IIT Faculty Honored at 2024 MSU Investiture Ceremony

March 12, 2024

Three IIT-affiliated faculty were among those honored at MSU's 2024 Investiture for Endowed Faculty on March 4, 2024: Dr. Honglei Chen, Dr. Norbert Kaminski and Dr. James Luyendyk.

On his first day at MSU, President Guskiewicz and hundreds of guests attended the investiture of the 2024 class of endowed chairs, endowed professors and MSU Research Foundation Professors to honor those faculty and the donors who support the esteemed positions. These 38 faculty lead MSU in its commitment to academic excellence and innovation.

“At Michigan State, we are building a culture that celebrates and rewards faculty achievements and builds a community of bright minds, crossing disciplines and departments,” Guskiewicz said. “Our faculty are not only doing incredibly impactful work in areas of great need and opportunity but also providing mentorship and inspiration to the next generation.”

Faculty are recognized as endowed professors through their leadership in their classrooms and their respective field and for their growing body of research. Through resources to help fund and build their research, these faculty grow collaborative networks and deliver to students a rich classroom experience in the topics they specialize in.

The honor of endowed and named chairs are awarded to faculty members with significant experience and accomplishments, a network of collaborators and an extensive body of research. Endowed chairs receive private funding, and named chairs receive grants allowing them to further their work, publish findings, travel to conferences and provide research experiences for promising students. The work of endowed chairs and named chairs helps MSU maintain its standing as a leader among other universities and research institutions around the world.

The MSU Research Foundation established the titles of MSU Research Foundation Professor and Red Cedar Distinguished Professor in 2014 and 2022, respectively. These titles are awarded to accomplished faculty, both current and incoming. The aim of the recognition is to enhance MSU’s stature in research and creative activity. 

The IIT-affiliated faculty honored at the ceremony were:

• Dr. Honglei Chen was named a MSU Research Foundation Professor. Chen is a professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics whose research focuses on studying environmental causes of neurodegenerative diseases, with the ultimate goal of disease prevention and healthy aging. To achieve this, he is focused on three primary areas: searching for environmental causes of Parkinson’s disease and neurodegeneration; understanding the complexity of prodromal neurodegeneration and the roles of the environment; and studying poor olfaction as a “miner’s canary” foretelling deteriorating health in older adults.
  
  
• Dr. Norbert Kaminski was named Food and Consumer Product Ingredient Safety Endowed Chair. Kaminski is the director of the Institute for Integrative Toxicology and the Center for Research on Ingredient Safety and is a professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. Broadly, his research focuses on immunopharmacology and immunotoxicology, with an emphasis on the elucidation of the molecular mechanisms for impairment of signal transduction cascades and gene expression during lymphocyte activation by drugs and chemicals.
  
  
• Dr. James Luyendyk was named Albert C. Dehn and Lois E. Dehn Chair in Veterinary Medicine. Luyendyk is a professor in the Department of Pathobiology and Diagnostic Investigation, where his work focuses on identifying novel mechanisms whereby the coagulation cascade contributes to liver disease pathogenesis.

For more information on the 2024 Investiture Ceremony, please see the original article on MSUToday: https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2024/recognizing-msu-endowed-outstanding-faculty.