Carlos Castillo-Chavez named Regents Professor

11/17/05: Carlos Castillo-Chavez has been named as one of the new Regents Professors at ASU. The following has been excerpted from the Board of Regents meeting summary.

The title of Regents Professor may be conferred only on tenured faculty holding the rank of professor or equivalent rank. Awards are limited to three percent of the total number of tenured and tenure-eligible faculty members. ASU currently has 39 Regents Professors. Nominations for Regents Professorships are made by faculty members and are submitted to a nominating committee. The nominating committee consists of nine to twelve tenured faculty members, appointed by the university president, who are noted for their scholarly achievements and represent a variety of academic disciplines. The nominating committee makes its recommendations to the president, who approves the final selections.

Professor Carlos Castillo-Chavez's research program lives at the interface of the natural and social sciences. His research program puts emphasis on the role of dynamic social landscapes on disease evolution. In this context, in collaboration with various researchers (graduate students, postdocs, and senior faculty elsewhere), joint work is conducted on the role of cross-immunity on the evolution and dynamics of influenza; the impact of behavioral changes, long periods of infectiousness, variable infectivity, co-infections, prostitution, social networks, and vaccine efficacy on HIV dynamics; the role of exogenous re-infection, variable progression rates, vaccination, public transportation, close and casual contacts (generalized households) on tuberculosis dynamics and control; the impact of life-history vector dynamics on dengue epidemics; and on the identification of time response scales for epidemics of foot and mouth disease. More recently, Professor Castillo-Chavez and collaborators have worked on the role of dispersal and disease as enhancing mechanisms of ecological diversity. Most recently, work has been started on problems at the interface of homeland security and disease invasions (natural or deliberate) and on models for the spread of social diseases such as alcoholism and ecstasy drug use. Work on models for the spread of extreme ideologies and their impact on cultural norms is also under way.

In addition, Professor Castillo-Chavez directs the Mathematical and Theoretical Biology Institute (MTBI) which focuses on providing research opportunities at the interface of the biological, computational, and mathematical sciences from the undergraduate to the graduate and postdoctoral levels. He is also the executive director of the Institute for Strengthening Understanding of Mathematics & Sciences (SUMS). In both capacities he hopes to increase the links of ASU's pipeline programs (high school, college, graduate school, and postdoctoral level) in order to enhance the level of participation and opportunities of U.S. students, particularly those who are members of underrepresented minorities.

According to the American Mathematical Society, the number of Ph.D. s granted to U.S. Latinos since 1999 has averaged approximately 12 per year. From 1996-2004, Dr. Castillo-Chavez has mentored in his summer program 228 undergraduate students. This group includes 161 Latinos, 9 Native Americans, 23 African Americans, 12 Asian Americans, and 23 U.S. Caucasians. During this period, he sent an average of 11 U.S. Latinos from underrepresented groups to graduate school programs in the mathematical sciences, including 16 to Cornell University, 15 to Iowa State University, and 9 to Arizona State University. This year alone, he will see from this group 7 U.S. Latinos (5 at Cornell and 2 at Iowa) and 1 African American (Princeton) earn their Ph.D. s in the mathematical sciences. In other words, in 2005 alone his mentorship efforts will result in an increase of about 50 percent on our national output of U.S. Latinos. He has been involved in national and university public service activities, in various settings from public health to education, that require his knowledge, leadership, and expertise.