CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Two Carle Illinois College of Medicine (CI MED) faculty members have been named University Scholars in recognition of their excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service.
The scholars program recognizes faculty excellence and provides $15,000 to each scholar for three years to enhance their academic careers. The money may be used for travel, equipment, research assistants, books, or other purposes.
“The University Scholars program celebrates the remarkable achievements of the named individuals,” said Nicholas Jones, the University of Illinois System’s executive vice president and vice president for academic affairs. “Our faculty represent the strong foundation of the world-class academic experience that contributes to the betterment of society and draws students and researchers to the U. of I. System universities from across the globe. The University Scholars are exemplars of that faculty excellence."
“When you consider the diversity of scholarship across all three of our universities and the standards of academic excellence that we nurture and grow through our recruitment of esteemed educators and researchers, all of our University Scholar recipients should be deservedly proud of the honor.”
The CI MED recipients, as described by their nominators:
Zeynep Madak-Erdogan
Photo by Jonathan King/Cancer Center at Illinois
Zeynep Madak-Erdogan, a professor of food science and human nutrition, is a professor of biomedical and translational sciences at Carle Illinois College of Medicine where she previously served as a health innovation professor. She is actively involved in the Cancer Center at Illinois and is a member of the Center for Genomic Diagnostics at Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology.
Her research has revealed cellular adaptations and molecular mechanisms that underlie the detrimental effects of specific lipids, free fatty acids and obesity in the aggressiveness of breast cancers. She published 65 papers, delivered more than 30 invited lectures and received a prestigious publishing award. She served as editor-in-chief for two endocrine-focused journals. Madak-Erdogan has been an investigator on grants totaling approximately $8 million. She was recognized as an Emerging Leader of the National Academy of Medicine and is a Big Ten Alliance Academic Leaders Program Fellow.
Much of her scholarly activity aligns with diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. She created a course on health disparities in the U.S. and organized a mini symposium on “Hormone Dependent Cancer Disparities.” She also serves as the inaugural co-lead of an Illinois Minority Serving Institutions Alliance working group, with a goal of producing underrepresented doctoral recipients by providing unique and targeted opportunities to enhance their preparation for a successful career in academia and beyond.
Jacob Sherkow
Law professor Jacob Sherkow focuses on intellectual property and medical therapies, agency regulation, and the legal and ethical issues attendant to advanced biotechnologies. He has authored or co-authored more than 60 articles and essays, two books on COVID-19 innovation policy, four book chapters and many op-eds. His work explores how the structuring of property and regulatory regimes can produce the best medicines for the most people.
Sherkow, a professor of biomedical and translational sciences at CI MED – often uses case studies to reveal situations where underlying scientific practice is misaligned with legal rules or the realities of litigation. He has explored these disconnects in areas such as patent law and irreproducible data; laboratory practice and inventorship surrounding genome editing techniques like CRISPR; medical device safety and follow-on technologies; and, recently, the science behind antibody generation and its mismatch with several doctrines in patent law. His recent work was funded through a grant from the National Institutes of Health to explore legal improvements to new genomic privacy and security technologies developed at Illinois.
In addition to his work at CI MED, Sherkow holds faculty appointments at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology and the European Union Center. He has also advised major scientific organizations on bioethical issues, including the Adaptive Immune Receptor Repertoire Community and the New York Genome Center.
In 2018, Sherkow was appointed to the National Academy of Medicine as an Emerging Leader in Health and Medicine Scholar, and currently serves as an academic advisor to the academy’s Committee on Emerging Science, Technology and Innovation. He routinely advises governments and commercial entities on a variety of issues related to patents and biotechnology. He has counseled dozens of investment firms about patent litigation, engaged with the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on patent challenges on pharmaceuticals, worked with the World Health Organization on the intellectual property rules covering viral genomes, advised a committee of the French National Assembly on issues relating to the patenting of biotechnological tools, and served as an expert in patent cases in the U.S. and Europe.
He is an accomplished teacher, frequently earning a place on the List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students. He serves on the editorial board of CRISPR Journal and provides peer reviews for many additional journals. At the College of Law, he directs the Intellectual Property and Technology Law Program and serves as the faculty advisor to the Journal of Law, Technology & Policy.
Editor's note: The original version of this article by the Illinois News Bureau can be found here.