UNM Vice President of Research and Economic Development Terry Yates has been awarded the Regents’ Meritorious Service Medal to recognize his extraordinary and distinguished service to the University. The Medal is awarded for outstanding teaching, service to students, research, scholarship, publications, and performance in faculty and University governance.
Yates is an internationally recognized scholar, researcher, lecturer and leader in the academic world. In addition to his administrative work at UNM he is a professor in the Departments of Biology and Pathology and Curator of Genomic Resources for the Museum of Southwestern Biology.
His work in building and organizing the mammal collections at the Museum helped it move into a position of national prominence, and the specimens were used by Yates and the Centers for Disease Control in the 1990’s to identify the host and transmission mechanism for the Hantavirus, later named the Sin Nombre virus. That significant accomplishment was included in the National Science Foundation’s “Nifty Fifty” list, a catalogue of its federally funded research activity that has been of the greatest societal benefit
Yates came to the University of New Mexico in 1978 as an assistant professor of Biology, and has since published more than 125 papers in refereed journals. Additionally, he has served as principal investigator or co-principal investigator on grants and contracts totaling more than $45.5 million. The American Society of Mammalogists has nominated Yates as an honorary member, the highest honor the society can bestow.
During his long career, Yates and a colleague Sydney Anderson have done extensive research on mammals in Bolivia. Their team has surveyed much of the country and doubled the number of mammal species known to occur there. As part of their work, they mentored dozens of Bolivian students. In addition, their research set a new standard for field research for funding agencies such as the NSF.
He also helped create the Long Term Ecological Research site near Socorro, used by UNM students involved in a wide variety of research projects. Most recently Yates and his team published a paper that linked weather patterns to vegetation growth and the increase in rodent populations. They were able to predict an increased danger to humans from Hantavirus in specific areas of the southwest in 2006 and to work with public health authorities in time to warn local residents of their increased risk for the disease.
Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu
Posted by scarr at August 17, 2007 05:07 PM