Three UB professors were given SUNY's highest award for teaching this week, as they were named Distinguished Professors.
The SUNY Board of Trustees honored Philip T. LoVerde of the School of Medicine, Barry Smith of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Tsu-Teh Soong of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences with the honor.
LoVerde received a bachelors of science degree in Zoology from the University of Michigan in 1968. He received his Masters in Wildlife Management, and then his Masters and doctorate degrees in Epidemiologic Science.
"After I finished my studies in Michigan, I went on Purdue as an assistant professor, and then came to Buffalo as an assistant professor in 1981, and I have been here ever since," LoVerde said.
Today, LoVerde teaches a wide variety of students in a number of different disciplines.
"I teach medical, dental, undergrads and grad students as a team teacher," he said. "I team-teach the sections that deal with parasitology."
LoVerde has been a professor for many years but said his most important contributions have been to the study of parasitology and his research on schistosomiasis.
"I study a particular parasite," LoVerde said. "It causes a disease called schistosomiasis. This is a disease that affects 300 million people. It ranks with tuberculosis and malaria as a major cause of morbidity, which makes people sick and incapacitated."
This disease is not present in the United States, but it is present in South America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, China and the Philippines. It can affect the military and people who travel to these parts of the world, he said.
According to LoVerde, there are a few things UB is doing to aid in the creation of a vaccine to prevent this disease.
"We are trying to identify the drug to understand how it affects humans, and we are trying to figure out how humans respond to the parasite," he said. "We have studies ongoing in Brazil and collaborative studies in Israel and Egypt."
According to LoVerde, they are very close to coming up with a vaccine. They are going to test the vaccine on baboons, and then hopefully perform human clinical trials.
The process of being named a distinguished professor takes a long time, according to Barry Smith, another of this year's honorees.
It involves two sets of interviews and letters from external experts, Smith said. UB collects one set and SUNY's central administration in Albany collects the other.
Smith has worked on ontology since 1975. His current focus is the construction of reference ontology for biomedical informatics.
"I have taught a wide variety of courses, from a course on philosophical aspects of Bill Clinton to a course on philosophical aspects of terrorism, and even a course on the meaning of life," Smith said.
Smith has taught many classes in ontology, which is the branch of philosophy that deals with the meaning of existence and relationships between different entities.
"Recently I have been teaching courses in applied ontology, which means showing how philosophical ideas can be of use to people outside philosophy, for instance to geographers, medical researchers or biologists," said Smith.
Soong said he is not sure how he was nominated for this honor but said he thinks it has to do with his work in structures.
Soong went for an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Dayton in Ohio. He then went on to get his masters and doctoral degrees in engineering science at Purdue. He has been at UB since the early 1960s.
"I'm in structures - how to design and develop and make structures safer against environment environmental loads such as earthquakes, winds and other events," said Soong.
He currently teaches structural engineering and earthquake engineering courses, and works at the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research.
"Specifically I am on a team to develop better protective systems for structure against earthquakes all over the world," Soong said. "We do a lot of work with Italy, Japan, Germany, China and Korea."
