Distinguished Professor

Austin
Photo by Heather Hill

"She has helped move nursing science away from a national preoccupation--largely with behavioral models--to the study of the interface between the behavioral and biomedical in understanding complex chronic health problems."

--Angela McBride, dean of the IU School of Nursing

Joan Kessner Austin

School of Nursing, IUPUI

The field in which Joan Austin now works is much different than the one she entered, in part because of the way she has helped redefine it.

Austin was the first scientist to study the experience of childhood epilepsy--beginning with the initial diagnosis--and to examine its impact on both child and family. Her longitudinal studies comparing children who have epilepsy with those who have asthma found that children with epilepsy have more behavioral problems and a lower quality of life. Austin has examined the reasons for those differences, looking at aspects of epilepsy itself and the treatments for it, as well as the reactions of families and society to the condition.

In 1993, she became the first behavioral scientist and first nurse to receive the prestigious Milken Medical Foundation Award for outstanding research in epilepsy.

"Joan is a magnificent and unselfish colleague," wrote IUPUI psychology professor Gary Bond. "Often highly productive faculty members pay a price for their accomplishments, in terms of collegiality. Nothing could be further from the truth in Joan's case. She always has time for others, she is kind and giving, unfailingly cheerful and never lets her enormously high level of effort interfere with the day-to-day interactions and contacts with others."

Distinguished Professor

Novotny
Photo by Heather Hill

"He is absolutely one of the most tenacious, stubborn, relentless scientists I know."

--Fred Regnier, professor of chemistry, Purdue University

Milos V. Novotny

Department of Chemistry, IU Bloomington

Over the course of a career that spans three decades--all of it spent at IU--Milos Novotny has proven himself a true student of the mysteries of the natural world. He has explored these mysteries by using analytical chemistry to investigate the molecular bases of disease and of communication.

Novotny has, for instance, profiled the way certain chemicals are generated by diabetes and identified the mechanisms by which they injure tissue. He has also devoted many years to investigating the chemical mediators animals use to communicate. It has long been known that these chemicals, called pheromones, can induce behavioral changes in insects. Indeed, insect pheromones have become the focus of industrial activity because of the promise they offer in controlling insect populations. But it was Novotny's work that first extended the concept of chemical communication to animals. More than 20 years ago, he identified compounds responsible for marking behavior, regulating the estrous cycle and initiating puberty in rodents and larger vertebrates.

Novotny's former and current students argue that, despite his impressive array of research accomplishments, he has made his greatest contribution to analytical chemistry as an educator who continues to foster new generations of scientists.

Graduates of the Novotny research group hold academic positions in universities around the world. Indeed, many of his international scientific colleagues note that not only was their graduate work made possible by breakthroughs Novotny had made, but so was the research of their peers and mentors.