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Two KU profs earn Higuchi-KU Endowment Research Awards

Dwyer, Barlow, K-State professors honored

Two professors from KU and two from Kansas State University have been named recipients of the prestigious Higuchi-KU Endowment Research Achievement Awards for 2009.

The awards, now in their 27th year, honor outstanding accomplishments in research by faculty members at KU and other Kansas Board of Regents institutions. The recognition program was established by Takeru Higuchi, the legendary "father of physical pharmacy" who was a distinguished professor at KU from 1967 to 1983, and his late widow, Aya.

Four individual awards are given annually. They are named for former leaders of KU Endowment who played key roles in recruiting Higuchi to KU. Their longtime financial support of KU helped enhance university research throughout the state of Kansas.

Each award includes a plaque and a $10,000 grant for ongoing research efforts. The award money can be used for research materials, summer salaries, fellowship matching funds, research assistants or other support related to research.

The 2009 Higuchi Award winners will be recognized formally Nov. 2 at a ceremony and reception at the Adams Alumni Center.

Balfour Jeffrey Award in Humanities and Social Sciences

Arienne Dwyer is an associate professor of linguistic anthropology. She joined the faculty in 2001 and is one of the best-known and most respected scholars working on the languages of inner Asia, especially Chinese minority languages. Much of this work has involved extensive and difficult field research along the eastern Silk Road, in collaboration with local communities. Dwyer is a pre-eminent specialist on language, ethnicity and ideology in Xinjiang, China's restive westernmost region. She regularly advises national and international agencies and organizations on China and central Asia, language vitality assessment and the creation of multimedia archives.

Dolph Simons Award in Biomedical Sciences

Steven Barlow is a professor of speech-language-hearing: sciences and disorders. He joined the faculty in 2000 and is an internationally recognized scholar in orofacial and laryngeal neurophysiology, and biomedical aspects of speech sensorimotor processing across the lifespan. His work with at-risk premature newborns led to inventions designed to assess the emergence of oromotor patterning and a new treatment to promote the development of a normal pattern of sucking behavior. This enables the fragile population to feed naturally before discharge from the neonatal intensive care unit. His NTrainer System technology is being developed for commercialization by KC BioMedix of Shawnee.

Irvin Youngberg Award for Applied Sciences

Charles Rice is a university distinguished professor of agronomy at K-State.

Olin Petefish Award in Basic Science

Duy Hua is a university distinguished professor of chemistry at K-State.