February Faculty and Staff Features

Yuichi Motai, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, VCU School of Engineering

Motai has received a $400,000 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, one of the foundation’s most prestigious awards, which is given to faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research.

Through the five-year grant, titled “CAREER: Engineering Data-intensive Prediction and Classification for Medical Testbeds with Nonlinear, Distributed and Interdisciplinary Approaches,” Motai will collaborate with medical physics experts at the VCU Massey Cancer Center and radiology experts at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston to advance colon cancer treatment and diagnosis through the application of sensory intelligence.

Motai and his colleagues have proposed an adaptive tracking method that may be used on soft tissue tumors. When this tracking method is used, radiosurgery systems may be able to maintain precise targeting of the tumor using a motion tracking system.

According to Motai, the successful development of the proposed dynamic classification method may substantially advance the clinical implementation of cancer screening, promote the early diagnosis of colon cancer and lead to an improved screening rate and reduce the mortality rate of colon cancer.

Gurpreet Dhillon, Ph.D., professor of information systems, School of Business

Dhillon recently received the Silver Core award from the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), an international organization that represents more than 50 national information technology societies from around the world. The Silver Core, which was established in 1974, is one of the organization’s most prestigious awards and goes to individuals for exceptional service to the IFIP.

Jay Albanese, Ph.D., criminologist and professor, L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs
Albanese has been named as this year's recipient of the Gerhard Mueller Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences International Section for outstanding contributions to comparative and international criminal justice. He’ll be recognized during an awards presentation on March 3, 2011 in Toronto.

Albanese, a criminal justice professor in the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, has a variety of research interests, including organized crime, human trafficking, corruption, ethics and criminal justice, white collar crime, gambling and crime and emerging crimes.
The Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, an international association established in 1963 to foster professional and scholarly activities in the field of criminal justice, promotes criminal justice education, research, and policy analysis within the discipline of criminal justice for both educators and practitioners.

Laura E. Wise, Ph.D., Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Wise, postdoctoral research associate in pharmacology and toxicology at Virginia Commonwealth University, is the recipient of a Young Investigator Award from The National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD) – the largest donor-supported organization in the world devoted exclusively to funding scientific research on psychiatric disorders. Wise will use the award to study sex differences in stress-related disorders and the role of the endogenous cannabinoid system. Wise will characterize fear behavior in an animal model to determine how these behaviors are regulated by blocking or facilitating cannabinoid signaling. NARSAD’s Young Investigator Award Program provides support for the most promising young scientists conducting neurobiological research. Basic and/or clinical investigators are supported, but research must be relevant to schizophrenia, major affective disorders or other serious mental illnesses.