In Memoriam

In memory of Lawrence H. "Larry" Harper, Professor of Mathematics

owenw — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 19:22:35 +0000

In memory of Lawrence H. "Larry" Harper, Professor of Mathematics owenw Tue, 12/19/2023 - 11:22 More College News December 19, 2023

Lawrence H. "Larry" Harper, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, passed away in October 2023. Professor Harper was a great contributor to mathematics, and influential colleges, and a friend to many.

Born August 27, 1938, Professor Harper received his Bachelor's Degree in Physics at UC Berkeley in 1961, followed by his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Oregon in 1965. From 1965 to 1970 he worked as Assistant Professor at The Rockefeller University in New York. Professor Harper also served as Visiting Professor at Brown University in 1974 and at Friedrich-Alexander University in Germany in 1979. He joined UC Riverside as Associate Professor of Mathematics in 1970, and retired from the university as Professor of Mathematics in 2006. He also served as a Jet Propulsion Laboratory summer sessions Research Engineer in 1962, 1964, 1965, 1968 and 1968, as well as Research Engineering at the Center for Communications Research in La Jolla, CA in 1995.

Professor Harper was a member of the American Mathematical Society and a National Science Foundation Fellow from 1963 to 1965. He frequently published articles on the topic of combinatorics, including "Size of the largest antichain in a partition poset" in Problems of Information Transmission in 2002 and "On the Bandwidth of a Hamming Graph" in Theoretical Computer Science in 2003. Professor Harper also published "On the Isoperimetric Problem for Hamming Graphs" in Discrete Applied Mathematics in 1999, followed by "The edge-isoperimetric problem for regular planar tessellations" in Ars Combinatoria in 2001. He published the monograph "Global Methods for Combinatorial Isoperimetric Problems" with Cambridge University Press in 2004.

Professor Harper was passionate about the field of combinatorics throughout his career. "When I got my degree in 1965, I decided to specialize in combinatorics, anticipating that the computer would have a profound impact on mathematics," he wrote in a self-statement. "I chose combinatorics because it was relatively undeveloped and perfectly situated to interact synergistically with the computer." Professor Harper served as liaison with the UC Riverside Department of Computer Science before he retired, and designed the Math 11 and Math 111 courses for the Fall 2004 syllabus in consultation with Math and Computer Science faculty members.

Illustration by Dr. John de Pillis

Outside of his research interests, Professor Harper co-chaired UC Riverside's Sexual Harassment Education Committee from 1988-1998, and served on the Board of Directors for the UCR Athletic Association from 1992-1997, where he created the Hueston M. and Margaret W. Harper Award for Outstanding Scholar-Athletes in honor of his parents, who were physical education instructors. He also served on the Faculty Senate Committee on Preparatory Education from 2001-2005. Professor Harper also served as a member of the Academic Senate Committee on Physical Resources in 1995, a position he held until retirement, and also served as a mentor for the Minority Summer Research Internship Program in 1997.

Professor Harper was remembered by his colleagues as a "folk hero in combinatorics." From his earliest days at UC Riverside, his colleagues could not miss the combination of Professor Harper's easy personal manner and sharp professional skills. He mentored several students during his time at UCR, including Joseph Dean Chavez, Ching Guu, Hosien Moghadam, Joseph Vasta, and Arlan Wareham, all of whom were grateful for his inculcating them with a passion for doing research. His colleagues regarded him as a brilliant and caring person who guided his students through their first forays into mathematical research and mentored them as they pursued their academic interests both at UC Riverside and beyond.

Read more about Professor Harper's contributions to math and his connections with his peers and students.

View Professor Harper's math genealogy webpage

Tags

In Memoriam

In Memoriam: Richard D. Goeden (1935-2023)

joanny — Mon, 04 Dec 2023 16:39:54 +0000

In Memoriam: Richard D. Goeden (1935-2023) joanny Mon, 12/04/2023 - 08:39 More College News December 04, 2023

Richard Dean “Dick” Goeden, Professor Emeritus of Entomology, passed away on August 17, 2023.

Goeden was born in Neillsville, Wisconsin on May 20, 1935, to Aleda and InJerome Goeden. He grew up in Wisconsin, but little is known about his childhood; he did at times recall that he played cards after school with his buddies “Augie” Busch and “Freddie” Miller of the local beer brewing families. Following high school, he enlisted in the US Air Force during the Korean War. He was stationed on the Channel Islands off the coast of California working in a communications tower where he scanned the skies for enemy aircraft and at one point tracked Soviet MiGs flying along the coast. He was honorably discharged but often stated his duration in the military as “3 years, 7 months and 23 days” to clearly indicate he counted down the days until he was out. Due to lack of any parental support, he used the GI Bill to further his education. He matriculated to the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1958 and graduated with a BS in 1962, the same year he wed Joan Apazeller with whom he remained married for 60 years until her passing in 2022.

We do not know what sparked Goeden’s initial interest in entomology, but he continued at UW-Madison working with famed forest entomologist Dale M. Norris, Jr. for a MS (1963) and Ph.D. (1965) in entomology. His master’s thesis was titled “Preliminary findings on the bionomics of Scolytus quadrispinosus Say (Coleoptera: Scolytidae).” He continued this research for his Ph.D. which culminated in the publication: “Some Biological and Ecological Aspects of Ovipositional Attack in Carya spp. by Scolytus quadrispinosus (Coleoptera: Scolytidae)” in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America, 1965, 58 (6): 771–777. It stated that his graduate work was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Wisconsin Conservation Department.

