From 1187 to 1185 B.C.E., Queen Tausert reigned over all of Egypt, the last ruler of its 19th dynasty and one of few queens to ascend to the station of Pharaoh. Her story is among many that Richard Wilkinson, a professor in the UA Department of Classics and Near Eastern Studies, has helped surface through excavations in Egypt's Valley of the Kings. By one survey, his work -- including a book of the year award for research on ancient hieroglyphs -- makes him one of the 30 most important scholars in the history of Egyptology. It's a single honor among many, including, as of 2008, a Regents' Professorship, the highest recognition conferred on faculty by The University of Arizona.

A hidden virus lurks in the majority of earth’s inhabitants, with potentially deadly consequences. UA researcher Felicia Goodrum is seeking clues to unlock the secrets of human cytomegalovirus. For her work, Goodrum, 39, is being lauded as “extraordinarily gifted’’ by President Barack Obama, who awarded her the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. The virus can exist throughout the life of its host, and can be lethal in people with compromised immune systems. Goodrum, assistant professor in immunobiology and molecular and cellular biology, is investigating how it survives, with the goal of developing a therapy to kill it.

Without small heat shock proteins, we couldn’t survive. Despite their name, these molecules play a much larger role than simply responding to heat stress. They’re critical in our responses to infection, toxins, oxygen deprivation and more. As part of our cellular repair system, they help new proteins form and help dispose of old ones. And researchers understand this complex science thanks largely to professor Elizabeth Vierling in the UA Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics. Vierling’s early research on these under-studied molecules expanded the field dramatically, earning her a Guggenheim Fellowship, the prestigious Humboldt Senior Research Fellowship, continuous funding from the NIH and NSF and now, a Regents’ Professorship, the highest honor conferred on faculty by The University of Arizona.

The UA Department of Pediatrics has been awarded a $44 million, six-year contract to participate in the National Institutes of Health’s National Children’s Study, a major effort to investigate the interaction of genes and the environment on children’s health. This study will follow a representative national sample of 100,000 children from before birth to age 21 to investigate factors that may influence the development of conditions such as autism, cerebral palsy, learning disabilities, birth defects, diabetes, asthma and obesity. The principal investigator for the UA portion of the study is Fernando Martinez, MD, professor of pediatrics and director of the UA’s Arizona Respiratory Center. “I am convinced that this study, if successful, will be remembered for years to come as one of the most important scientific enterprises ever started regarding children’s health,” Dr. Martinez said.

You think it’s tough to get into a top medical school or law school? Try the UA School of Dance. Among 400 dance students competing for admission in this fall, only 35 will be accepted. The School of Dance has built a reputation as one of the nation’s top university dance programs for young dancers who want to excel in ballet, modern and jazz. Graduates perform with world-class companies – American Ballet Theatre, Cirque de Soleil, Riverdance and Hubbard Street. Auditioning students must place in advanced/intermediate levels in all three dance styles to pass the barre for UA School of Dance.

A Muscogee Creek and Cherokee from Oklahoma, Tom Holm is a prolific Native American scholar and award-winning UA American Indian Studies professor. He’s published more than 50 articles, books and government reports, even a children’s book on Native American warriors and code talkers in World War II. Now he’s turned to fiction, writing a gritty murder mystery set in 1920s Oklahoma with corrupt lawmen, insatiable businessmen and an oil boom on Indian land. His debut novel is called “The Osage Rose.” “New York Times” best-selling author Margaret Coel says, “Tom Holm has written an engaging debut novel with characters that matter and a story that lingers on after you've turned the last page.“ The book is published by UA Press.

UA freshman Elisa Meza is one of about 600 students in The University of Arizona’s first class of Arizona Assurance Scholars, who can graduate in four years, debt-free. “Being a first-generation student is harder than most realize, financially. Having support from the Assurance lives up to its name, assuring me that I deserve to be here pursuing education,” Meza said. Recently, Helios Education Foundation displayed its commitment to the institution and our state’s students through a $2 million gift to Arizona Assurance. Scholarship awards cover tuition, fees, books, and room and board, as well as provide students with mentors and community networks to ensure their academic success.

In the midst of ongoing concerns about the quality of teaching in America, a study by the UA College of Education brings great news -- first-year teachers in Arizona are launching their careers well prepared for their formidable task. A research team of Educational Psychology faculty and graduate students observed new teachers in K-12 classrooms over three years, tracking instructional activities, interactions with students and more. Their findings show that new teachers pass muster, delivering quality education as defined by a widely used, long-vetted evaluation standard. Honored for its insights and importance by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, the study paves the way for still deeper examination of the factors that drive teacher success.

The largest National Science Foundation grant ever received in Arizona was awarded to the UA – $50 million for a five year project called the iPlant Collaborative. Administered by the BIO5 Institute, it will create a global center and computer infrastructure to unite plant scientists, computer scientists and information scientists from around the world to answer questions of global importance. “This project is collaborative – designed by the scientific community, for the community,” says UA plant sciences professor, BIO5 member and iPlant director Richard Jorgensen, “and will change the way we do science.” All iPlant projects will offer programs for school-aged children, undergraduate and graduate students and interested lay people.

