it into a strangely beautiful compound capable of extraordinary properties. Angell provided foundational insights into water's true nature.

Recognized: 1998


 

Luc Anselin

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

While he was with ASU, Anselin directed the GeoDa Center for Geospatial Analysis and Computation. He specialized in spatial data analysis for economics, criminology, public health, electoral studies and international relations.

Recognized: 2011  |   Recognition video


Charles J. Arntzen

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Arntzen is a pioneer in the development of plant-based vaccines for human disease prevention. His research interests are in plant molecular biology and protein engineering, and in using plant biotechnology to enhance food quality and value and to overcome health and agricultural constraints in the developing world.


Recognized: 2004  |   Recognition video


Blake Ashforth

W. P. Carey School of Business

Ashforth's work focuses on how organizations and individuals affect each other, how newcomers find meaning and a sense of identity in their workplaces, and why things go wrong in organizations, from corporate corruption to job burnout and bullying.

Recognized: 2019


Constantine A. Balanis

Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

Balanis has made recent significant contributions to research in artificial magnetic conductors by enhancing the radiation characteristics of low-profile and leaky-wave antennas and reducing the RCS of radar targets by using checkerboard architectural patterns. He has also been instrumental in developing TV and online electrical engineering courses at ASU.

Recognized: 1991


Sir Jonathan Bate

College of Global Futures, The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Bate is a Foundation Professor of Environmental Humanities and an expert in sustainability as well as in Shakespeare and Renaissance literature, Romanticism, biography and life-writing, contemporary poetry, visual culture and theater history. He is a Distinguished Global Futures Scholar. He has written 20 books, including “Mad about Shakespeare: Life Lessons from the Bard” in 2022. He was knighted for services to literary scholarship in 2015.


Recognized: 2024


David C. Berliner

Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College

Berliner is an educational psychologist. His most recent book focused on America's infatuation with rankings, with STEM to the disadvantage of other liberal arts, and with charter schools that raise their graduation rates by shedding underperforming students – something conventional public schools are far less able to do.

Recognized: 1996


Daniel Bodansky

Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law

A leading authority on international environmental law generally, and global climate-change law in particular, Bodansky negotiated for the U.S. at the fifth and sixth conferences to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and was a leading participant at the 2015 Paris Summit.

Recognized: 2017  |   Recognition video


Stephen Bokenkamp

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Bokenkamp specializes in the study of medieval Chinese Daoism, with a special emphasis on its literatures and its relations with Buddhism. As a top U.S. scholar of Daoism, he's spent a majority of his career helping reconnect China with its past, including debunking the misperception that it's the least religious country on Earth.

Recognized: 2014


Barry Bozeman

Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions

Bozeman's research focuses on public management, organization theory and science and technology policy. The author or editor of 15 books, Bozeman is one of the most highly regarded scholars in the field of public administration and policy.

Recognized: 2017  |   Recognition video


Alexandra Brewis

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Brewis is a cultural and medical anthropologist and President’s Professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change. She researches the intersections of culture, health, environment and well-being. She focuses on how low social position and resource insecurity interact with daily experiences and emotions to exacerbate the stresses that worsen physical and mental health. She is currently focusing on the topics of obesity, water security and climate change.


Recognized: 2024


Jane Buikstra

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Buikstra is credited with forming the discipline of bioarchaeology, which applies biological anthropological methods to the study of archaeology. She was also the founding director of the Center for Bioarchaeological Research. Buikstra's international research encompasses bioarchaeology, paleopathology, forensic anthropology and paleodemography.

Recognized: 2008  |   Recognition video


 

Peter R. Buseck

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

For nearly 60 years, Buseck and his research group have been recognized for their pioneering work in the nanomineralogy of meteorites and interplanetary dust particles. The Center for Meteorite Studies, founded in 1961, was recently named in Buseck's honor, now known as the Buseck Center for Meteorite Studies.


Recognized: 1989


 

Carlos Castillo-Chavez

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Castillo-Chavez used mathematical biology – representing, treating and modeling biological processes with math – to study how diseases evolve. He was the founding director of the Simon A. Levin Mathematical, Computational and Modeling Sciences Center and the graduate field in applied mathematics in the life and social sciences.

Recognized: 2005  |   Recognition video


Laurie Chassin

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Chassin conducts research on developmental pathways of risk and resilience from childhood to adulthood. Her projects include longitudinal studies of the origins of alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use and the mechanisms through which these behaviors are transmitted across multiple generations.

Recognized: 2007  |   Recognition video


Aditi Chattopadhyay

Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering


Chattopadhyay is the director of the Adaptive Intelligent Materials and Systems Center. Much of her research explores fundamental attributes of complex materials and systems to improve their performance and durability. Her current research areas include multifunctional materials, multiscale modeling, structural health monitoring and damage prognosis, and multiaxial fatigue.

Recognized: 2013


Cordelia Chávez Candelaria

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Candelaria developed a program called People-Power Undergoing Life Sustaining Education — PULSE — that provides workshops for ASU faculty and students to integrate fact-based reasoning into their analysis and decision-making in areas such as diversity, law and civics.

