Five professors have been promoted to the rank of University of New Mexico distinguished professor. Distinguished professors are individuals who have demonstrated outstanding achievements and are nationally and internationally renowned as scholars.
Interim Provost Viola Florez said, “The rank of Distinguished Professor is the highest faculty rank at the university. It is reserved for a very small number of individuals who have made major scholarly contributions to their fields. This year we had a very strong group of nominees, and we are proud of the accomplishments of each of them. The new awardees join a very select group of our faculty.”
The 2007-2008 inductees are:
David Craven
Professor in the Department of Art and Art History in the College of Fine Arts, Craven has been on the UNM faculty since 1993. He earned his Ph.D. in art history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1979.
Craven has published five books and more than 130 articles, and he has co-authored many other publications. He has held several positions as a visiting scholar including a recent appointment at Humboldt University in Berlin.
Craven’s work bridges art, philosophy and cultural studies, which establishes him as a leading authority on modern art, in both the United States and Latin America.
Abhaya Datye
Professor in the Department of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering in the School of Engineering, Datye has been at UNM for more than 22 years during which he has had a major impact on both the graduate and undergraduate programs in chemical engineering.
He has run the Center for Micro-Engineered Materials for 23 years and turned it into an NSF/industry supported hub for nano-materials research. He is also a key player in creating and managing the statewide NSF EPSCoR program in nano-materials.
Datye earned his Ph.D. in chemical engineering in 1984 from the University of Michigan.
Larry Davis
Larry Davis, professor of neurology and research professor of microbiology in the Department of Neurology in the School of Medicine, earned his M.D. at Stanford University in 1966. He is an acclaimed scholar, researcher, educator, medical clinician, academic administrator and mentor who joined the UNM faculty in 1975.
One example of his expertise and the respect he has earned from his peers is that shortly following 9/11 he was invited to give the opening plenary lecture, “Bioterrorism: Biological Threats,” to 12,000 of his colleagues at the national meeting of the American Academy of Neurology.
Davis has been chief of Neurology Service at the VA for many years while simultaneously serving as vice chairman of the UNM Department of Neurology. In addition to his research, educational and administrative duties, Davis continues to be a dedicated clinician, rotating in-patient ward attending and on-call duties equally with his staff physicians and seeing patients in several neurology clinics weekly.
Linda B. Hall
Professor Linda Hall, History Department, College of Arts and Sciences, is an internationally distinguished scholar in her research on the Mexican Revolution and on relations between the U.S. and Latin America in the 20th century. Recently, her scope has broadened to embrace large-scale cultural studies such as the topic of the cult of the Virgin Mary in Spain and Latin America.
She has served as head of the History Department’s Latin American section and director of UNM’s Latin American Studies Program. She is currently president of the American Historical Association’s Pacific Coast Branch. She is a two-time recipient of Fulbright Fellowships and has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Hall has been a Visiting Fellow at the Huntington Library and at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego and also at UCLA. Hall, who earned her Ph.D. in Latin American History at Columbia University in 1976, joined UNM as full professor in 1986.
Deepak Kapur
Computer Science Professor Deepak Kapur’s primary interests are in the areas of formal methods, automated deduction, algebraic and geometric reasoning and their applications. Kapur earned his Ph.D. in computer science at MIT in 1980. He has been on the UNM faculty since 1999.
Kapur has edited three books and published more than 150 journal papers, book chapters and conference proceedings, many of which appeared in top journals. According to CiteSeer scientific citation index, Kapur is in the top two percent of computer science researchers.
He has attracted more than $2 million in funding to UNM, much of it from the NSF. His theoretical work has led to the development of software systems, including Rewrite Rule Laboratory, which is especially well known and regarded.
Kapur initiated a program with the Albuquerque Public School’s Career Enrichment Center where he mentored high school students, some of whom went on to compete at regional, state and international science fairs. He has also pushed nomination of UNM’s best undergraduates for Computing Research Association’s Outstanding Undergraduate Awards.
Kapur serves on the executive boards of both the Computer Science Research Institute at Sandia and the Los Alamos Computer Science Institute at LANL.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu