An awards program honoring rising stars of the UC Davis faculty marks its third year with the announcement of five 2002-'03 Chancellor's Fellows.

The program was established in 2000 to honor the achievements of outstanding faculty members early in their careers. Recipients are recognized for their accomplishments and the influence their work has had on fellow researchers in their fields as well as the potential they show.

Honorees each receive a one-time award of $25,000 to be used for research, teaching or service activities and can use the title "Chancellor's Fellow" for five years.

The new fellows will be honored during a Nov. 18 reception at the chancellor's residence.

Academic Senate members from all schools and colleges are eligible for the award, but nominees must be within three years of having received their tenure. In addition, nominees must have been on the Davis campus for a year prior to the June deadline for nominations.

The Chancellor's Fellowship program is jointly supported by the Chancellor's Club and the Annual Fund of UC Davis. Nominees are evaluated by a committee of their peers.

The honorees are:

Fred Chong, associate professor of computer science

In nominating Fred Chong for the award, computer science chair Dan Gusfield described him as one of the department's "super-stars," an innovative and creative teacher with a growing international reputation in his research area, computer architecture.

With collaborators at MIT and UC Berkeley, Chong was recently awarded a $3 million grant to design a quantum computer. Using the behavior of single atoms and molecules, a quantum computer could quickly answer problems that would take a conventional computer millions of years to solve.

Chong and his graduate students have also pioneered a concept called "Active Pages," which allows calculations to take place in computer memory. Their research showed that Active Pages could be used to make conventional computer workstations run applications hundreds of times faster.

Alan Conley, associate professor of veterinary medicine

Alan Conley is an authority on reproductive endocrinology, especially the control of steroids, including estrogens, progestins and androgens.

He has made important contributions to the understanding of how estrogens are synthesized.

Colleagues note that since joining the UC Davis faculty in 1995, Conley has had an extremely productive research program, publishing his research in the most well-respected scientific journals, training highly qualified graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and serving on review panels for national competitive grants programs.

"We all also know Dr. Conley as a serious scientist, but one with a twinkle in his eye and a ready laugh," wrote veterinary professor Bob Bon-Durant.

"His prodigious work ethic infects his lab, and permeates out into the halls to other department faculty."

Rick Robins, associate professor of psychology

• social psychologist specializing in the study of personality and the self, Rick Robins pursues two avenues of research: how self-esteem develops over time and how the nature of personality affects life outcomes.

He has already established a national and international reputation, with his person-centered approach to personality forming the basis of studies in several European countries, said Steven Sheffrin, dean of the Division of Social Sciences.

Robins serves on three editorial boards of his field's top journals and his research has been consistently supported by grants from the National Institute for Mental Health. An esteemed teacher, he also has worked with a large number of undergraduates in research projects and is a co-principal investigator on a major training grant at the graduate level.

"Professor Robins is an outstanding young researcher who has been amazingly prolific and has already made important impacts in his field," Sheffrin said.

Catherine Robson, associate professor of English

Catherine Robson has distinguished herself as a brilliant and original expert on Victorian literature and culture.

The centerpiece of her achievement is Men in Wonderland: The Lost Girlhood of the Victorian Gentleman, a "stunning first book" published last year, said Dean Elizabeth Langland of the Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies. "The book is brilliantly argued and breathtaking in its originality," says Langland, herself a Victorian literature scholar.

Robson is also credited with publishing a series of highly accomplished articles in top-tier, influential academic journals and with being "among the most distinguished" teachers in her department and division, Langland said.

Robson also has been a committed campus citizen, serving on the English department's committee that wrote an academic plan to guide the unit's recruitment of new faculty, its Graduate Committee, the Women's Studies Pro-gram Committee and the Academic Sen-ate Rules and Jurisdiction Committee. She also regularly participates in the UC Santa Cruz-based Dickens Project, bringing the program to UC Davis two years ago and again this year.

Sharon Strauss, associate professor of evolution and ecology

Sharon Strauss, whose research focuses on how organisms are influenced both ecologically and evolutionarily by the complex communities to which they belong, has "established herself as an international leader in plant evolutionary ecology and as a campus leader in graduate education," said Michael Turelli, chair of her section in the Division of Biological Sciences.

Her work, he said, has "set the research agenda for other plant evolutionary ecologists ... (a) more integrative approach to research on plant-insect interactions."

Strauss' record of professional and university service is extensive. Currently, she is Program Director in Ecology for the National Science Foundation, the premier funding agency for basic research in her field.

At UC Davis, she has analyzed hiring patterns of women for the University-wide Faculty Recruitment Committee and served on the campus's Work-Life Balance Committee. Strauss was one of the faculty members who recently won a $2.6 million NSF training grant for graduate students.