Recognized: 2005


Michelene T.H. Chi

Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College

Chi is a cognitive and learning science researcher, whose studies into cognition span psychology and education. She has worked not only on theories of how students learn science concepts and why they struggle, but also on ways to improve classroom teaching.

Recognized: 2018


Thomas Choi

W. P. Carey School of Business

Choi is a supply-chain management expert, the AT&T Professor and co-director of the Complex Adaptive Supply Networks Research Accelerator, an international research group of scholars. He researches the upstream side of supply chains, in which a buying company interacts with many suppliers that are organized in various networks, and his publication record makes him among the most prolific scholars in supply chain management in the world.


Recognized: 2024


Philip Christensen

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Since the mid-1990's, Christensen has pursued the use of spacecraft observations to study environmental and urban development problems on Earth. His research focuses on the composition, physical properties and processes, and morphology of planetary surfaces, with an emphasis on Mars and the Earth. A major element of his research has been the design and development of spacecraft infrared remote sensing instruments.

Recognized: 2004  |   Recognition video


Robert Cialdini

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Cialdini, thought leader in the field of Influence, has spent his entire career conducting, testing, analyzing and publishing peer-reviewed scientific research on what causes people to say “Yes” to requests. The results of his research, his ensuing articles, and his New York Times bestselling books have earned him an acclaimed reputation as a respected scientist and engaging storyteller.


Recognized: 1988


Geoffrey A. Clark

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Clark is known nationally for his contributions to quantified archaeological research designs and internationally for his work in paleoanthropology on hunter-gatherer adaptations, epistemology and human origins research. He has done fieldwork in Arizona, Mexico, France, Spain, Cyprus, Turkey and Jordan. (40, 304)

Recognized: 2002


 

Jeffrey Cook

Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts
Deceased

Cook dedicated more than 40 years (1959-2003) of his life to architecture and education. Coming to Arizona from northeastern Canada, he brought a passion for bioclimatic design to the Southwest. His work at ASU took him all over the globe, sharing his insight and expertise with students, scholars, scientists, artists and community leaders.


Recognized: 1988


 

John M. Cowley

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Deceased

In 1970, the same year that atoms were first observed directly by electron microscope, Cowley joined ASU’s Department of Physics. An internationally recognized authority in electron microscopy, Cowley established a world-leading school of EM and it’s been said that his scientific leadership had a significant impact on establishing ASU as a Research I university.


Recognized: 1988


Paul Davies

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Davies is a theoretical physicist who has worked for much of his career in astrophysics and cosmology, with emphasis on the origin and early stages of the universe, the quantum properties of black holes and the nature and origin time and in life – including extraterrestrial life – and in complex systems generally.

Recognized: 2011  |   Recognition video


Robert B. Denhardt

Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions

Denhardt published a dozen books and more than 100 articles in professional journals, primarily in the areas of public administration theory and organizational behavior, especially leadership and organizational change. He is a member of the prestigious National Academy of Public Administration

Recognized: 1991  |   Recognition video


 

Thomas Dishion

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Deceased

Dishion was an elite researcher in prevention science and the single most recognized name in the world when it came to substance-abuse prevention. His contributions in preventive science restructured what is known about child development, and changed how clinical psychology is conducted across the world.

Recognized: 2017  |   Recognition video


Norman E. Dubie Jr.

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Deceased

Dubie came to ASU in 1975 to establish the creative writing program. He taught hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students, formed a community of poets and has been published widely. His work has been bestowed numerous accolades, including the PEN USA prize for Best Book of Poetry.

Recognized: 1991


Nancy H. Eisenberg

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Eisenberg’s research interests include emotion-related regulation, moral and emotional development, empathy, altruism and developmental psychopathology. Many undergraduate students work in the Eisenberg laboratory on longitudinal studies of social, emotional, psychological and moral development in children, including children at risk for problems.


Recognized: 1991


Lindy Elkins-Tanton

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Elkins-Tanton is a Foundation Professor and vice president of the Interplanetary Initiative. A leading figure in the early evolution of rocky planets and planetesimals, she is also the principal investigator of the NASA Psyche Mission, which launches in 2024.

Recognized: 2021  |   Recognition video


James Elser

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Elser investigates the theory of biological stoichiometry — the study of the balance of energy and multiple chemical elements in living systems. He and his international team of collaborators seek to understand how the coupling of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus shapes the ecology and evolution of living things.

Recognized: 2008  |   Recognition video


 

LeRoy Eyring

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Deceased

Eyring was recruited to ASU in 1961 as the chairman of the then Chemistry Department, where he founded the LeRoy Eyring Center for Solid State Science. Eyring is recognized as the authority on rare earth oxides, a collection of chemical elements, including scandium, yttrium and lanthanide series, materials now used in metallurgy, electronics, ceramics, lasers and more.


