Professorships Awarded to Three Sciences Faculty

The College has awarded named professorships to three of its faculty: Drs. H. Thomas Banks, Montserrat Fuentes and David Muddiman. The professorships were made possible by gifts from generous donors.

Banks, a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics, was awarded the first LeRoy B. Martin Jr. Distinguished Professorship. Banks’ work integrates innovative ideas from mathematics and statistics into powerful predictive models that have profound effects on patient diagnosis and therapy, as well as the design of clinical trials for HIV and other areas of medicine. He has also been a visionary organizational leader in the mathematical sciences at the university. He joined the NC State faculty in 1992.

Banks’ professorship was created by NC State alumnus Dr. James Goodnight to honor Martin, a longtime mathematics professor at the university and a Distinguished Alumnus of what is now the College of Sciences. Goodnight is CEO and a co-founder of SAS, the world’s largest privately held software company. SAS emerged from NC State’s Department of Statistics when Goodnight was on its faculty in the 1970s. Goodnight and his wife, Ann, are longtime supporters of both the College of Sciences and NC State, establishing several professorships and the Goodnight Scholars Program.

Fuentes was named the first Goodnight Distinguished Professor in Statistics, a professorship also made possible by a gift from Goodnight. Her internationally recognized research seeks to better understand how pollution affects human health, as well as find ways to improve tools used to forecast extreme weather events. She is the principal investigator and director of the Research Network for Statistical Methods for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, an initiative funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Fuentes joined NC State’s Department of Statistics in 2003 and was named department head in 2011.

Muddiman, a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry, was awarded the first Jacob and Betty Belin Distinguished Professorship. Muddiman is director of the W.M. Keck FTMS Laboratory for Human Health Research at NC State and a world-renowned expert in the areas of mass spectrometry, analytical chemistry and systems biology. His interdisciplinary research seeks to understand the underlying biology of ovarian cancer, work that exemplifies the convergence of the sciences that has become so powerful in improving the human condition. He joined the NC State faculty in 2005.

Muddiman’s professorship was created by Jacob Belin, a 1970 NC State applied mathematics alumnus, and his wife, Betty. Jacob Belin is president of Kern Oil and Refining Company, an independent oil refining and marketing company headquartered in Bakersfield, Calif. The Belins are longtime friends of the College and previously established a full scholarship endowment in the College of Sciences Foundation.