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The University of New Mexico

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Media Contact: Karen Wentworth (505) 277-5627
kwent2@unm.edu

July 26, 2007

UNM VP of Research and Economic Development Becomes Honorary Member of the American Society of Mammalogists

UNM Vice President of Research and Economic Development Terry Yates has been awarded honorary membership in the American Society of Mammalogists. This is the highest honor the professional society can bestow on its members.

UNM President David J. Schmidly headed Yates’ thesis committee when he got his masters from Texas A&M. “Terry likes calling himself a rat trapper,” said Schmidly. “But his work with mice and their link to the Hantavirus is research that has helped transform the world.”

The Horn Professor of Biological Sciences and the Museum at Texas Tech University Robert J. Baker says, “Terry’s record includes over 100 excellent scientific publications, which in sum have had a tremendous impact on our perspective of the relationship of weather to risk of human diseases such as Hantavirus. His work is often credited with giving birth to the new multidisciplinary field of ecological epidemiology.” Baker is also past president of the society.

Yates was given the award as the result of his extensive field research and publications, his technical breakthroughs in his specialty, and his dedicated administrative work, both at the University of New Mexico and for the society. His work has been recognized by the National Science Foundation as one of the 50 most significant discoveries with societal benefit that has resulted from their funding of science research in the U.S.

Yates current work is in the field of Hantavirus research, where he and his research group are producing ground-breaking work into the complex connections between weather, growth in deer mice populations and human disease. The group was able to predict the areas of increased danger for human infection from Hantavirus in the summer of 2006 in time to warn public health authorities so they could increase preventative information to the local population.

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