"The Baker Awards provide essential support to faculty members engaged in research, scholarship or creative projects," said Rathindra Bose, vice president for research and dean of the Graduate College.  "This funding, in turn, can help them leverage external awards that will advance their research programs to the next state of innovation."

This year's Baker Awards will support the research, scholarship and creative activity of five faculty members. Projects receiving awards during the 2009 funding cycle range from a study of muscular movements in specific organisms to an analysis of marital court cases in early modern London.

This year's winners are, Sarah Wyatt, associate professor, environmental and plant biology; Scott Hooper, professor, biological sciences; Haley Duschinski, assistant professor, sociology and anthropology; Loren Giese, professor, English department; and Daewoo Lee, associate professor, biological sciences.

"Quite simply," said Sarah Wyatt, "the Baker Award will mean being able to keep my research going. My federally funded grant is closing and I don't have another at the moment to take its place; thus, I have a gap in funding. With the Baker Award, I will be able to continue the project to its completion and get the results I need to again get external funding."

Scott Hooper also has earned a Baker Award to complete two ongoing projects -- connecting the activity of the lobster nervous system to the behavior it produces -- and increase the chances of obtaining external funding from the National Science Foundation.

For Haley Duschinski, assistant professor of sociology and anthropology, a Baker Award will allow her to complete the field research necessary for several academic journals. It will also provide her with material for several chapters of her book, "Homeland Insecurities: The Micropolitics of Peace in Kashmir." For India and Pakistan, Kashmir has been an area of dispute since 1947. Her research will explore the emerging human rights advocacy movements in Kashmir Valley and the impact that it has upon the Kashmiri people.

Loreen Giese, a professor of English who recently was named a 2009 University Professor, said the Baker Award will allow her to complete the final phase of her book-in-progress, "Marital Discord in Early Modern London," which examines marital experiences, behaviors, and roles and attitudes toward the expectations of marriage documented in the London Consistory Court between 1586 and 1611.

Daewoo Lee's research uses transgenic fruit flies that express the human protein associated with Parkinson's disease. This allows for the symptoms of Parkinson's disease to be carried out in a much shorter time frame than in humans, making it quick and easy to test medications and study cellular changes.

The John C. Baker Fund was endowed in honor of Ohio University's 14th president in 1961 by a gift of more than $612,000, from 1926 College of Arts and Sciences graduate Edwin L. Kennedy and his wife, Ruth, a 1930 graduate of the College of Education. The Kennedys contributed more than $10.5 million to Ohio University, including a significant collection of Southwest Native American artwork that resides in Ohio University's Kennedy Museum of Art.