Recognized: 1988


 

Martin T. Farris

W. P. Carey School of Business
Deceased

When Farris joined ASU in 1958, the then College of Business Administration had only recently been formed. An economist, Farris was interested in transportation, distribution and logistics. His first textbook “Domestic Transportation: Practice, Theory and Policy” expanded the scope of transportation to include planning, labor relations, management and marketing as well as traditional economics.


Recognized: 1988


David K. Ferry

Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

Ferry served 35 years in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering. He authored or co-authored more than 950 research papers, wrote or co-wrote 20 textbooks, 34 chapters in science books and edited eight other books. Collectively those writings have spanned a broad range of the many facets of electrical engineering, electronics and related physics and mathematics.


Recognized: 1988


Donald Fixico

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Fixico created a knowledge base of narratives that did not exist before his research in what he calls the “Medicine Way of American Indian History.” He showed the importance of Indian oral traditions and Native perspectives in not only writing Indian histories but American histories.

Recognized: 2018


 

David William Foster

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Deceased

Foster joined ASU in 1966. He helped build the Spanish and Portuguese programs in the School of International Letters and Cultures. He was a trailblazer who published groundbreaking research in the larger fields of Latin American studies and LGBTQ studies. Among his publications are more than 50 book-length, single-authored critical studies, bibliographies and anthologies.


Recognized: 1990


Stewart Fotheringham

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Fotheringham is the director of the Spatial Analysis Research Center in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning. He is well-known in the fields of spatial interaction modeling and local statistical analysis and has substantive interests in health data, crime patterns, retailing and migration.

Recognized: 2018


 

Janet Franklin

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

While she was with ASU, Franklin studied global change biology, conservation biogeography, landscape ecology and geospatial science. Her scholarship seeks to understand the patterns and dynamics of terrestrial plant communities at the landscape scale.

Recognized: 2014


Petra Fromme

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Fromme is the director of the Center for Applied Structural Discovery. She studies the structure-to-function relationship of membrane proteins involved in bioenergy conversion and infectious diseases. She was an integral part of a team who developed the technique of serial femtosecond nanocrystallography for analyzing proteins using high-intensity X-ray Free Electron Lasers.

Recognized: 2015  |   Recognition video


 

Rachel G. Fuchs

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Deceased

Fuchs was a Distinguished Foundation Professor of History. Her specialty was the social history of 19th-century France. Her pioneering studies of the intersections of gender, poverty and law in 19th-century France reshaped the field of European historical studies.

Recognized: 2010  |   Recognition video


Ferran Garcia-Pichel

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Garcia-Pichel is the founding director of the Center for Fundamental and Applied Microbiomics at the Biodesign Institute. His discoveries on the roles that microbes play in the environment are considered pioneering and are shaping our understanding of the deep history of Earth from deserts to oceans.

Recognized: 2020


James Paul Gee

Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College

Gee is a linguist who has worked on syntactic theory, the philosophy of language, psycholinguistics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, language learning, education, literacy and video games and learning. He joined ASU in 2007. His current work focuses on how sense-making is founded in sensation and how this can inform design and media for deep learning.


Recognized: 2013


Gene Glass

Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College

Trained originally in statistics and educational psychology, Glass' interests broadened to include psychotherapy research, evaluation methodology and policy analysis. He made important contributions to education statistics, notably the development of "meta-analysis." He applied meta-analysis to his often-cited research on the relationship of class size and achievement.

Recognized: 2004  |   Recognition video


Luis Gomez-Mejia

W. P. Carey School of Business

A highly cited scholar producing pioneering research to discover what makes businesses more successful, innovative and flexible, Gomez-Mejia's studies focus on the relationships of international management, strategic management, executive compensation and family businesses.

Recognized: 2004  |   Recognition video


 

Mary Beth Gorman Stearns

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Deceased

Stearns joined ASU in 1981 as a professor of physics, coming from Ford Motor Company, where she served as principal scientist for more than 20 years. Stearns' work on gamma-ray scattering led her to study the energy levels of iron atoms, and this in turn led her to nuclear magnetic resonance studies of magnetic ions, and to theoretical work on the quantum structure of these materials.


Recognized: 1988


 

William L. Graf

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Deceased

Graf's research broadly addressed geomorphology and hydrology of rivers, and the intersection of science and policy for public land and water. He conducted research and served in science review and oversight positions for water quality and quantity, aquatic and riparian habitats and endangered species in a variety of ecosystems. (49, 331)

Recognized: 1994


Steve Graham

Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College

For more than 40 years, Graham has studied how writing develops, how to teach it effectively and how it can be used to support reading and learning. His research involves developing writers and students with special needs in both elementary and secondary schools

Recognized: 2020


 

Ronald Greeley

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Deceased

Greeley's research focused on understanding planetary surface processes and geologic histories, which involved a combination of spacecraft data analysis, laboratory experiments and geologic field studies on Earth of features analogous to those observed on the planets.