It also is unclear why Goeden became interested in biological control of weeds, but Norris’ influence may have had an effect. Norris conducted research pre-dating the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring showing that DDT was largely ineffective against bark beetles and should be avoided in fighting Dutch Elm disease. As Goeden was finishing his Ph.D. work in 1965 a position became available in the Department of Biological Control, University of California, Riverside for a biological control of weeds specialist, to which he applied; it must have appealed because it combined his love of both insects and plants. He often told the story that the department head, Glen Carman, invited him out for an interview in the springtime when the hills surrounding Riverside were green from the winter rains. He was offered and accepted the position and upon his return to start his new job in June of 1965, he and Joan were dismayed to see the hills and the sky had turned to their annual summertime brown hue. In spite of the unexpected seasonal changes, they remained in Riverside for the remainder of their lives.

Goeden became a luminary in the field of biological control of weeds; a subdiscipline that primarily uses insect herbivores as a means to attain widespread control of plants that damage natural and agricultural systems. In an ironic twist, one of his first assignments at UC Riverside was documenting the previous 25 year’s efforts of the Opuntia cactus biological control program on Santa Cruz Island, the same place where he had perched years before in a military tower looking for enemy planes. The Optunia project was started by Professor Harry Scott Smith, Department of Biological Control, UC Riverside, in 1940 and was the first use of a live organism to control a weed in North America. In 1967, Goeden, along with Charles A. Fleschner, Professor and Entomologist, and Donald W. Ricker, Staff Research Associate, published an exhaustive, and often cited, treatise on the program’s status which became one of only three targeted weed species in California’s history to achieve complete biological control.

The scientists who developed and implemented biological control of weeds programs were extremely disciplined and principled. They were a tight knit, strict, and self-policing group because they knew releasing primary herbivores into a new environment came with huge ecological risks and if they were responsible for any mistakes, it could spell the end of the use of biological control for pest management across the board. To their credit, biological control of weeds has avoided such disasters and remains a viable management approach to this day.

Goeden’s specialty was faunistic surveys for insects associated with indigenous and non-indigenous weeds, an interest he developed in college where he participated in floristic surveys and contributed beautifully preserved specimens to the university’s herbarium. His career surveys took him to many parts of the world and on extended sabbaticals with his growing family to Italy, Switzerland, France, and England beginning in 1970. He conducted biological control research on every continent except Antarctica. These studies formed the basis for the eventual movement and establishment of weed feeding biological control agents to restore ecological balance to disrupted ecosystems in the US and abroad. Goeden oversaw the importation and establishment of a weevil, Rhinocyllus conicus, into California for the biological control of the invasive weeds Italian and milk thistles. His work on this project clarified a crucial element in the overall success of biological control agents relating to their area of origin. He established that phytophagous species that occur over a wide latitudinal range develop distinct climate biotypes; and these biotypes need to be carefully matched to the climate of their eventual area of release in order to maintain the seasonal host plant/herbivore synchrony needed for successful insect reproduction.

Conducting ecological studies after biological control agents have been released is rare due to inevitable funding shortages. However, Goeden made additional significant contributions to the discipline of biological control by managing to conduct crucial post-release evaluations on the outcome of major weed control projects in the US. Through extensive, years-long studies he was able to discern the biotic and abiotic factors that led to the failure of several biological control agents, thus helping to inform future programs.

During his surveys on US ragweeds (Ambrosia spp.) in the mid-1970s he became fascinated with fruit flies in the family Tephritidae, particularly the non-frugivorous species in the subfamily Tephritinae. He published his first dedicated works on these flies in the mid-1980s and redirected his career to focus on their study in southern California from that point forward. Over the next two decades he, along with his technicians and students, published 108 peer-reviewed papers detailing the biology, ecology, and behaviors of 66 of the 149 species of tephritid fruit flies in California. His body of work is considered by colleagues to be among the most extensive and thorough for any native tephritid fauna in the world. His expertise in California’s tephritids was called upon when one of their exotic cousins, the Mediterranean fruit fly, made headlines by invading southern California in the late 1980s, sparking significant public unrest with the use of helicopters applying malathion-laced bait over Los Angeles. He was able to help regulatory researchers clarify the differences between the native species and the invading, fruit-feeding species, for future development of fly control options. His work on tephritids diversified beyond biology and ecology into taxonomy in later years. He always stated the flies were better plant taxonomists than people and relied on his thorough collection records of host plant associations to help him tease apart species concepts. He named new species for his family members and associates and eventually was in turn honored by having a genus named after him, Goedenia.

Goeden was an experiment station scientist to the core. Although, research was his primary focus, his faculty duties also included teaching field entomology and biological control. During his career, federal and state funds supporting experiment stations was eroding fast. Many faculty were forced to seek research money through external grant opportunities. Goeden did not take that route and continued conducting his research program solely on the dwindling government resources, achieving what one colleague stated as getting more peer-reviewed publications per research dollar than anyone else in the department. He averaged over 5 publications per year for 20 years just on fruit flies alone. And his publications were of the highest quality as he was a skilled scientific writer and editor. He was observed spending hours debating with colleagues over a single word choice to ensure that the meaning of a statement couldn’t be misinterpreted.