Four students from the UA Eller College of Management – Charney Marks, Kevin Romo-Leon, Jenn Schmitt and Audrey Sibley – took what began as a classroom exercise to real-world business for HeatMax, which makes Toasti Toes heat packs for skiers and hunters. The team conceived a new consumer target – professional women working in cold weather – and fashioned a full-scale strategy for branching Toasti Toes in a new direction. Executives at HeatMax were so impressed, the CEO met team members at company headquarters in Georgia and signed their concepts into contracts, giving the students a share of the new product’s sales and an ongoing foothold in its development and marketing.

This year’s freshman class is the largest, most diverse and most academically gifted class in UA history. Among 7,000 incoming freshmen, 35 percent are minority students – an 18 percent increase in Hispanic students and a 25 percent increase in Native American students. The Honors College will enroll more than 1,250 students including a record number of minority students. More than 13 percent of the freshman class are top scholars. One third of UA freshmen finished in the top 10 percent of their high school class. The freshman class’ mean grade point average is 3.3, slightly higher than last year’s class. “More enrolled students mean brighter futures for Arizona,” said UA President Robert N. Shelton. “On behalf of the entire UA community, we welcome this freshman class and our transfer students with a great deal of pride and anticipation.”

Lacey Nymeyer, a former swimming student-athlete at the University of Arizona, and a silver medalist in the 400-meter freestyle relay at the 2008 Olympic Games, is the 2009 NCAA Woman of the Year. A Tucson native, Nymeyer helped lead Arizona to the 2008 NCAA Division 1 women’s swimming and diving team championship. She graduated from the UA in 2009 with a degree in Physical Education and aspirations of becoming a high school athletics director. When she’s not swimming, Nymeyer gets involved in service projects for Casa de los Niños and Haven House for Women. She is the third student-athlete from the UA to be named NCAA Woman of the Year. Other honorees include high-jumper Tanya Hughes in 1994 and Whitney Meyers in 2007.

Insecticides kill pests. Simple, right? Wrong. Even as they kill, insecticides drive evolution, because only toxin-resistant individuals survive and reproduce. This accelerated evolution means that when insecticides are overused they can quickly become useless. Conundrums like this keep Dave Crowder busy. A Ph.D. candidate in the UA's Entomology Program, Crowder uses mathematical models and experiments to study how crop-destroying whitefly populations might dwindle or thrive in various farming scenarios. His research helps determine how best to control these and other pests and is helping to rank UA entomology #2 among all major U.S. research universities in the most recent Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index.

More than 50 years ago, scientists pointed radio telescopes to the sky and found light from objects so distant that they appeared as faint stars, barely detectable. Today we know them as quasars—quasi-stellar-radio-sources—the oldest known galaxies, pulsing with energy from powerful black holes devouring as many as a thousand suns per year. Most are at the fringes of our expanding universe—up to 13 billion light years away—and may hold the key to understanding its earliest eras. Ready to turn that key stands the UA’s Dr. Xiaohui Fan, a global leader in studying these celestial Rosetta stones and the only astronomer to win a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship award.

It's no easy feat to build an acclaimed musical career while turning out wave after wave of exceptional musicians. Such is the legacy of harpist Carrol McLaughlin, who recently added the University Distinguished Professor award to her many honors, including a Senior Specialist Fulbright Award. Hailed as one of the most influential harpists of the 20th century based on recordings, scores and 600+ solo concerts, McLaughlin also created the HarpFusion education model as a UA student in 1978. Emulated worldwide, it teaches the full range of musicianship – performance, composition, engineering, tour management and more – and has sent generations of students to the nation's best graduate programs and conservatories as well as chairs in world-renowned symphonies.

Setsuko K. Chambers, MD, professor and vice chair of the UA Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, has been elected a member of the prestigious Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. Dr. Chambers, also the Bobbi Olson Endowed Chair of Ovarian Cancer and director of Women's Cancers at the Arizona Cancer Center, joins a small cadre of obstetricians and gynecologist in the nation who have been similarly honored.````"We were privileged to recruit Dr. Chambers from Yale in 2004," said Kathryn L. Reed, MD, professor and head of the UA Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. "She brought to Arizona her aspirations to excellence in all facets of medical academia with the ultimate goal of improving the lives of women and their loved ones through clinical care, research, education and public service. We know her as a fierce advocate for her patients, her students, residents and fellows, her nurses, her mentees and her colleagues."````Other UA faculty members who are Institute of Medicine members are: J. Lyle Bootman, PhD, ScD, dean of the College of Pharmacy; Peter Rosen, MD, clinical professor, Department of Emergency Medicine; and M. Paul Capp, MD, professor emeritus.