Recognized: 1994


Nancy Beth Grimm

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Grimm is a scientist who has had an international impact in the environmental sciences and is a pioneer in desert stream ecosystems. Her collaborations across the disciplines of earth, life and social sciences, as well as engineering, helped create the subdiscipline of urban ecology.


Recognized: 2019


Devens Gust

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Gust has research and teaching interests in aspects of organic chemistry including artificial photosynthetic solar energy conversion, organic photovoltaics, molecular computing, and general photochemistry with application in areas of solar energy conversion, molecular opto-electronics, renewable hydrogen production and materials chemistry.

Recognized: 2010  |   Recognition video


Karen Harris

Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College

Harris created a unique model of instruction called Self-Regulated Strategy Development, which helps students to learn complex topics. She is to achieving equitable, quality education, an important aspect of social justice.

Recognized: 2021  |   Recognition video


Gerald T. Heydt

Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

Heydt is a world-renowned academic whose seminal work in power engineering has shaped the power industry, academic research and generations of students in the field. He is the author of two books in the area of power engineering and is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Recognized: 2002


David R. Hickman

Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts

Hickman is considered one of the world’s pre-eminent trumpet virtuosos and has performed more than 2,000 solo appearances around the world as a recitalist or guest soloist with more than 500 different orchestras. He has released 19 solo albums encompassing a wide variety of repertoire. Hickman is founder and president of the acclaimed Summit Brass.


Recognized: 1989


Bert Hoelldobler

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Emeritus

Hoelldobler is one of the world's experts in insect social behavior and ecology. He has explored how insect societies are organized, diving deep into the underlying mechanisms of communication. His innovative and multifaceted research has led to many new discoveries about the dynamics of social structures, communication behavior and the evolution of animals.

Recognized: 2013


Peter Iverson

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Deceased

Iverson wrote about the American West, primarily American Indian history in the 20th and 21st centuries, with Navajo history at the core of his research and teaching. He took the then-novel approach in his practice and teaching of history of emphasizing the importance of oral histories and collaborating with the Native communities those histories he was documenting.

Recognized: 2000  |   Recognition video


Edward Kavazanjian

Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

Kavazanjian is a leading expert on geotechnical engineering for civil infrastructure systems. He is pioneering the development of the emerging field of biogeotechnical engineering as director of the Center for Bio-mediated and Bio-inspired Geotechnics (CBGB), a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center.

Recognized: 2014


David Kaye

Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law

Kaye’s research focuses on the law of evidence, on the use of science and statistics in litigation, and on genetics and the law. In 1985, he was appointed the first director of the ASU Center for the Study of Law, Science and Technology. He has served on committees or advisory panels for the National Academy of Sciences and the National Commission on Forensic Science, among others.


Recognized: 1990


 

Gary D. Keller

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Deceased

In his 34-year-career at ASU, Keller taught Spanish and Chicano studies, led the Hispanic Research Center and served as founder and editor of ASU’s Bilingual Press. His many roles and projects at the university captured his passion and driving force: to champion minority voices and culture and help students reach their full academic potential.


Recognized: 1988


Colleen Keller

Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation

Keller's research interests include diet and physical exercise for vulnerable populations. She was among the leaders who researched geriatric and racial disparities linked to specific health outcomes based on evidence obtained in her clinical practice and one of the first researchers in the nation to research health promotion among minority women.

Recognized: 2011  |   Recognition video


 

Susan W. Kieffer

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Kieffer was with ASU from 1990 to 1993. She studies geological fluid dynamics, including volcanoes and geysers on Earth and other planets, thermodynamics and shock waves in volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts and hydraulic jumps in river flows.


Recognized: 1991


Sally L. Kitch

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Kitch is the founding director of the Institute for Humanities Research and of the Humanities Lab at ASU. Her research focuses on gender and feminism through the analysis of a wide range of social and cultural narratives, including historical documents, political texts and philosophical and religious treatises.

Recognized: 2010  |   Recognition video


Mark Klett

Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts

Klett is a photographer whose background includes working as a geologist before turning to art practice. His interests include making new works that responds to historic images; creating projects that explore relationships between time, change and perception; and exploring the language of photographic media through technology.


Recognized: 2002


 

Raymond Kulhavy

Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College
Deceased

Kulhavy was a professor in the Department of Psychology in Education for 33 years. His primary areas of study were cognitive psychology, mathematics education, levels-of-processing effect, programmed instruction and academic achievement, which was interdisciplinary in nature.


Recognized: 1989


 

Sudhir Kumar

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

With ASU from 1998-2014, Kumar worked in the evolutionary bioinformatics field and, with colleagues, developed MEGA (Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis), a software package that provides evolutionary analysis of gene sequences across individuals, populations and species.

Recognized: 2012  |   Recognition video


Ying-Cheng Lai

Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

Lai is one of the world's most influential researchers in nonlinear dynamics and complex systems. He focuses on relativistic quantum chaos, a field in theoretical physics that he pioneered at the boundaries of quantum mechanics, relativity and chaos theory

Recognized: 2021  |   Recognition video


Daniel M. Landers

College of Health Solutions

Landers joined ASU in 1981. His research in the Exercise and Health Psychology Laboratory is directed toward an analysis of exercise effects on selected mental health variables. His recent research emphases include examination of the effects of exercise on mood, including anxiety and depression, coping abilities, sleep and cognitive functioning.