Goeden retired in 2002 as the last titled “Professor of Biological Control” at UC Riverside shortly after receiving a lifetime achievement award for research excellence at the Entomological Society of America’s annual meeting in Montreal in 2000. Dick was a dedicated scientist and loved his work immensely. He donated his massive collection of curated tephritids to the US National Museum, UC Riverside and Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. He had developed an encyclopedic and intimate knowledge of California’s ecology and ecosystems after years of combing through its backroads; knowledge he willingly shared with colleagues that ultimately led to their own discoveries. He thoroughly enjoyed mentoring graduate students to whom he was incredibly generous with his time and advice. He provided them many life and career lessons as he was always available for a friendly chat over coffee or deeper conversations where he patiently listened and offered meaningful, non-judgmental feedback. He instilled students with a strong scientific ethic. His mantra was – always stand on the science you’ve done and do not speculate too far beyond that. And don’t procrastinate!

More importantly, Dick Goeden was a loving and dedicated family man. He and Joan raised three children, who he was so proud of, and delighted in the time they had with their four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. He also was an accomplished gardener and avid painter creating a multitude of incredibly photo-realistic scenes from his many travels around the world. He maintained a collection of beer steins throughout his life, perhaps a nod to his card-playing pals from his youth, and always enjoyed sharing a beer with friends and family, especially around a backyard barbeque. He was a self-made man who made an indelible impact on the science of biological control, tephritid biology, and the many students he mentored through the years.

David Headrick, Professor, Department of Plant Sciences, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
Richard Redak, Professor, Department of Entomology, UC Riverside

Tags

In Memoriam

Department of Entomology

In memory of Mir Mulla, Emeritus Professor of Entomology

tomwt — Fri, 26 May 2023 20:30:30 +0000

In memory of Mir Mulla, Emeritus Professor of Entomology tomwt Fri, 05/26/2023 - 13:30 More College News Kathy Keatley Garvey | UC ANR February 06, 2023

Mir Mulla

UC ANR - UC Davis faculty and friends are remembering internationally recognized medical entomologist Mir Mulla, a UC Riverside distinguished emeritus professor of entomology whose university career spanned 50 years of teaching, research and public service. He died Jan. 29 at his home in Riverside at age 97.

Robert Washino, emeritus professor of entomology, emeritus chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology, and emeritus associate dean of the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, praised him for his research and friendship.

"I first met Mir who was on the UC Riverside campus in the early 1960s for the first organizational meeting of the UC Systemwide Mosquito Research Program with biologists representing UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UCLA and UC Riverside," Washino recalled. "From that day forward, all of us in mosquito research competed for research funding and became either friends and/or competitors and sometimes both. I could have written a book on all that took place and it would have been a best seller if it were ever published but it was fun while it lasted!"

That was when the names of Barr, Work, Shaefer, Garcia, Reeves, Belkin, Bohart, Mulla and Washino - and more - populated the mosquito research news, or names "from the good ol days," said Washino, now 91.

"Mir was a great help to me getting started at UC Riverside, particularly in my mosquito days," said UC Davis distinguished professor Bruce Hammock, who holds a joint appointment with the Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Major Dhillon, retired district manager of the Northwest Mosquito Abatement District, headquartered in Corona, Riverside County, and executive director emeritus of Society for Vector Ecology (SOVE), based in Ontario, Calif., was a 49-year friend and colleague.

"He was my major professor under whom I got my doctorate," Dhillon said. "I met him when he was 49 years old and I lost him after 49 years. He was a great mentor and TRULY an exemplary scientist of international fame.”

Dhillon said that Mulla donated $50,000 to SOVE last year at a memorial lecture. Mulla is credited with helping establish the UC Riverside's medical entomology department. He was named a fellow of the Entomological Society of America in 1995 and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1998. The World Health Organization honored him with its Distinguished Service Award in 2010, and SOVE singled him out for a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009.

Mulla's Formula. Mulla was a close associate of William "Bill" Reisen, professor emeritus, Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. Reisen wrote about Mulla's Formula to Estimate Control in a book, Vector Biology, Ecology and Control, pages 127-137, published in 2010:

"In California, the endemic mosquito borne encephalitides, including West Nile virus, are contained by special districts using integrated vector management programs. These agencies combine public education, source reduction and proactive larval control to suppress mosquito abundance to the point where tangential transmission of virus to humans is rare or unlikely. However, when these methods in concert fail to prevent enzootic amplification and the risk of human infection becomes eminent or is on-going, emergency adulticide applications of pyrethrin compounds are used to interrupt transmission. The efficacy of these applications has become controversial and some cities have opted to not apply adul-ticides. The current paper describes how a formula developed Dr. Mir Mulla some 40 years ago is still useful in solving contemporary problems of estimating percent control, a statistic useful in evaluating intervention efficacy. This simple but effective equation accounts for changes in both control and treated populations and thereby can be applied in dynamic situations where abundance is not stable. Examples are presented from ground and aerial experimental applications in Riverside County and from emergency interventions in Sacramento County in 2005 and Yolo County in 2006."

According to a 2008 UC Riverside newsletter, Mir served as a major professor for 27 doctoral students and three master's students; mentored more than 30 visiting scientists from overseas; and trained 20 postdoctoral scientists. "Dr. Mulla has made noteworthy contributions to, and has served in, numerous national and international organizations. These include the World Health Organization, with over 40 years of service in capacities such as science advisor, member of the Expert Advisory Panel, member or chair of steering committees or scientific working groups, as well as temporary advisor on numerous international projects. His publications (over 400) are well known around the world and are sought after by many scientists and specialists."

Native of Afghanistan. Born in Zangawat, Afghanistan to a family of 12 brothers and 4 sisters, Mir received a scholarship in 1948 to Cornell University where he obtained his undergraduate degree in entomology and parasitology in 3.5 years. He received his doctorate at UC Berkeley. In 1956, joined the UC Riverside faculty to help establish a medical entomology department, and launched his research on the control of eye gnats and mosquitoes.

