Stacey Lee, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Educational Policy Studies professor specializing in the education of immigrant communities, and Miron Livny, a professor of Computer Science with an emphasis in high-throughput computing, have been named Vilas Research Professors.
The Vilas Research Professorship (RSP), funded through the William F. Vilas Trust Estate, is an award granted to UW-Madison faculty members. The Vilas Research Professorships were established to promote academic progress and are awarded to those who have demonstrated exceptional research skills, exceptional qualifications and potential. The selected individual must have made significant contributions to the university's research mission, and garnered widespread national and international recognition for their high-quality research.
Carryover of the award to the next fiscal year is not allowed, and funds must benefit the recipient's research activities. Flexible funds go toward research expenses and a reduced teaching load, and may not be used to provide additional salary support for the award winner or other faculty members, for scholarships or fellowships, to directly charge tuition or to purchase alcohol.
Lee, who also serves as the associate dean in the School of Education, was recognized as the Frederick Erickson Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) Professor of Educational Policy Studies and an affiliate faculty member in Asian American Studies.
Her research is focused on the role of education in the assimilation of immigrants into the United States. Lee is also the author of Unraveling the Model Minority Stereotype: Listening to Asian American Youth and Up Against Whiteness: Race, school and immigrant youth.
“I am honored and thrilled to be named a Vilas Research Professor,” Lee said. “[I] look forward to continuing research that examines the complex intersections of immigration, race and education, particularly for Asian American communities.”
Professor Livny, who also serves as the principal scientist at Core Computational Technology of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, is the founding director of the Center for High Throughput Computing.
Livny joined the UW-Madison faculty in 1983, formed shared research computing on the UW–Madison campus and contributed to Nobel Prize-winning endeavors such as the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.
“By freely providing the software that reliably implements the mechanisms required to build mutual trust, to facilitate sharing and to handle large ensembles of tasks, research computing communities were formed worldwide,” said Livny. “These include national providers of computing services, like the OSG consortium where [I am] the founding Technical Director, campus wide communities and some of the largest international science endeavors.”
The award provides a faculty salary of $10,000, a flexible research fund of $50,000 per fiscal year and a retirement supplement of $2,500 per year.
Jasper Bernstein is news manager for The Daily Cardinal. He previously served as the associate news editor, covering city, campus and breaking news. Follow him on Twitter at @jasperberns.