Recognized: 1990


Stacy Leeds

Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law

A Foundation Professor of Law and Leadership, Leeds is considered one of the most important figures in the world of Indian law and policy and has served on the judiciaries of 10 tribal nations. Leeds' accomplishments include publication of books and articles, development of new courses, connections to the Native American community, grants and mentoring of Indigenous students.


Recognized: 2022  |   Recognition video


 

Sheng Hsien Lin

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Deceased

Lin was a world-renowned theoretical chemist. He joined ASU in 1965 and his research over a long and productive career created impacts over a broad range of subjects, including transition state theory, radiationless transitions, multiphoton transitions, vibrational energy relaxation and transfer and femtosecond chemistry.


Recognized: 1988


Jerry Y. S. Lin

Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

Lin has made significant contributions to the advancement of inorganic membrane science and high temperature gas separation technologies. He has produced more than 330 refereed chemical engineering and materials sciences journal publications, holds 10 patents and trained more than 100 postdoctoral fellows and graduate students.

Recognized: 2011  |   Recognition video


Stuart Lindsay

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Lindsay is the director of the Center for Single Molecule Biophysics. His research focuses on nano-scale biophysics and much of his work is aimed at speedier diagnosis and an understanding of the molecular basis of disease. He has pioneered aspects of atomic force microscopy, particularly related to imaging and chemical analysis in water.

Recognized: 2007  |   Recognition video


Huan Liu

Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

Liu is widely regarded as a pioneer in AI research. He focuses on developing computational methods for data mining, machine learning and social computing. His contributions in big data include development of AI models that can impact health care, social media and mis/disinformation, algorithmic solutions for socially responsible AI and, in collaboration with the Army Corps of Engineers, improving our nation's water sustainability.


Recognized: 2022  |   Recognition video


Devoney Looser

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Looser combines rigorous research with public outreach and is known internationally for her work and expertise. She is the author or editor of 10 books on literature by women. She has had great impact on the contemporary literary and cultural studies landscape.

Recognized: 2020


Michael Lynch

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Lynch is the director of the Biodesign Center for Mechanisms of Evolution. He has been hailed as the world's leading quantitative geneticist with research that focuses on uncovering the mechanisms driving evolution at the genomic, cellular and organismic levels. His impactful work in the field of evolutionary biology has been funded from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of the Army.


Recognized: 2022  |   Recognition video


David MacKinnon

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

MacKinnon is globally recognized as a leader in quantitative psychology — the application of statistics to help understand psychology. His primary area of expertise is the prevention of problems before they occur and assessment of the effectiveness of interventions, including in the prevention and treatment of adolescent drug abuse.

Recognized: 2021  |   Recognition video


Subhash Mahajan

Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

Mahajan's research focuses on understanding the origins of defects in semiconductors and their influence on device behavior and deformation behavior of solids. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Recognized: 2006  |   Recognition video


Gary Marchant

Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law

Marchant is the director of the Center for Law, Science and Innovation. His research interests include legal aspects of genomics and personalized medicine, the use of genetic information in environmental regulation, risk and the precautionary principle, and governance of emerging technologies such as nanotechnology, neuroscience, biotechnology and artificial intelligence.

Recognized: 2011  |   Recognition video


 

Theresa Markow

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Since leaving ASU, Markow and her group has pursued understanding of the genomic evolution of species. Using the fruit fly, Drosophila, as a model, she also performs metabolic studies to learn more about diabetes and obesity.

Recognized: 1994


Flavio Marsiglia

Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions

Marsiglia is the founding director of the Global Center for Applied Health Research. His research on cultural diversity and youth substance use is highly influential in the prevention field, and credited with a measurable reduction in drug use and other high-risk behaviors among youth in Arizona, across the U.S., and other countries.

Recognized: 2014


 

James W. Mayer

Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering
Deceased

Mayer was considered a “giant” of materials science and engineering. He furthered advances in the materials that have enabled computers and other electronic devices to be made more compact and to operate rapidly. He was also widely recognized for contributions to solid-state engineering.

Recognized: 1994


 

Darryl E. Metzger

Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering
Deceased


Recognized: 1992


 

Lee Meyerson

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Deceased

Meyerson came to ASU in 1961 in the Department of Psychology. He was an early pioneer in the field of rehabilitation psychology and dedicated to improving the lives of children with disabilities. He was recognized for his scholarly excellence and dedicated mentoring of students.


Recognized: 1988


 

Warren E. Miller

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Deceased

Miller was one of the foremost authorities on American voting behavior. He joined ASU’s then Political Science Department in 1982. His research focused on individual voter behavior and participation in national politics, reception of and reaction to communications concerning political events, and the representation process linking constituents and their elected officials.