From the Riverside Press-Enterprise obituary: "In his 50-year career as a medical entomologist, Dr. Mulla pioneered insect control methods throughout Southern California and the world. Mir's techniques for eye gnat and mosquito control improved people's health worldwide. He was a prolific scientist who authored more than 500 scientific publications. He loved field work and was a demanding editor, guiding over 30 graduate students. Mir led World Health Organization efforts to help developing countries control vector-borne diseases, including malaria. He traveled to many countries in this endeavor."

His wife of 64 years, Leila "Lee" Patterson Mulla, died Aug. 9, 2019 at age 88. They met at the International House at UC Berkeley during his graduate studies and married in August 1954. They raised four children, David, Shireen, Dean and Janet.

"Mir served as a leader in the Riverside Muslim community," according to the obituary. "He and Lelia founded the Islamic Society of Riverside and Orange Counties and played a key role in building the Islamic Center of Riverside, the first mosque in the Inland Empire. His philanthropic work included supporting the local Muslim community, donating land to Riverside County Parks to preserve public access to Sugarloaf Mountain for generations and establishing scholarships with the University of California Riverside in the College of Agriculture and Natural Sciences."

A Muslim funeral prayer (Janazah) will be held Friday, Feb. 3 after the 1 p.m. Jum'a prayer at Islamic Center of Riverside, 1038 W Linden St., Riverside. A public memorial service will be held Saturday, Feb. 4 at 11 a.m. at the Norco Family Funeral Home, 2645 Hammer Ave, Norco, followed by burial at 1:20 p.m. Saturday at Pierce Brothers Crestlawn Mortuary, 11500 Arlington Ave, Riverside.

Donations in his memory can be made to the Dr. Mir S. Mulla and Lelia L. Mulla Endowed Scholarship Fund, UC Riverside Foundation (access myadv.ucr.edu and search for "Mulla") or the Islamic Center of Riverside, islamiccenterofriverside.net/donate).

READ THE ARTICLE ON THE UC ANR BLOG

Tags

In Memoriam

In memory of Stephen Wimpenny, Professor of Physics

joanny — Fri, 19 May 2023 20:00:32 +0000

In memory of Stephen Wimpenny, Professor of Physics joanny Fri, 05/19/2023 - 13:00 More College News May 19, 2023

Professor of Physics Stephen Wimpenny passed away on November 21, 2022. He joined the University of California, Riverside in 1987. He was an influential leader in experimental high energy physics and played a leading role in the discovery of the top quark in 1995 by the DZero and CDF Collaborations and studies of its properties by the CMS collaboration.

Steve was born in 1956 in the United Kingdom. He attended the University of Sheffield for both undergraduate and graduate studies, receiving his Ph.D. in 1980. From 1980-84 Steve was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Liverpool where he worked on the CERN EMC muon scattering experiment. Steve then became a CERN Research Fellow (1984-87) and transitioned to the UA1 experiment where he led studies of the muon decays of the newly discovered W and Z bosons. In 1987 Steve came to UC Riverside and joined the physics faculty in 1988. He began work on the DZero experiment, which was being constructed at the Tevatron collider at Fermilab. Working at DZero, Steve made important contributions to the muon detector construction, installation, and operation. He soon became leader of the group searching for signatures of the elusive top quark in decays to leptons (electrons and muons), and he played a central role in the discovery of the top quark in 1995 by the DZero and CDF Collaborations. He led the DZero Top Quark Dilepton Analysis group from 1992-96 and continued as a leader in top quark physics in DZero and later at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.

In 2006 Steve joined the CMS experiment at CERN where he continued studies of the top quark. He was one of the first leaders of the Top Quark Mass group in CMS. He was the driving force on the combination of all of the CMS mass measurements as well as the combination of CMS, ATLAS, DZero and CDF results. He performed one of the first measurements of the top-antitop cross-section at the LHC. He studied the hadronization of bottom quarks (an important ingredient in the top quark mass measurement). He also searched for the very rare production of 4 top quarks, culminating in evidence shortly before he passed away. He was a long-time member of the CMS Top Quark Publication Committee, charged with producing well-written and timely publications, and just became co-chair in October.

Steve was very active in administrative affairs at UC Riverside. He served as Physics and Astronomy Undergraduate Advisor for many years and served on numerous Academic Senate committees. He chaired both the Courses committee (2001) as well as Educational Policy (2015-2016). He also served on the Privilege and Tenure, Preparatory Education, and Academic Personnel committees.

Steve will be remembered as an accomplished leader and innovator in top quark physics. He was a highly valued professor and member of the UCR community and a mentor to many. He is survived by his wife Judy and sons Edward and Daniel.

Tags

In Memoriam

In Memory of Frank Vasek, the First Director of the UCR Botanic Gardens

joanny — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 18:09:07 +0000

In Memory of Frank Vasek, the First Director of the UCR Botanic Gardens joanny Wed, 10/05/2022 - 11:09 More College News Cheri Vasek, Cindy Engel, and Maxine Vasek June 01, 2022

The first director of the University of California, Riverside Botanic Gardens, Frank C. Vasek, passed away in Davis, California on January 11, 2022, at the age of 94. He is survived by his wife of 67 years, Maxine, daughters Cheri Vasek and Cindy Engel, son-in-law Tom Engel, and grandchildren Clara and Katie Engel.

