Research Fast Facts

FY 2011 Dashboard of Research Metrics

Recent OU Rankings

May 17, 2011

Maureen Taylor, professor in Strategic Communications in the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, is the 2010 Pathfinder Award winner from the Institute of Public Relations. The highest academic award bestowed by the organization, it recognizes a program of scholarly research that significantly contributes to the body of knowledge and practice of public relations.

The leadership program of the K20 Center, an education research and development center, recently ranked in the top three nationally out of 50 state programs funded and evaluated by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The program seeks to develop school and district leaders for systemic, substantive changes impacting student learning.

Michael R. Abraham, a professor of chemistry, received the 2010 American Chemical Society award for Achievement in Research for the Teaching and Learning of Chemistry. The award recognizes contributions to research that have led to the improvement of chemistry education.

The Entrepreneurship program offered by the Price College of Business was ranked in the top 15 nationally by Entrepreneur magazine in association with The Princeton Review.

Five OU faculty members were named Fulbright Scholars for the 2010-11 year, placing OU in first place, along with the University of Nebraska, in leading the Big 12 in scholars for the year. The scholars are: Anthony Sterling Roath of Marketing and Supply Chain Management, Rita Keresztesi of English, Kathryn Jenson White of Journalism, Rozmeri Basic of Art History, and Mihajlo-Misha Nedeljkovich of Film and Video Studies.

Phononic Devices, a firm whose products are based on the research of OU Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Patrick McCann, was one of only 37 applicants selected as an Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy grantee from the 3,700 proposals received.  Phononic’s work in thermoelectrics was highlighted in the technology blog GigaOM and the New York Times as one of “10 Companies to Watch” out of ARPA-E.

The National Academy of Kinesiology ranked the department of Health and Exercise Science doctoral program, which only began in 2002, in the top 15 in the country for 2010.

Two faculty members in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department, Lei Ding and John N. Jiang, won National Science Foundation CAREER awards in 2010. CAREER awards are the most prestigious awards from the NSF supporting junior faculty in the sciences and engineering.

Linda Zagzebski, Kingfisher College Chair of Philosophy of Religion and Ethics and George Lynn Cross Research Professor of Philosophy at OU, was awarded a fellowship from The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for her project “Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief.” The fellowship s awarded to individuals who have shown “exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.”

A truck-mounted Doppler radar partially funded by the National Science Foundation will allow researchers at the OU School of Meteorology to go mobile as they study tornadoes and other rapidly evolving meteorological phenomena in the field. Howard Bluestein, OU School of Meteorology professor, recently received the rapid-scan, high-resolution, polarimetric radar. The new mobile radar cost $1.25 million; the NSF provided $875,000 and OU provided $375,000 in cost-sharing funds.