Florida State University has bestowed the title of Distinguished Research Professor on four outstanding faculty members for their exemplary research productivity and contributions to their fields.
“Outstanding national and international scholarly output and creativity is a cornerstone of a thriving research enterprise,” said Vice President for Research Stacey S. Patterson. “I am thrilled to be able to recognize four individuals as Distinguished Research Professors this year who model exceptional performance and extraordinary contributions to their fields.”
The Distinguished Research Professor award recognizes outstanding research and/or creative activity of eligible Florida State University faculty currently at the rank of full professor.
Recipients receive a one-time award of $10,000 and can use the title Distinguished Research Professor throughout their tenure at FSU. The title is only surpassed by that of the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor Award.
This year’s recipients, who were honored at the university’s spring faculty awards ceremony, are:
Paolo Aluffi, Mathematics, College of Arts and Sciences
Aluffi came to Florida State University in 1991 as an assistant professor, rising through the ranks to full professor in 2000. He is also a visitor in mathematics at the California Institute of Technology. His research is in the field of algebraic geometry, and he has been funded by the Simons Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the National Security Agency. He is a managing editor of the Journal of Singularities and has given invited talks around the world. He received FSU’s Developing Scholar Award in 1998 and served as the first Marion Bradley Brennan Professor of Mathematics. He earned his doctorate from Brown University in 1987.
Robin Goodman, English, College of Arts and Sciences
Goodman came to Florida State University in 2001 as an assistant professor of English and quickly established her research agenda in examining how public life and its institutions can be vitalized through the study of feminism, literature, film and critical theory. She previously received the university’s Developing Scholar Award in 2009 and served as a Global Fellow at University of California, Los Angeles in 2003-2004. She received her doctorate in comparative literature from New York University in 1997.
Linda Rinaman, Psychology, College of Arts and Sciences
Rinaman has been a faculty member at Florida State University since 2017 after spending the majority of her academic career at the University of Pittsburgh. Her work examines the way animals’ neural systems help them adapt to emotional and physiological stress. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health for more than 30 years and has served as a member of the FSU Faculty Senate and as a member of the Animal Care and Use Committee.
Ingo Ludwig Wiedenhoever, Physics, College of Arts and Sciences
Wiedenhoever is the director of the John D. Fox Laboratory and a professor of nuclear physics. He received his doctorate in nuclear physics from the University of Cologne in 1995 and was a postdoctoral fellow at Argonne National Laboratory and an assistant professor at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory in East Lansing, Michigan. He moved to Florida State in 2001 and became a full professor in 2012. His research group is working to study Big Bang and supernova nucleosynthesis while also actively developing detection systems for different experimental setups of the laboratory. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and received FSU’s Developing Scholar Award in 2010.