Frank was born in Cleveland, Ohio on May 9, 1927. Following high school he enlisted in the Marine Corps, after which he attended the University of Ohio, graduating in 1950. Frank attended graduate school at UCLA, pursuing a Ph.D. in Botany with research emphasis in genetics and taxonomy. There he met fellow UCLA graduate student Maxine McClelen, who was studying plant anatomy. They were married in August of 1954. Frank and Maxine shared a love of plants, and together they created beautifully landscaped yards with flourishing native and drought tolerant species at their homes in Riverside, Valley Center, and Davis.

Frank earned his Ph.D. in Botany at UCLA in 1955, having joined the faculty at the new UCR campus in the previous year. Soon after Frank’s arrival he was appointed to play a key founding role in establishing the Herbarium and the new botanic garden on the young UCR campus. As the Botanic Gardens' first director, serving until 1967, Frank developed a budget, designed a plan emphasizing California native plants and select exotic plants, and made many physical improvements including an irrigation system, small lathhouse, perimeter fences, and roads. Concurrently, he immediately set out to create from scratch an herbarium to use for research and teaching purposes. From a modest beginning relying mostly on donations of field collections from his students’ coursework, Frank championed the preservation and expansion of this priceless resource. The irreplaceable library of plant specimens at UCR currently boasts more than 273,000 specimens sourced mostly from California and throughout the Western Hemisphere, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Some of these specimens are now extinct in the wild.

Frank conducted research in ecology and systematics over a long and productive career. He also prioritized the sharing of knowledge, in both formal and informal settings. Teaching and mentoring students was a particularly meaningful aspect of his academic career.

One of Frank’s most significant projects was discovering the desert creosote “King Clone” as one of the oldest living organisms on earth. Using radiocarbon dating, Frank determined King Clone’s age to be 11,700 years. He further corroborated this with field observations of growth rates in the creosote clonal rings.

Upon retiring from UCR after a 34-year career, Frank and Maxine moved to a 3-acre property in Valley Center, California, where they revitalized a fruit orchard and developed a mini botanic garden in their front yard. When they moved to Davis in 2000, they again pursued their passion for gardens, creating a beautiful garden in their suburban lot. Frank and Maxine moved to the University Retirement Community in Davis in 2013 and even there, Frank surreptitiously developed a lively garden in what had once been a neglected area and created an identification guide for the trees and shrubs on the grounds.

Frank was humble, patient, devoted, kind, and always optimistic, attributes that contributed to making him a good teacher. One key to his optimism was his capacity to reflect thoughtfully and with gratitude; it was the lens through which he saw the world. Throughout his life, he exemplified a commitment to being present and engaged in the issue at hand to create positive outcomes. He always said that he never shied away from tackling complicated projects. The UCR Botanic Gardens owes a huge debt of gratitude to the dedication, creativity, and passion of Frank Vasek, its founding Director.

Tags

In Memoriam

Remembering ‘isotope queen’ Marilyn Fogel, pioneering scientist, beloved mentor

tomwt — Wed, 25 May 2022 15:08:22 +0000

Remembering ‘isotope queen’ Marilyn Fogel, pioneering scientist, beloved mentor tomwt Wed, 05/25/2022 - 08:08 More College News Jules Bernstein | UCR News May 17, 2022

Marilyn Fogel, endowed geoecology professor at UC Riverside, died on May 11 at her home in Mariposa, Calif. She was 69.

Marilyn Fogel at UC Riverside in 2016.

She pioneered the use of different forms of the same chemical element, called isotopes, to understand the life history of organisms, both modern and ancient. In so doing, she helped develop biogeochemistry as a new field of science with many seminal papers in the field and earned herself the moniker ‘isotope queen.’

Her work with stable isotopes traced the long-term history of living things not only on Earth, but also helped answer questions about life elsewhere in the universe.

“Consistently innovative, world-class studies across wide-ranging fields are a hallmark of her career, with a diversity of research questions that is unique among the leading biogeochemists and isotope ecologists in the world,” said Gordon Love, chair of UCR’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. “The impact and breadth of Marilyn’s research are extraordinary.”

Her death was the result of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, often known as Lou Gehrig’s disease or ALS. In life, she was the recipient of the highest honors the scientific community has to bestow.

In 2019, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, a rare distinction. According to the Congressional Research Service, there are roughly seven million scientists in the U.S., and only 2,400 of them are members of the national academy.

She was the first woman ever to win the Alfred Treibs Medal in organic geochemistry for lifetime achievement in the field, and was a fellow of the Geochemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Geophysical Union.

Though her list of accolades is lengthy, it does not end with awards, fellowships, or publications. She was revered by many at UCR not only for her scientific brilliance but also for her advocacy on behalf of students and colleagues.

“Her ‘let’s take care of this right now,’ doggedness in defending staff, students and junior faculty who felt that they had no voice will be missed. Her pragmatism and ‘let’s get it done’ attitude will be missed. I use the word ‘let’s’ a lot when I think about Marilyn. She was a collaborative person who understood that progress happens when everyone is engaged. I’m a better leader because of Marilyn,” said Kathryn Uhrich, dean of UCR’s College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences.

After earning her doctorate from University of Texas-Austin in botany and marine sciences, she continued on to a postdoc at the Geophysical Lab at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. She remained there as a staff scientist until 2012, then spent three years at UC Merced.

In 2016, Fogel joined UC Riverside’s Earth and Planetary Sciences department as the Wilbur W. Mayhew Professor of Geoecology, and director of the Environmental Dynamics and GeoEcology or EDGE Institute. With Fogel at the helm, the institute helped usher in a generation of new science at UCR across diverse departments spanning geochemistry, environmental sciences, ecology, biology, botany & plant sciences, and biochemistry.

