Fedoroff, Knell, and Robinett Receive 2007 Distinguished Service Awards

Nina Fedoroff, Susan Knell, and Richard Robinett have been honored as the recipients of the 2007 Eberly College of Science Distinguished Service Award. This award was established in 1979 to recognize individuals who have made exceptional leadership and service contributions to the college. These three individuals received their awards during the annual Eberly College of Science Awards Dinner held in October 2007.

Nina Fedoroff joined the Penn State science faculty in 1995 and is currently on leave from her position as Evan Pugh Professor of Life Sciences and the Verne M. Willaman Chair in Life Sciences in the Department of Biology. She is serving as the Science and Technology Adviser to the Secretary of State. Fedoroff is one of the nation's leading researchers in life sciences and biotechnology. She earned a bachelor's degree in biology and chemistry, summa cum laude, from Syracuse University in 1966 and a doctoral degree in molecular biology from the Rockefeller University in 1972. Following graduation from Rockefeller, Fedoroff held a post-doctoral fellowship position at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, where she successfully sequenced one of the first animal genes to be sequenced and later became a staff scientist, turning her attention to plant research and cloning some of the first plant genes. It was in 1978 that she also became a faculty member in the Department of Biology at Johns Hopkins University. From 1995 to 2002 at Penn State, Fedoroff served as the Director of the Biotechnology Institute. She also organized and served as the first director of the Life Sciences Consortium, now known as the Huck Institute of the Life Sciences, a seven-college organization devoted to the promotion of multidisciplinary research and teaching in life sciences. In 2002 she was named an Evan Pugh Professor at Penn State and in 2003 she also became a member of the external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute.

In addition to giving many radio and television interviews and lecturing across the globe, Fedoroff has published two books and numerous papers in scientific journals and has served on the board of many prestigious science organizations such as the International Science Foundation. Her contributions to science led to her receiving a 2006 National Medal of Science and the National Institutes of Health Merit Award. Currently, she serves on the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the European Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Microbiology. Fedoroff was appointed to a three-year term as the Science and Technology Advisor to the U. S. Secretary of State in August 2007.

Susan Knell serves as director of the Science Cooperative Education Program and Science International Programs. During her twelve years with the college, Knell continually has strived to identify ways to better serve science students through expanding and improving existing cooperative-education and study-abroad opportunities. She has piloted such new initiatives as the Externship Program in order to involve students in career decision-making early in their scientific careers.

Knell has served on a number of committees at the college and University level, some of which include the International Council, the Education Abroad Advisory Committee, the College Undergraduate Enrollment Management Committee, and the organizing committee for Fall Career Days. She has also served in leadership roles for external cooperative-education organizations such as the Cooperative Education and Internship Association, which awarded her and her colleagues a research grant for investigating differences in learning environments between traditional classroom settings and hands-on cooperative-education environments.

Also awarded a 2007 Distinguished Service Award was Richard Robinett, a professor of physics who has been a Penn State faculty member since 1986. Robinett currently serves the Department of Physics as associate department head, director of undergraduate studies, and director of graduate studies. He advises roughly 140 prospective and declared undergraduate physics majors. Robinett has published more than 115 papers in refereed journals along with two editions of an undergraduate textbook on quantum mechanics.

Robinett's contributions to professional organizations include his serving as an associate editor of the American Journal of Physics and as a member-at-large of the Executive Committee of the American Physical Society Forum on Education. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2003 for his excellence in training and advising undergraduate physics majors. Robinett has been honored with various Penn State awards that include: the Undergraduate Program Leadership Award in 2005; the Undergraduate Student Government Excellence in Advising Award in 2003; the C.I. Noll Award for teaching in 2002; the Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1999; and the Penn State Society of Physics Students Teaching Award. He received his B.A. and Ph.D.degrees from the University of Minnesota, followed by postdoctoral research appointments at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.