Three named SUNY Distinguished professors

UB faculty members Anthony Campagnari, Gary Giovino and John Richard have been named SUNY Distinguished Professors, the highest faculty rank in the SUNY system.

They were among 18 SUNY faculty members appointed to the distinguished professor ranks by the SUNY Board of Trustees at its meeting on March 20.

The rank of distinguished professor is an order above full professorship and has three co-equal designations: distinguished professor, distinguished service professor and distinguished teaching professor.

Campagnari, Giovino and Richard were all named Distinguished Professors in recognition of their international prominence and distinguished reputations within their chosen fields. According to SUNY, “this distinction is attained through significant contributions to the research literature or through artistic performance or achievement in the case of the arts. The candidate’s work must be of such character that the individual’s presence will tend to elevate the standards of scholarship of colleagues both within and beyond these persons’ academic fields.”

“We are very proud that three of our exceptional faculty members have been appointed to the highest rank in SUNY,” said Charles F. Zukoski, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. “This distinction confirms that UB faculty are among the best in the world and that they have a tremendous impact through their research, scholarship and teaching.”

Anthony Campagnari, senior associate dean for research and graduate education, and professor of microbiology and immunology, and medicine in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, is an international leader in the discovery and treatment of infectious diseases. He is arguably one of the world’s experts in the pathogenesis of the Gram-negative bacteria associated with otitis media — or middle ear infections.

His group was the first to show that antimicrobial photodynamic therapy elicits bactericidal activity versus Moraxella catarrhalis biofilms, a discovery that could change the paradigm for treatment of otitis media. His team also developed a novel mouse model to provide new insights into secondary bacterial pneumonia caused by Staphylococcus aureus.

Campagnari’s research — funded continuously for more than 28 years by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. Department of Defense and the Office of Naval Research, as well as industry and private foundations — has led to 80 peer-reviewed publications, eight book chapters and five U.S. patents.

A UB faculty member since 1996, Campagnari is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. He is a recipient of the UB Sustained Achievement Award from the Exceptional Scholar Program (2002), the UB Visionary Innovator Award (2008), the UB Inventor and Entrepreneur Award (2009), the UB Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring Award (2015), the Stockton Kimball Award (2016) and the Distinguished Biomedical Alumnus Award from the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (2017), and the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities (2017).

Gary Giovino, professor of community health and health behavior and associate dean for faculty affairs in the School of Public Health and Health Professions, is an internationally renowned authority on tobacco use and nicotine.

His work focuses on measuring and understanding tobacco use and dependence among youth and adults in the United States. Internationally, he facilitated development of the Global Tobacco Surveillance System, a major public health effort whose partners include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization. He also led a major tobacco use study, published in 2012, that surveyed more than 435,000 respondents representing 3 billion people from 16 countries and revealed an urgent need for policy change in low- and middle-income nations.

Other research interests include the influence of adverse childhood experiences and suboptimal nutrition on tobacco use, as well as the use of lifestyle factors, such as exercise and nutrition, to facilitate smoking cessation.

In 2015, Giovino was appointed to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, which advises the FDA in its regulation of tobacco products. He previously worked at the Office on Smoking and Health at the CDC, serving as chief of the epidemiology branch. He also served for 15 years on the New York State Tobacco Use Prevention and Control Program Advisory Board, helping to guide policy in New York State.

A UB faculty member since 2006, Giovino is a member of the inaugural class of fellows of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco.

John Richard, UB Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry, has studied a range of problems related to the mechanisms for organic reactions and for their catalysis by enzymes — proteins that sustain life by enormously accelerating the rate of chemical reactions in the cell. He is currently working to unite seemingly disparate theories on how enzymes achieve their rate accelerations.

A member of the UB faculty since 1993, Richard has edited 15 books and authored more than 225 publications, with 95 appearing in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the society’s flagship publication. He has served as editor and editorial board member for several scientific journals, and as a chair for numerous scientific conferences. He has presented more than 225 talks and invited lectures at universities, and at national and international conferences in more than 20 countries. These talks served as the springboard for many collaborative studies.

Richard has received numerous awards, including the 1988 First Award from the NIH and the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) 2007 Special Creativity Award. He was elected a fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in 2014 in recognition of his long service to the society, which included a six-year stint as secretary of its Division of Biological Chemistry. The ACS Western New York chapter presented him the 2009 Jacob F. Schoellkopf Award for his service to the chemistry and chemical engineering fields.

The NIH has funded Richard’s work since 1988, and he has received additional funding from the NSF and the Petroleum Research Fund.