Recognized: 1988


Douglas C. Montgomery

Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

Montgomery's research interests focus on industrial statistics, including design of experiments, quality and reliability engineering, applications of linear models and time series analysis and forecasting. He is an author of 16 books and more than 200 technical papers.

Recognized: 2005  |   Recognition video


Carleton Bryant Moore

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Deceased

Moore was in the School of Molecular Sciences and the School of Earth and Space Exploration. He was a pioneering researcher in the field of meteorite studies, founding director of the ASU Center for Meteorite Studies and credited with being the first scientist to detect the different types of carbon in lunar samples. A mineral, carletonmooreite was named for him in 2021.


Recognized: 1988


Ana Moore

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Moore has led a team of students and postdoctoral associates to design and build bio-inspired molecular systems, which contributed to the development of the field known as artificial photosynthesis. One of her present goals includes the construction and use of synthetic systems to better understand key light-driven and catalytic aspects of photosynthesis.

Recognized: 2010  |   Recognition video


Thomas A. Moore

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Moore's research interests focus on the design and assembly of bio-inspired constructs for solar energy conversion, catalysis and signal transduction. His work addresses the design, synthesis and assembly of bio-inspired constructs for solar energy conversion and the design principles for artificial systems to be realized through reengineered photosynthesis and synthetic biology.

Recognized: 2010  |   Recognition video


 

Jeffrie G. Murphy

Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law
Deceased

Murphy focused on the philosophy of law and jurisprudence, criminal law, ethics and religion, moral philosophy (including moral psychology) and Immanuel Kant's moral, political and legal philosophy. He is perhaps best known for his skeptical views on modern criminal law and its focus on mercy, forgiveness and punishment.

Recognized: 1994


Alexandra Navrotsky

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Navrotsky is the director of the Navrotsky Eyring Center for the Materials of the Universe. She has been described as the world's leading scientist in the field of thermochemistry of minerals and related solid-state materials. Her discoveries have been of fundamental importance in solid-state chemistry, geochemistry, materials science and engineering, exoplanetary chemistry and materials for space exploration.


Recognized: 2022  |   Recognition video


Robert Nemanich

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Nemanich's groundbreaking research is in a broad range of fields. He has made seminal discoveries in diamond and diamond-like materials, optical spectroscopy, III-Nitride materials, novel probe microscopy techniques, and advanced thin film growth methods. These breakthrough techniques have applications in electronic devices, optoelectronics and semiconductors.

Recognized: 2016  |   Recognition video


Michael O'Keeffe

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

O'Keeffe has performed groundbreaking work on the fundamental structure and properties of molecules and materials. He is a pioneer in the creation of materials made from linking molecular building blocks into porous frameworks, a field used to develop everything from catalysts to materials for specific chemical separation processes.

Recognized: 1994


 

James Ohlson

W. P. Carey School of Business

A world-renowned and dedicated scholar, Ohlson has provided new and important insights into the key role of accounting earnings in the valuation and operation of economic enterprises. He was with Arizona State University from 2004 to 2008.

Recognized: 2007  |   Recognition video


Simon Ortiz

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Ortiz is an Indigenous poet and writer of Acoma Pueblo heritage who specializes in Indigenous literature. His courses of study focus on decolonization of Indigenous people's land, culture and community. With literary perspective as a guide, his research interests include cultural, social, political dynamics of Indigenous peoples of North, Central and South America.

Recognized: 2011  |   Recognition video


Caio Pagano

Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts

Pagano is an internationally renowned concert pianist, teacher and scholar. He has performed on four continents in more than 900 public performances, premiered 36 works in concert halls worldwide, 25 of these were works written and dedicated to him by the composers.

Recognized: 1998


Robert E. Page Jr.

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Emeritus

Page is a Provost Emeritus. His background is in behavior and population genetics with focus on the evolution of complex social behavior. Using the honey bee as a model, he has dissected their complex foraging division of labor at all levels of biological organization from gene networks to complex social interactions.

Recognized: 2015


 

Dennis James Palumbo

Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions
Deceased

Palumbo was a prominent political scientist and professor of justice studies. He was the director of the Morrison Institute for Public Policy from 1983-1986 and became acting director for the then School of Justice Studies at ASU from 1988 to 1989. Among his publications are "Statistics in Political and Behavioral Science" (1969) and "Public Policy in America: Government in Action" (1988).


Recognized: 1988


G. Robert Pettit

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Deceased

During his 55-year career at Arizona State University, Pettit founded and directed the Cancer Research Institute and was the Dalton Professor of Cancer Research and Medicinal Chemistry. He was a pioneer and a major presence in the field of natural products chemistry and was deeply involved and successful in the discovery and development of cancer chemotherapy agents.


Recognized: 1990


George H. Poste

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Poste is chief scientist with the Complex Adaptive Systems Initiative and the Institute for Future Health, a joint venture between ASU and the University of Arizona in precision health and digital health. This effort focuses on remote health monitoring technologies. From 2003 to 2009 he directed and built The Biodesign Institute at ASU.

