The College of Science congratulates UNT Biological Sciences Professor Dr. Pudur Jagadeeswaran on receiving the 2021 University Distinguished Professor Award from the Office of the Provost. The purpose of this award is to recognize tenured faculty at the rank of professor who have achieved a truly exceptional record of creative activities or research productivity and who demonstrate a record of continued extraordinary productivity.

Dr. Jagadeeswaran received his Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Science, where he determined a bacterial 5S RNA sequence. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale. He sequenced human globin gene cluster that led to the discovery of Alu families. He served as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he cloned clotting factor genes and identified hemophilia mutations. He then moved to UTHSCSA as an associate professor and rose to the rank of full professor. He created mouse model of one hemophilia mutation. He then pioneered the zebrafish model to study the genetics of coagulopathies and moved to UNT. Since then, he identified several novel hemostasis genes using zebrafish model.

He published 100 papers, has been funded by NIH and taught medical, graduate, and undergraduate students. He trained 18 postdoctoral fellows, 19 graduate students, and 70 high school, undergraduate, and MD students. He served on the departmental, university, international and national committees, including NIH study section panels. He serves on the editorial board of Blood Coagulation and Fibrinolysis and BBA Molecular Cell Research journals. He organized national and international meetings and chaired in these conferences. He received ASIOA Mario Toppo distinguished scientist and lifetime achievement awards.

Four faculty members in the College of Science received Faculty Excellence Awards this year. "[These awards] speak clearly of our excellence in faculty research and mentoring," said Dean Su Gao. "Each of the awards is well deserved and the result of years of diligent and outstanding work by the faculty members. I offer my heartfelt congratulations to all COS faculty award recipients, and thank all faculty for their unwavering pursuit of excellence in their research and scholarship."

For more information on this year's Salute to Faculty Excellence Award Winners, please visit: https://vpaa.unt.edu/fs/recognition/SFE-award-winners21