Jeannine Durdik Named Associate Dean for Research in Fulbright College

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. Interim Dean William A. Schwab has appointed Jeannine Durdik associate dean for research in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas. She will be responsible for mentoring faculty members and helping them obtain funding from various agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense.

“Professor Durdik brings years of experience in grant writing and success in gaining significant funding to the position,” said Schwab. “She is on a peer review committee for the National Institutes of Health and has been an ad hoc reviewer for major professional journals and national grant panels. In addition, her research is currently receiving major funding from the National Institutes of Health.”

Durdik, a professor and vice-chair in the biological sciences department, came to the University of Arkansas in 1994 from the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver, where she was an assistant professor of medicine. She was a postdoctoral student at Brandeis University in Massachusetts after she earned her doctorate from Johns Hopkins University.

In addition to the master teacher and outstanding mentor awards she has won from Fulbright College, Durdik is the recipient of postdoctoral fellowships from the American Cancer Society and the Cancer Research Institute. In her research, Durdik focuses on the aging of the immune system. Once people are over 65, they cannot make new immune responses so attempts to vaccinate them do not work. She and her colleagues are trying to understand why so that vaccinations can be made for the aging.

“I recall that my doctoral committee had to sign off that I had ‘contributed to the knowledge of the world,’ ” Durdik said. “As associate dean for research, I intend to help our faculty make that contribution. That little word ‘for’ carries the meaning of my job and defines my priorities. The work of scientists is ultimately for the world, for everything from the effort to preserve rare species to mapping the human genome and creating new scientific devices using completely novel, complex nanostructures.”

Durdik believes that multidisciplinary research is often very creative and can advance scientific knowledge swiftly, so she intends to reach out across campus and bring together interdisciplinary teams. She also plans to work with both private and federal funding agencies.