A toast to the following Department of Viticulture and Enology emeriti for their recent awards …

• Carole Meredith, professor — California State Fair’s Wine Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by the fair’s Wine Advisory Task Force.

Meredith was among the early researchers who developed DNA markers for grapes, and then used them to identify the genetic and geographic origins of numerous varieties.

A faculty member since 1980, she oversaw research in grapevine genetics, including the creation of a genome map now used internationally to identify genes that control disease resistance and fruit quality in wine grapes.

Today, she and her husband have a vineyard in the Mount Veeder district of Napa Valley, releasing their wines under the label Lagier Meredith.

• James Wolpert, Cooperative Extension specialist — The American Society for Enology and Viticulture’s Merit Award, the society’s highest honor, in recognition of significant contributions to the field.

Wolpert joined the UC Davis faculty in 1983 and served as department chair for a decade during the planning and development of the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science.

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Professor Marc Schenker will receive an alumni award of merit from the Harvard School of Public Health, where, in 1980, he received a Master’s of Public Health (epidemiology and occupational health).

A letter from the Alumni Awards Committee states that the award presentation is scheduled during the Alumni Centennial Dinner, Nov. 2.

Schenker, a physician, joined the UC Davis faculty in 1983. He is affiliated with the Department of Public Health Sciences (serving as chair, 1995-2007) and the School of Medicine. He focuses on migration and health, occupational and environmental health, pulmonary disease, and global health research and teaching.

He holds three directorships: Occupational and Environmental Health, since 1983; Western Center for Agricultural Health and Safety, since 1990; and Migration and Health Research Center, since 2009. He has been co-director of the Center of Expertise on Migration and Health since 2009.

And, since last year, he has held a position in University Outreach and International Programs, as associate vice provost for outreach and engagement, at the local, state and international levels.

Schenker was a pre-med student at UC Berkeley, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1969, then received his M.D. at UC San Francisco in 1973.

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Professor Emeritus Stefano Varese of the Department of Native American Studies recently addressed the annual congress of the Latin American Studies Association as the recipient of the 2013 LASA-Oxfam America Martin Diskin Memorial Lectureship award.

In his lecture, “Eulogy of Utopian Praxis: From Dystopian Reality to the Research of Hope,” Varese said: “I often have asked myself this question: Can we abandon dystopia? When did we start to neglect utopia and assume dystopia?

“When did we begin to take for granted that the world we live in is irremediably unchangeable, that it is a good world the way it is, with a few hundred thousand people living in imperial luxury and billions of human beings (and other beings) barely surviving or becoming extinct?” Read the complete lecture.

Charlie Hale, professor of anthropology at the University of Texas, introduced his former colleague. Hale was an assistant professor at UC Davis from 1990 to 1995, during which time he and Varese were prominent, along with Professor Emeritus Carol Smith, in founding the university’s Hemispheric Institute on the Americas.

“What an extraordinary record of scholarly ‘acompañamiento,’ of ‘witness to sovereignty’ (to borrow the title of Stefano’s most recent book) these four decades have produced,” Hale said of Varese’s academic career. Read the complete introduction.

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Professor Durham Ken Giles is among 13 new fellows of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. The induction ceremony took place in July during the society’s annual international meeting, held this year in Kansas City, Mo.

He earned the honor for his “insightful research, teaching and outreach related to engineering design and development for agricultural mechanization, especially in the technical area of spraying and materials handling,” the society declared on its website.

It further states: “Giles is considered a worldwide leading expert in agricultural chemical application and is recognized as one of the most innovative engineers in academia.”

Giles joined the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering in 1987. His research honors include more than 20 patents.

He has been a member of the ASABE for 34 years and serves today as associate editor of two of the society’s publications, Transactions of the ASABE and Applied Engineering in Agriculture.

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Book awards …

• Drew Halfmann, associate professor, Department of Sociology — Distinguished Scholarship Award from the Pacific Sociological Association, for Doctors and Demonstrators: How Political Institutions Shape Abortion Law in the United States, Britain and Canada. More about the book.

• Donald Palmer, professor of organizational behavior, Graduate School of Management — Best Book Award from the Social Issues in Management Division, Academy of Management, for Normal Organizational Wrongdoing: A Critical Analysis of Theories of Misconduct in and by Organizations. More about the book.

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Kyle Montgomery, research scientist and lab manager in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been named to the Grads of the Last Decade, or GOLD, Committee of the Electron Devices Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

He works in the Woodall Research Group with Distinguished Professor Jerry M. Woodall.

Montgomery completed a doctorate in electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University in August 2012. He received a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Houston in 2004 and then spent three years developing and building rugged electrical component test systems for the oilfield service company Schlumberger Limited.

His research interests today include the development of novel semiconductor alloys for optimal performance in visible wavelength LEDs and solar cells, as well as investigating high-speed, high-power heterojunction bipolar transistors.

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Dateline UC Davis welcomes news of faculty and staff awards, for publication in Laurels. Send information to dateline@ucdavis.edu.

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