Editor's note: This story is being highlighted in ASU Now's year in review. Read more top stories from 2019.
Five Arizona State University professors are being honored with the highest faculty award possible: Regents Professor.
The five are internationally recognized experts at the top of their fields, and on Thursday, they joined an elite rank when their nominations were approved by the Arizona Board of Regents.
“The 2019 Regents’ Professors are pioneers in ecology, engineering, judicial decision making, business and social evolution,” said Mark Searle, executive vice president and university provost at ASU. “Their scholarship contributes to the better understanding of our world, environment and each other. The entire ASU community celebrates their great achievement.”
The new Regents Professors are:
• Blake Ashforth, an expert on organizational behavior who holds the Horace Steele Heritage Chair in the Management and Entrepreneurship Department of the W. P. Carey School of Business.
• Nancy Grimm, who holds the Virginia M. Ullman Chair in Ecology in the School of Life Sciences.
• Joan Silk, a world-renowned primatologist in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change.
• Cassia Spohn, a Foundation Professor and director of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice.
• Vijay Vittal, Ira A. Fulton Chair Professor and ASU Foundation Professor in electric power systems in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering.
“Arizona State University is proud to count these deserving scholars among our world-class faculty,” ASU President Michael M. Crow said.
“Their work meaningfully expands our knowledge of the world, and our university community is fortunate to benefit from their experience and leadership.”
Here’s more on the new Regents Professors:
Blake Ashforth
His recent research has included topics such as bullying in the office and the ways that employees think of their companies as a person.
One reviewer wrote: “Professor Ashforth is one of the premier living scholars in the field of organizational behavior and management. He has brought the concept of social identity into the mainstream of organizational behavior and in doing so expanded it to make apparent how participation in an organization can shape an individual’s sense of self and membership (both “who am I” and “who are we”).”
Nancy Grimm
Her lab, the Urban and Stream Ecosystems Lab, is working on several projects, including a collaboration among several universities to develop a way to take the “pulse” of streams. She recently won an award for being part of a team that created an international consensus on how to approach urban ecology.
Grimm, who earned her master’s degree and PhD at ASU, inspired a reviewer to write this: “Nancy recognized early the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to solving global change problems and has been an effective champion for integrating the work of natural and social scientists and engineers to promote resilience of urban infrastructure.”
Joan Silk
She spent years studying the social lives of baboons in the Okavango Delta of Botswana and did research on how baboons use relationships to decrease stress.
One reviewer wrote: “Her multiple theoretical and data-based contributions across a 40-year span have shaped the modes and manners by which we model and understand primate groups and primate sociality. It is near impossible to read any substantive work on primate studies and not see Dr. Silk cited.”
Cassia Spohn
Her research on biases in the investigation and prosecution of sexual assault led the Defense Department to call upon her as an expert on its advisory board. She reviewed material from different branches of the military service to compare the outcomes of sexual assault in the military justice system with the civilian justice system.
One reviewer wrote: “She is hands down the leading American social scientist in the study of sentencing and prosecution decisions, and among the small handful of leading specialists on racial disparities and discrimination in the criminal justice system. … Her creativity, combined with her methodological sophistication, make her uniquely influential.”
Vijay Vittal
Earlier this year, Vittal was part of a team that received a $3.6 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office to advance solar energy’s role in strengthening the reliability and resiliency of the nation’s electricity grid.
One reviewer wrote: “Dr. Vittal is without question the No. 1 scholar globally in power system dynamics and is amongst a handful of scholars that lead the broader area of power system engineering in the world.”
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