Four faculty members in the College of Letters & Science have been appointed to Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation named professorships.
The appointments include $75,000 in research support from WARF over five years. Overall, six UW-Madison faculty members received WARF named professorships.
The L&S recipients are:
Bunn
Henry T. Bunn, Glynn Ll. Isaac Professor of African Paleoanthropology, focuses on the biological and behavioral evolution of humankind in Africa — particularly the evolution of human diet and the foraging and social behavior related to the quest for food.
For the past nine years he has served as co-director of the Olduvai Paleoanthropology and Paleoecology Project, and is now developing a related project at Olduvai in Tanzania and at nearby Laetoli.
Harackiewicz
Judith M. Harackiewicz, Paul Pintrich Professor of Psychology, studies goals, competition and performance evaluation in academic and athletic contexts.
Her research into promoting motivation found that a simple intervention led to high school students taking more math and science courses in high school, and she is testing ways to promote interest and performance in foundational college biology courses that serve as a gateway to biomedical careers.
Reps
Thomas W. Reps, J. Barkley Rosser Professor of Computer Sciences, focuses on program analysis and verification, addressing one of the most important technological issues faced by society: ensuring that the software that surrounds us behaves correctly.
One of his notable contributions is the development of an algorithm used in Microsoft's SLAM tool for identifying bugs in device drivers — bugs that once caused over 85 percent of crashes in Windows.
Wolf
Kirsten Wolf, Kim Nilsson Professor of Scandinavian Studies, studies Old Norse-Icelandic language and literature, focusing on cognitive linguistics.
She is co-editor of the field’s most popular reference book —Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia— author of a textbook on the Vikings, and has done pioneering work on Icelandic-Canadian literature.