“Her arrival at UCR was a watershed moment, and even though challenged every minute by an insidious disease, she led us toward solutions to some of our greatest problems, the environmental catastrophe of the Salton Sea in particular. She would be pleased to know that this work will continue, building on the foundation she championed right up to the end,” said Timothy Lyons, distinguished professor of biogeochemistry and director of UCR’s Alternative Earths Astrobiology Center.

“I’m absolutely gutted by the loss of a very special colleague, role model, and friend. Marilyn was one of the most creative and generous scientists I’ve known,” Lyons said.

After retiring in summer 2021, she became chair of UCR’s Salton Sea Task Force, a diverse group of scientists from UC Riverside working to explain and help solve the ecological crises at the Salton Sea, California’s largest and most polluted lake.

Colleagues on the task force expressed universal admiration for her leadership skills.

“She was able to bring a multidisciplinary group of people together, which I think is rare in many fields. One thing I noticed in the way she managed the group was to give everyone time to express their opinions. It didn't matter if it was a graduate student or a distinguished professor, she wanted to know what every one of us thought,” said Roya Bahreini, professor of atmospheric science and task force member.

“Her leadership in solving one of the most important environmental crises of our time is phenomenal,” said Hoori Ajami, associate professor of ground water hydrology. “She was a great inspiration especially for women scientists and took every opportunity to support them. Her legacy and impact will remain for generations to come.”

Fogel’s wisdom and humor remain on display in her Isotope Queen blog, and in the book she published titled “Advice from the Isotope Queen, Building a Meaningful Career While Enjoying a Full Life.”

Flowers, preferably from the local Mariposa Flower Farm, may be sent to her home at 4086 Lakeview Drive, Mariposa, CA 95338.

Fogel is survived by her husband of 33 years, Chris Swarth, and their children Dana and Evan. Her family plans to hold a memorial service later this summer.

Additional memorial events are being planned in conjunction with Marilyn’s colleagues. Those who would like to honor Fogel by advancing the science she championed can donate to the EDGE Institute fund.

Tags

In Memoriam

In memory of chemistry professor, Dr. Ted Kuwana

tomwt — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 16:50:53 +0000

In memory of chemistry professor, Dr. Ted Kuwana tomwt Wed, 03/30/2022 - 09:50 More College News March 30, 2022

Donate to the Kuwana-Sawyer Undergraduate Award in Analytical Chemistry

Dr. Ted Kuwana, a chemistry professor and specialist in spectroelectrochemistry, bioelectroanalytical chemistry, and modified electrodes.

Dr. Ted Kuwana, 90, of Seattle, WA, died at University of Washington Northwest Hospital after several weeks of pneumonia. He was the founding father of a new field in chemistry called spectroelectrochemistry, which was created by combining two well-known analytical techniques of electrochemistry and spectroscopy. He was first author on the first published article in this field in 1964, which describes the use of tin oxide-coated glass surfaces (optically transparent electrodes) for following the absorbance changes of different electroactive species during electrolysis.

He was a chemistry professor at University of California, Riverside (UCR), Case Institute of Technology (later Case Western Reserve in Ohio), Ohio State University, and a Regents Distinguished Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Chemistry at the University of Kansas (KU). He authored more than 200 journal articles from 1956–2015, edited a three-volume book Physical Methods in Modern Chemical Analysis, and held three patents. He trained 72 graduate students and leaves an impressive academic legacy, with many former students in leadership positions at universities, in government, and in industry. He often said, “I’m not teaching chemistry, I’m teaching students how to think.”

Ted was born in Idaho Falls on a potato farm to Japanese immigrant (Issei) parents Nenokichi and Yoshino. The family leased the land, as it was illegal for them to own land. Ted was the youngest of six children (Todd, Mas, Mits, Jessie, and Aiko), all who predeceased him. His father died when Ted was 10 and his mother died when he was 12; his older brothers took over the farm work and his sisters helped look after Ted. His mother’s dying wish was for Ted to go to college.

He had no money for college, but found Antioch College in Ohio, which offered a work-study program. He was fortunate to do chemistry research with Dr. Rick Yalman; Ted was paid for his lab work, and authored a published paper as an undergrad. He earned his B.S. in 1954, then his M.S. at Cornell. He didn’t realize that the scholarship he was offered at Cornell had to pay for everything, and ended up with $5 left each month for food. He then went to KU and was Dr. Ralph Adams’ first Ph.D. student. Ted earned his Ph.D. in 1959 studying electrochemical properties of carbon paste electrodes. He often quoted Ralph, who said, “If you love what you do, the rewards will take care of themselves.”

After postdoctoral training at California Institute of Technology, he went to University of California, Riverside as a Visiting Assistant Professor in 1960, which is where he met Jane Bader, who would become his wife and editor of everything he (and his lab) wrote. It can’t be overstated how important her assistance was with his career, as she understood the chemistry and was a talented writer and editor. During his five years at UCR, he loved to drive around in his red Volvo P1800 sports car, and even in his late 80s when he went back to the Los Angeles area, he still knew all the roads and how to get most quickly from one place to another.

In the latter years of his career at KU (1985-2002), he focused on electroanalytical, bioanalytical, and pharmaceutical chemistry, and was proud to be back at his alma mater tasked with promoting research and economic development statewide. He was director of the Center for Bioanalytical Research (1985-1989) and head of the state’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) to promote scientific progress in states that traditionally receive lower amounts of federal R&D funding.