Recognized: 2005  |   Recognition video


 

Edward C. Prescott

W. P. Carey School of Business
Deceased

Prescott's research was foundational to the field — and modern understanding — of macroeconomics. He and frequent co-author Finn Kydland were honored with the 2004 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences “for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind business cycles.”

Recognized: 2005  |   Recognition video


Stephen Pyne

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Pyne has published more than 40 books, most of them dealing with fire, but others on Antarctica, the Grand Canyon, the Voyager mission, and with his oldest daughter, an inquiry into the Pleistocene. His fire histories include surveys of America, Australia, Canada, Europe (including Russia), and the Earth.

Recognized: 2004  |   Recognition video


Alberto Álvaro Ríos

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Ríos is the director of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing and Arizona's inaugural poet laureate. He is the author of 12 collections of poetry, most recently, “Not Go Away Is My Name.” He has also written three short story collections and a memoir, “Capirotada,” about growing up on the Mexican border.

Recognized: 1994


Bruce Rittmann

Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

Rittmann is the director of the Biodesign Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology. His research focuses on the science and engineering needed to manage microbial communities to provide services to society. Services include generating renewable energy, cleaning water and soil, and improving human health.

Recognized: 2008  |   Recognition video


 

Richard Rogerson

W. P. Carey School of Business

Rogerson's interests are in the fields of macroeconomics and labor economics. He published work on labor supply and taxes, business cycle fluctuations, the effects of labor market regulations, financing of public education and development. He was with Arizona State University from 2001 to 2011.

Recognized: 2006  |   Recognition video


Nancy Felipe Russo

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Russo's research focuses on physical, mental, and reproductive health outcomes among diverse women experiencing unplanned or unwanted pregnancy and childbearing. Her work also includes examination of the relationship of feminist identity and religion to attitudes towards abortion, women, and other social issues.

Recognized: 1998


Michael J. Saks

Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law

Saks' research interests focus on empirical studies of law and the legal system, especially decision-making in the legal process, evidence law, the law's use of science, the behavior of the litigation system and legal policy affecting medical patient safety.


Recognized: 2008  |   Recognition video


Osvaldo Sala

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Sala is a Foundation Professor and the founding director of the Global Drylands Center at ASU. He has been trained as an dryland ecologist working from the local to the global levels. He is known for his large-scale field manipulative experiments simulating climate change around the world.

Recognized: 2018


Irwin Sandler

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Sandler is interested in the development, evaluation and dissemination of intervention programs to promote resilience of children and families experiencing major life stressors. His work has primarily focused on families experiencing parental divorce and bereavement from the death of a parent.

Recognized: 2004  |   Recognition video


 

Otto F. Sankey

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Deceased

Sankey's techniques were highly influential in theoretical materials physics research around the world and have been applied by researchers to provide insight into the relation of atomic structure, electronic states and materials properties.

Recognized: 2007  |   Recognition video


 

Dieter Schroder

Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering
Deceased

Schroder was a noted semiconductor technology expert. His knowledge of semiconductor characterization—how to put the special characteristics of electrical materials to useful work— and the significance of his research earned him an international reputation.

Recognized: 2008  |   Recognition video


Joan Silk

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Silk is recognized internationally as a leader in the study of primate and human behavioral evolution. Her research has transformed understanding about the relationship between nonhuman primate behavior and human evolution, especially the origin of humans' prosocial behavior, such as sharing, cooperating and volunteering.

Recognized: 2019


Mary Lee Smith

Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College

Smith's work spanned psychology and education reform, with focus on education policy and measurement, statistics, and research methodology. Smith, along with Gene Glass, were known for their pioneering work in using meta-analyses for reporting research outcomes.

Recognized: 2004  |   Recognition video


David John Smith

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Smith's long-term research interests have centered around the development and applications of atomic-resolution electron microscopy, and he has more recently focused on characterization of semiconductor heterostructures and nanostructures.

Recognized: 2000  |   Recognition video


V. Kerry Smith

W. P. Carey School of Business

Smith studies focus on environmental economics, public economics and applied econometrics, with particular interest in economic valuation of environmental amenities; sorting models and general equilibrium policy analysis; and evaluation of individual behavior under uncertainty. One current project explores the economics of complementary private and public mitigation for homeland security.

Recognized: 2010  |   Recognition video


 

John C. H. Spence

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Deceased

Spence's career spanned more than 40 years at ASU, where early on he was a key contributor to ASU's world-renowned program in electron microscopy and, more recently, was the director of science for the NSF BioXFEL Science and Technology Center on the application of X-ray free-electron lasers to structural biology.

Recognized: 1996  |   Recognition video


Cassia Spohn

Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions

Spohn has shaped three areas of criminology: race and justice, sentencing and handling of sexual assault cases. She has researched the decision-making of prosecutors, judges and police officers to understand patterns, racial disparities and discrimination in the administration of criminal justice.

