Professor James Weisshaar is among the 10 UW-Madison faculty members who have been appointed to Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) named professorships in 2017.
The awards honor faculty who have made major contributions to the advancement of knowledge, primarily through their research endeavors, but also as a result of their teaching and service activities. This award cannot be conferred more than once to any faculty member.
Award recipients chose the names associated with their professorships. Weisshaar elected to become the Richard J. Burke Professor of Chemistry in honor of his influential high school chemistry teacher. The Weisshaar research group studies the spatiotemporal organization of the transcription and translation machinery in E. coli and the mechanisms by which antimicrobial peptides attack and kill bacteria.
The WARF Named Professorship awards are made possible by the significant research efforts of UW–Madison faculty and staff. Technology arising from UW–Madison research is licensed by WARF to industry. Income from successful licenses is returned to the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education to fund a variety of research activities throughout the divisions on campus, including these awards.