Nineteen University of Chicago faculty members have received distinguished service professorships or named professorships, including five in the Biological Sciences Division. The University's named professorships were established to recognize exceptional achievements in research, scholarship, and contributions to the academic field. Distinguished Service Professorships form a subset of the named chairs given to the most distinguished members of the faculty.
Brent Doiron has been named as the first Heinrich Kluver Professor in the Departments of Neurobiology, Statistics, and the College. This new professorship honors Kluver, an experimental psychologist and neurologist who made seminal contributions to the understanding of the relationships between the brain and behavior.
Doiron’s research focuses on a combination of nonlinear dynamics and statistical mechanics, with an emphasis on the genesis and transfer of variability in neural circuits. He has developed core theoretical insights that have made contributions to both neural coding and network learning. Throughout his research career, he has collaborated with experimental colleagues who work in the electrosensory, olfactory, somatosensory, auditory, and visual systems.
Doiron is Director of the Grossman Center for Quantitative Biology and Human Behavior, and Chair of the Committee on Computational Neuroscience. His awards include an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Neuroscience, a Vannevar Bush faculty fellowship award, and a Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award from the University of Pittsburgh.
Bana Jabri has been named as the Sarah and Harold Lincoln Thompson Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Pathology, Pediatrics, and the College.
Jabri’s research focuses on celiac disease, autoimmune disorders and inflammatory bowel disease. Her laboratory’s overall interest is in mucosal and innate immunity, and more specifically the interplay between the immune system and mucosal surfaces. They have a particular interest in intestinal inflammatory diseases, with a focus on celiac disease and inflammatory bowel disease. Using a range of molecular and cellular approaches, including the study of signal transduction, cellular immunology and genetic engineering of mouse models, to her group studies the developmental and functional aspects of immune function in the mouse and human intestine.
Jabri is Chair of the Committee on Immunology and Vice Chair for Research for the Department of Medicine. Her awards include the international William. K Warren Jr. Prize for Basic Research in celiac disease, the Lloyd Mayer Mucosal Immunology Prize, and the Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Education, and she is a member of the Association of American Physicians.
John Maunsell has been named as the Albert D. Lasker Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Neurobiology and the College.
Maunsell’s research is aimed at understanding how neuronal signals in visual cerebral cortex generate perceptions and guide behavior. His group’s approach is to record from individual neurons in trained, behaving animals while they perform visual tasks. Much of that work is directed at understanding how paying attention to specific visual targets affects the way that they are represented in the brain, and how changes in the sensory representation caused by attention relate to changes in perception and behavior.
Maunsell is Director of the Neuroscience Institute. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science, the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences, and has received awards from the McKnight Foundation and Office of Naval Research.
Monica Peek has been named as the Ellen H. Block Professor for Health Justice in the Department of Medicine.
Peek’s research pursues health equity and social justice, with a focus on promoting equitable doctor/patient relationships among racial minorities, integrating the medical and social needs of patients, and addressing healthcare discrimination and structural racism that impacts health outcomes, including diabetes, COVID-19, and many more chronic conditions. She has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed research papers and publications and has served as the principal investigator of multiple grants from institutions such as NIH/NIDDK, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, and the Merck Foundation.
She is the Associate Director of the Chicago Center for Diabetes Translation Research, the Executive Medical Director of Community Health Innovation, and the Director of Research and Associate Director at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. She is also a Senior Associate Editor for the journal Health Services Research, a member of the Executive Council for the American Diabetes Association, a member of the international advisory board for Physicians for Human Rights and a board member for the Greater Chicago Food Depository. Dr. Peek has won numerous awards for community service and advocacy. She was named one of the “Top 40 under 40” in Chicago and has been ranked among Chicago’s Top Female Physicians.
Shyam Prabhakaran has been named as the James Nelson and Anna Louise Raymond Professor in the Department of Neurology.
Prabhakaran is a vascular neurologist and epidemiologist and an internationally recognized leader in stroke research and treatment. He has led projects focused on uncovering the underlying causes of stroke using novel imaging techniques, improving stroke care delivery in prehospital and hospital settings, and optimizing stroke recovery. His research explores intersections between individual stroke risk factors and biomarkers, community health disparities, and learning health systems and uses computational and engineering methods to design and implement multi-level interventions to improve stroke care and patient outcomes. A powerful advocate for improving disparities in stroke care, he has been instrumental in reorganizing ambulance transports for acute stroke patients in Chicago and improving access to proven time-sensitive stroke treatments for Chicago residents.
He is Chair of the Department of Neurology, an elected fellow of the American Heart Association and the American Neurological Association, and principal investigator of the Chicago Regional Coordinating Center in the National Institutes of Health’s Stroke Trials Network.
