From cosmology to Chinese privatization to genomics, five campus scholars will delve even deeper into their areas of discovery -- thanks to some high-level support.

Each year, Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef uses a portion of UC Davis Annual Fund contributions to fund the Chancellor's Fellows awards, which honor outstanding faculty members early in their careers.

The 2004-2005 Chancellor's Fellows are Elizabeth Freeman, Lloyd Knox, Prasad Naik, Sergey Nuzhdin and Li Zhang. The fellows receive $25,000 each to put toward their research, teaching and service activities,. They also can use the title "Chancellor's Fellow" for five years.

The chancellor will host a reception for the new fellows at the chancellor's residence on March 14.

"The accomplishments and the considerable promise of this year's recipients of the Chancellor's Fellows award are so impressive," Vanderhoef said. "They represent the ideals of the academy and are sure to contribute significantly to the campus as their careers progress."

Lloyd Knox

Being selected for the fellowship, said cosmologist Lloyd Knox, stimulated an idea for outreach and recruitment in cosmology, which is the study of the origin, evolution and structure of the universe as a whole.

"Next fall I plan to visit high schools and community colleges to give talks about cosmology," said Knox. "Also I'll tell them about the value of a physics education and the value of a UC Davis physics education in particular."

Knox said he has already spent some of the money to buy nodes for a computer cluster in the Center for Computational Science and Engineering's computing co-operative.

"We will use these computers both for simulation of astrophysical phenomena and for analysis of cosmological data," said Knox. "It's an exciting time now in cosmology because of new detector technologies allowing new kinds of observations, and interesting theoretical issues to tackle."

Knox earned his doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago in 1995 and began at UCDavis in 2000.

Elizabeth Freeman

Elizabeth Freeman is an assistant professor of English. She said she plans on using the fellowship to complete her second book project, Time Binds: Essays on Queer Temporality.

"The money will help me hire research assistants to locate and review experimental films and literary works for the project, buy or rent the films, accumulate a library of works on philosophies of time and history, and update my computer equipment so I can explore multimedia productions," she said.

Freeman may also use funds to publish her current book with a CD-ROM of film clips.

"I am impressed that Davis supports faculty so generously even after tenure," she said, "and extends such significant resources even toward projects in the humanities, where research funding is very difficult to obtain."

Freeman, who came to Davis in 2000, received her doctorate in English from the University of Chicago in 1996.

Li Zhang

Li Zhang is an associate professor of anthropology and the director of the east Asian Studies Program. Of the fellowship, she said, "It was a nice surprise, and I felt deeply honored by the selection. I take it as a sign of encouragement and hope to continue to produce more and better works."

Zhang will use the award money for research trips to China and for two book projects. "It will also make it possible for me to present my current research at several national and international professional conferences," said Zhang.

She is the author of the book, Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space, Power, and Social Networks within China's Floating Population. One of her current book projects is based on housing privatization and the rise of the real estate industry inChina. She also is co-editing a book on privatization and neo-liberalism in China.

Zhang earned her doctorate from Cornell University in 1998 and came to UC Davis in 1998.

Sergey Nuzhdin

Sergey Nuzhdin is an evolutionary biologist and faculty participant in the Genetics and Population Biology graduate groups. His teaching and research interests include molecular evolution, speciation and the population genetics of the Drosophila fly.

"Our lab is actively moving forward genomics studies," said Nuzhdin. "I will most likely invest money into assembling a micro array synthesizer -- a very much needed piece of equipment by the section of ecology and evolution."

He said his research is "pushing in many different directions," from the role of transposable elements in reducing malaria-caused suffering in the world to genetic variations among yeast strains.

"People in the lab are going after the most interesting evolutionary questions," said Nuzhdin, who earned his doctorate in genetics from the Institute of Molecular Genetics in Moscow in 1992 and began at Davis in 1997.

Prasad Naik

Prasad Naik is an associate professor of marketing. He plans to allocate the award money to studying international markets, advertising and marketing across the globe.

"Last year I undertook a study of South East Asia -- Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia -- along with eight MBA students," he said. "Given this award, it is now feasible to visit Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong this year along with two dozen MBA students from the Graduate School of Management at UC Davis."

He credited colleagues, students, friends and family for helping him attract the fellowship. "My sincere thanks to them all," he added.

Naik obtained his doctorate in marketing in 1996 from theUniversity of Florida and his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering in 1984 from theUniversity of Bombay, and a MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. He came to UC Davis in 1996.

The campus has named 32 Chancellor's Fellows since the program began in 2000.