Ted was the recipient of numerous awards for his extensive achievements in developing the fields of spectroelectrochemistry, bioelectroanalytical chemistry and chemically modified electrodes. Awards include the American Chemical Society Division of Analytical Chemistry’s J. Calvin Giddings Award for Excellence in Education (2004); EPSCoR Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award (2002); American Chemical Society Division of Analytical Chemistry Award in Electrochemistry (1995); The Japan Society for Analytical Chemistry Honorary Membership and Medal (1991); and the Society of Electroanalytical Chemists C.N. Reilly Award (1989).

One part of Ted's legacy are educational resources, including the Analytical Sciences Digital Library established in 2002, for which he was the managing director. Even after he retired in 2002, he was key in the development and management of this NSF-funded free online resource about chemical measurement and instrumentation. He was active in addressing the issue of how to teach more effectively and led efforts to create problem-based learning modules. He conducted summer teaching sessions for faculty at smaller undergrad institutions.

In the words of Alex Scheeline, Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “Ted was someone of vast perspective, practical insight, understated enthusiasm, and high standards. Not to mention his excellent taste in restaurants. Ted is a man of impeccable integrity, a dedicated analytical electrochemist, and a savant who saw how to harness the internet to improve analytical education in a practical way that anticipated the needs of the COVID era by 20 years.”

Ted is survived by his wife Jane; son Eric Kuwana, a lawyer who divides his time between Gibson Island, MD, and New York City; and daughter Ellen Kuwana, a scientific writer and editor who lives in Seattle, WA. Ted and Jane have four granddaughters: Claire Kuwana, a senior at Northwestern University; Camille Kuwana, a sophomore at University of Chicago; Mikka Hoffman, a senior at UCLA; and Kira Hoffman, a first-year student at UC Berkeley.

Donations in Ted’s honor can be made to the Kuwana–Sawyer Undergraduate Award in Analytical Chemistry to help UC Riverside undergraduate students conducting research in analytical chemistry, with preference to those studying electrochemistry.

Donate to the Kuwana-Sawyer Undergraduate Award in Analytical Chemistry

Tags

In Memoriam

Remembering Professor Emeritus of Nematology Reinhold Mankau

joanny — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 20:06:45 +0000

Remembering Professor Emeritus of Nematology Reinhold Mankau joanny Mon, 01/03/2022 - 12:06 More College News January 03, 2022

Reinhold Mankau passed away on Sunday, December 5, 2021, in Riverside, California. Known by his family, friends, and colleagues as Ron, he was a faculty member at the University of California, Riverside for 33 years. He belonged to the first generation of scientists that gave the UCR Department of Nematology its stellar worldwide reputation.

Ron was born in Chicago, Illinois, on July 22, 1928. He studied Biology from 1946 to 1948 at Wright Junior College, Chicago. The following year, Ron enrolled at the University of Illinois and received a bachelor's degree in 1951 and a master of science degree in 1952, both in Biology. As a Ph.D. student in Plant Pathology/Parasitology at the land-grant University of Illinois, Urbana, Plant Pathologist/Nematologist Dr. Maurice Linford was his major professor. Ron's thesis focused on host-parasitic relationships of the clover cyst nematode, Heterodera trifolii. In 1954, he and the love of his life, Saroj, got married. A year later, both finished with their Ph.D. Ron received a Fulbright Research Fellowship at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India, where they lived from September 1956 to December 1957. A month later, he was appointed Assistant Nematologist at the University of California, Riverside, pursuing microbial biocontrol organisms.

In 1964-65, he spent a sabbatical as a Fulbright Senior Postdoctoral Fellow at the Agricultural College and Research Institute, Coimbatore, in southern India. In 1972, he hired Diana Wall Freckman as a Research Nematologist in his lab which started her long and exceptional career. In 1973-74, Ron served as a United Nations Development Program consultant in a project designed to advance the postgraduate program in Plant Pathology/Nematology at the University of Agricultural Science, Hebbal, Mysore, India. Consequently, he was one of the foremost experts regarding plant-parasitic nematode problems and research in India.

Ron's research on biology and epidemiology of parasites and predators of plant-parasitic and free-living nematodes earned him a worldwide reputation as an authority in biological nematode control and sustainable crop management. Ron knew his nematode-destroying fungi like no other. His lab studied physical and biological factors that influenced their reproduction, persistence, and efficacy. His mission-oriented goal was to find microorganisms that could be efficiently and economically useful as biological control agents.

Ron also was a trailblazer in researching nematode-suppressive soils. In early 1970, he discovered a bacterium in mountainous areas of California that attached to the surface of nematodes. He found similar organisms associated with greenhouse and field populations of root-knot nematodes (Meloidogyne spp.) in southern California. Gerald Thorne, one of the pioneers of US Nematology, had described the microorganism previously as the microsporidian parasite Duboscqia penetrans. But Ron Mankau and Jack Imbriani published in 1974 after extensive study of morphology, histochemistry, and life cycle in various nematodes that the organism was a prokaryote. Ron renamed it Bacillus penetrans (now Pasteuria penetrans). However, the true potential of this and similar bacteria occurred to him while working for the French Office of Scientific and Technical Research Overseas (ORSTOM) in Senegal in 1979. He discovered B. penetrans parasitizing root-knot nematodes in some grower fields and significantly mitigated crop damage by those otherwise devastating pathogens. Equally important was the discovery by his Ph.D. student Graham Stirling of Dactylella oviparasitica (now Hyalorbilia oviparasitica), a hyperparasite of root-knot nematodes. They demonstrated the importance of the fungus in the natural suppression of M. incognita populations in some California peach orchards.