Recognized: 2019


Sumner Starrfield

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Starrfield is a computational astrophysicist and an ASU Regents Professor of Astrophysics who has been doing studies of stellar explosions (novae, recurrent novae, X-ray bursts, and Supernova Ia progenitors) for more than 30 years using a Lagrangian, hydrodynamic, fully implicit, stellar evolution computer code that incorporates a large nuclear reaction network.

Recognized: 2002


Anne Stone

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Stone is an anthropological geneticist who has transformed knowledge in forensic science, the genetics of infectious diseases and reemerging infection diseases, and the evolutionary history of humans and the great apes. She was a key developer of paleogenetics techniques for extraction of DNA from ancient remains.

Recognized: 2016  |   Recognition video


Ayanna Thompson

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Thompson is the director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Her pioneering contribution to literary studies is a body of work that has challenged Shakespeare scholars in the U.S. and abroad to think about and teach about the Bard's plays with an eye on performance and race.

Recognized: 2020


Hava Tirosh-Samuelson

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Tirosh-Samuelson is a professor of history and the director of the Center for Jewish Studies. She has established herself as the top scholar in contemporary Jewish philosophy; scholarship that is at the intersection of religion, science and technology; religious environmentalism; gender studies and Jewish intellectual history.

Recognized: 2017  |   Recognition video


 

William T. Trotter

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

During the 15 years Trotter was with ASU, he served as professor and chair of mathematics and vice provost. He has since published extensively on the combinatorics of partially ordered sets, graph theory, Ramsey theory, and extremal combinatorics.

Recognized: 1992


 

Rebecca Tsosie

Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law

While she was with the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law from 1996-2011, Tsosie was instrumental in transforming the ASU Indian Legal Program into one of the nation's best and she helped in the formation of the College of Law's master's degree program in Indian Law.

Recognized: 2012  |   Recognition video


 

Christy G. Turner II

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Deceased

A driving force in the realm of dental anthropology, Turner was a prolific and influential researcher for more than 40 years. His broad interests spanned the world and all four fields of anthropology: physical anthropology, archaeology, linguistics and sociocultural anthropology.

Recognized: 1992


B L Turner II

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

A geographer and human-environmental scientist, Turner works on land change from prehistory to present, urban land system design, vulnerability and resilience, and sustainability. He works on deforestation, primarily in Mexico and Central America, and urban design in arid environments, especially the American Southwest.

Recognized: 2015


 

Chinary Ung

Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts

Recognized: 1989


Elly van Gelderen

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

van Gelderen is a syntactician interested in language change. Her work shows how regular syntactic change (grammaticalization and the linguistic cycle) provides insight in the Faculty of Language.

Recognized: 2007  |   Recognition video


Carlos G. Velez-Ibanez

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Velez-Ibanez is the founding director emeritus of the School of Transborder Studies at ASU. His academic fields include applied anthropology, complex social organizations, culture and education, ethno-class relations in complex social systems, migration and adaptation of human populations, political ecology, qualitative methodology and urban anthropology.

Recognized: 2011  |   Recognition video


Vijay Vittal

Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

Vittal's expertise is in the field of large-scale power grids — the transmission, distribution and security of energy infrastructure. One of his pioneering contributions has been the development of methods to deal with fluctuations on the power grid due to renewable energy sources.

Recognized: 2019


Meenakshi Wadhwa

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Wadhwa is a planetary scientist, Foundation Professor and director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration. She is also the principal scientist for the Mars Sample Return mission. Wadhwa researches the processes that form the planetary bodies in the solar system. Her group has developed novel approaches for using highly precise isotope analyses to measure the time scales involved in the formation of planetary bodies and study the origins of water in the solar system.


Recognized: 2024


 

J. Bruce Wagner

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Deceased

J. Bruce Wagner, Jr. was a distinguished chemistry professor and researcher at Arizona State University’s School of Molecular Sciences. He published more than 100 technical papers and he was an active member of the Electrochemical Society for more than 40 years, and served as its president from 1983-1984.


Recognized: 1989


Kurt Weiser

Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts

Weiser's work has evolved with rich evocations of plant life to narratives which incorporate figures from myth and history into his tropical landscapes, meticulously painted onto porcelain teapots, globes and other vessels, and fired multiple times. The result is “the painting is the three dimensional reality.”

Recognized: 2000  |   Recognition video


Paul Westerhoff

Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

Westerhoff has received wide recognition for his work on water treatment and developing novel technologies to address emerging water issues. One of environmental engineering's most challenging topics is the management of engineered nano-materials in the water environment and risks to the ecosystem and human health.

Recognized: 2016  |   Recognition video


Rogier Windhorst

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Windhorst's research is in astronomy, cosmology, galaxy formation and evolution, the cosmic dark ages and the epoch of First Light, and astronomical instrumentation. Since the early 1990's, his group has contributed significantly to unraveling the formation and evolution of distant galaxies with the Hubble Space Telescope.

Recognized: 2005  |   Recognition video