Four NC State Faculty Will Receive Prestigious Holladay Medals

The North Carolina State University Board of Trustees will award the Alexander Quarles Holladay Medal for Excellence to four faculty members in recognition of their outstanding careers at NC State. The Holladay Medal is the highest honor bestowed on a faculty member by the trustees and the university.

This year’s honorees are Dr. William R. Atchley, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor of Genetics and Statistics in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; Dr. B. Jayant Baliga, Distinguished University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering; Meredith Davis, Alumni Distinguished Graduate Professor of graphic design in the College of Design; and Dr. Fred Gould, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor of Entomology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

The Holladay Medal is named for Col. Alexander Quarles Holladay, the university’s first president. It recognizes the contributions of faculty members in teaching, research and service. Winners receive a medal and a framed certificate, and their names are inscribed on a plaque in the NC State Faculty Senate chambers.

Atchley has served NC State for 25 years, after joining the faculty as head of the Department of Genetics in 1986. He has been a pioneer in the field of computational biology which integrates theory and methodology from statistics, mathematics, computer sciences and molecular biology to solve complex biological problems.  He is widely recognized as one of the founders of the fields of experimental systematics and developmental quantitative genetics. Atchley is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award from Germany and was recently an Distinguished International Professor at the Chinese Academy of Science.  Atchley is a 2011 recipient of the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the highest honor the governor of North Carolina can bestow on a citizen.

Baliga has served NC State for 22 years, and is the founder of the Power Semiconductor Research Center (PSRC), an internationally recognized center for education in power semiconductors. He invented the insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT), which is pervasively used in consumer, industrial, lighting, medical, transportation, defense, and renewable power generation applications worldwide. The energy efficiency improvements achieved using the IGBT have saved consumers over $3 trillion while reducing worldwide carbon emissions by over 30 trillion pounds. Baliga has authored 16 books, published 500 scholarly papers, and founded four successful start-up companies. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, recipient of the O. Max Gardner Award, and was inducted into the Electronic Design Engineering Hall of Fame in 2010.

Davis has served NC State for 22 years, 19 of them as director of graduate programs in graphic design, 10 as a department head and 4 as director of the PhD program in design. Her research focuses on the application of design thinking to teaching and learning in other subject areas in K-12 schools. She revised NC State’s master’s program in graphic design, which is now ranked #2 nationally among public universities, and has developed programs for the departments of education in Wisconsin, Michigan, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. Davis is a fellow and national medalist of the American Institute for Graphic Arts, and has served as president of the Graphic Design Education Association, president of the American Center for Design, and on the board of directors of the American Institute of Graphic Design.

Gould has served NC State for 32 years. His research focuses on using genetics to develop novel strategies for decreasing damage by agricultural pests and decreasing the spread of insect-vectored human disease like malaria or dengue fever by manipulating the genomes of the pests in ways that would suppress their wild populations or prevent them from spreading disease. Gould has authored more than 180 papers and has worked with numerous government and non-governmental agencies to develop policy relevant to ecologically and evolutionarily sustainable use of transgenic crops. Most recently, Gould has developed an academic program in the new field of genetic pest management, which hopes to prepare a new generation of researchers for the scientific and social challenges that will face agriculture and human health in the 21^st century.

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