Ron taught the formal class Nematode Diseases of Plants for many years together with his Department of Nematology colleagues Ivan Thomason, Seymour Van Gundy, and Howard Ferris. He served on the Steering Committee for UCR's Pest Management M.S. Program. He trained Ph.D. students, post-docs and inspired many more worldwide. On his and Saroj's travels, he was often invited to give scientific seminars which he presented fluently in German, French, or Spanish. Ron was promoted to the rank of Full Professor in 1976 and retired in 1990. In Varadero, Cuba, at one of the last scientific meetings he attended, the Organization of Nematologists of Tropical America honored him with a citation of special recognition for his long-standing contribution and support of ONTA since the inception of the organization.

In retirement, he and his wife Saroj, a California State University Emeritus Professor in Biology, spent most of the year in southern Baja. Throughout their 67 years of marriage, they enjoyed traveling together, making friends on all continents, and visiting more than 100 countries around the globe. Ron was humble and personable, and remained involved with the Nematology Department until shortly before his death. He will be remembered fondly by many.

Tags

In Memoriam

In memory of Dr. Shawn Biehler, Professor Emeritus of Geophysics

edraws — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 21:35:32 +0000

In memory of Dr. Shawn Biehler, Professor Emeritus of Geophysics edraws Thu, 09/23/2021 - 14:35 More College News September 23, 2021

Dr. Shawn Biehler was a beloved educator and researcher at UC Riverside. Shawn was born in New Jersey in 1937. He earned his B.S. in Geological Engineering at Princeton University in 1958, following up at the California Institute of Technology with an M.S. in 1961 and a Ph.D. in 1964. After ten years as a researcher at Princeton and Caltech, Shawn took a faculty position at MIT in 1966, and moved to a tenured faculty position in UCR’s Department of Earth Sciences in 1970.

At UCR, Shawn pursued a research program studying crustal structure with seismological, electromagnetic, and gravitational methods, with implications for tectonics and economic concerns, particularly for geothermal and hydrological applications.

He also gained respect and renown as a mentor to a tremendous number of students who became professional geologists, engineering geologists, and geophysicists in Southern California and beyond. He was greatly loved by his students. In the words of one, “I learned considerably from Shawn Biehler; I remember I took his applied geophysics course, and it was amazing to me to use gravity, magnetics, and seismic refraction to literally make the basin and range Mojave geology come into full resolution before your eyes.”

Shawn also was a founding member of the Summer of Applied Geophysics Experience (SAGE) with the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Over three decades, hundreds of aspiring geophysics students passed through SAGE and took their skills with them to their later careers. In honor of Shawn and his legacy, colleagues and UCR alumni set up the Shawn Biehler Endowed Fund at UCR to help fund SAGE scholarships and geophysical field work. Please make a donation to the Shawn Biehler Endowed Fund.

After retiring from UCR in 2000, Shawn remained in Riverside close to campus. Shawn is survived by his wife Andrea and his two children.

Tags

In Memoriam

In memory of William T. Frankenberger, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Soil Microbiology and Biochemistry

joanny — Tue, 24 Aug 2021 22:30:45 +0000

In memory of William T. Frankenberger, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Soil Microbiology and Biochemistry joanny Tue, 08/24/2021 - 15:30 More College News August 24, 2021

William T. Frankenberger, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Soil Microbiology and Biochemistry, passed away suddenly on August 14, 2021 at the age of 69. He retired from UC Riverside in April 2011 after 30 years of distinguished service in the Department of Soil and Environmental Sciences. After graduating high school in Kansas, he received a track scholarship in pole vaulting at Emporia State University, graduating in 1974 with a BA degree in Biology. He then attended Iowa State University in 1975 and received a Master’s degree (1977) and Ph.D. (1980) in the Department of Agronomy. In 1982, he received the Emil Truog Award from the Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) for the most outstanding dissertation nationwide in Soil Science.

In 1981, Dr. Frankenberger joined the faculty at UCR. His research interests included agronomic and environmental microbiology with an emphasis on microbial production of plant hormones, microbial transformations of oxyanions (selenium, arsenic, chromium and perchlorate) and bioremediation of hazardous chemicals.

Dr. Frankenberger received the highest honor in Environmental Protection from the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture (1995) for developing an innovative bioremediation technology, overcoming political and bureaucratic hurdles, for permanent, cost-effective and safe cleanup of selenium in the environment. In 1988, he filed a patent to remove selenium via microbial detoxification from contaminated sediments at Kesterson Reservoir in Central California. This innovation persuaded the US government to change its plans to create a capped landfill over the Superfund site at the reservoir, instead using his intrinsic bioremediation method on the dewatered sediments at the 1200-acre site. The University of California cited Dr. Frankenberger’s work as one of UC’s greatest 50 research accomplishments during the period from 1983-1989. Since then, federal and state regulatory agencies have adopted intrinsic bioremediation as a viable option in remediation of hundreds of sites containing other hazardous chemicals including solvents, pesticides, and petroleum products.

Dr. Frankenberger has received numerous national awards including election as Fellow in five scientific societies (ASA, SSSA, ASM, AAAS and AIC). He received the American Society of Agronomy Environmental Quality Research Award (1996), the Soil Science Research Award (1997), the Agronomic Research Award (1999), and recognition for being one of the 100 most highly cited researchers worldwide in the area of ecology/environment. During his career he published 240 journal articles and authored or edited 8 books.

In November 2015, Dr. Frankenberger established an Endowed Faculty Professorship in Soil Science at Iowa State University in the Department of Agronomy.

Bill spent his retirement years in Stevensville, Montana with his wife Margaret Beebe-Frankenberger. He leaves behind two sons (Spencer and Grant) and a step-daughter Melanie. He was preceded in death by his son Ryan.

Tags

In Memoriam