Michael Freitag, professor of biochemistry and biophysics, received the Milton Harris Award in Basic Research for his outstanding research on how chromatin proteins shape eukaryotic genomes and epigenetic mechanisms of regulating DNA transcription through the use of filamentous fungi model systems.
Freitag has published more than 280 papers in prestigious journals, such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Genome Research, Science and Nature; he has published 66 papers and received more than 8,500 citations for his work in the last 10 years.
Colleagues describe Freitag as among "the most respected scientists in the field of fungal biology."
"Since Michael’s arrival at OSU in 2006, he has built a fantastically productive and internationally recognized basic research program," said Andrew Karplus, Head of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics.
Freitag is renowned for his 2010 work pioneering the “ChIP-seq” approach in filamentous fungi. ChIP-seq is a high-throughput approach to obtain genome-wide maps showing which parts of a cell’s DNA make direct contacts with proteins. As one nominator noted, this work “made his lab a training ground for researchers from the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia to learn ChIP-seq and its computationally intensive analyses.”
Corinne Manogue, professor of physics, was honored with the F.A. Gilfilan Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Science. The Gilfillan Award honors a faculty member in the College whose scholarship and scientific accomplishments have extended over a substantial period of time.
An outstanding theoretical physicist, Manogue's research focuses on quantum gravity and she played a key role in the early work relating division algebras and supersymmetry. She currently studies the use of octonians—a type of algebra—to study fundamental particles.
Manogue is a teacher and scholar of the highest level as evidenced by her prestigious national and university teaching awards, including the American Association of Physics Teachers' Excellence in Undergraduate Physics Teaching Award. She is also the leader and driving force behind OSU's revolutionary Paradigms in Physics Project, which trains undergraduates how to think like physicists. Manogue is a Fellow of both the American Physical Society and the American Association of Physics Teachers.
She has pioneered physics education research and written articles on how to help students make the difficult transition from lower-division to upper-division physics. Her work has been generously funded by the NSF and has trained multiple students and postdocs who have gone on to become leaders in Physics Education Research.
"Corinne has helped to make discipline-based education research in science a highly respected endeavor that is changing the way we teach science in universities," said Heidi Schellman, Head of the Department of Physics.
