Three University of Arizona faculty members have been named Regents Professors, in recognition of achievements in teaching, research and scholarship.
Regents Professor is the university’s highest faculty rank, awarded to full professors whose accomplishments warrant national and international distinction, UA said in a news release. The title is limited to no more than 3% of the university’s tenured and tenure-track faculty members.
Janko Nikolich, Jiang Wu and Dennis Zaritsky are the latest professors to earn the honor, confirmed Thursday by the Arizona Board of Regents at its meeting in Flagstaff.
Nikolich is also Bowman Professor, head of the Department of Immunobiology in the College of Medicine – Tucson, and co-director of the university’s Center on Aging.
“His research has transformed the understanding of how the immune system changes over time and has contributed to the development of new strategies for strengthening immune resilience in older adults,” the UA news release said. “During the COVID-19 pandemic, Nikolich developed a precise and effective blood test that helped track COVID-19 exposure and immunity.”
Wu is a professor in the Department of East Asian Studies in the College of Humanities and director of the university’s Center for Buddhist Studies.
The University of Arizona's Janko Nikolich, Jiang Wu and Dennis Zaritsky were confirmed Thursday as Regents Professors.
“Wu is a leading scholar of Chinese and East Asian Buddhism whose research focuses on how the religion spread and how it has changed over many centuries. He has written multiple books on Chinese history and received a prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2023.”
Zaritsky serves as deputy director of the university’s Steward Observatory and recently completed a six-year term as chair of the Giant Magellan Telescope Science Advisory Council.
“He is recognized as one of the most innovative thinkers and researchers in astronomy. His accomplishments include using dwarf galaxies to map the distribution of dark matter in the Milky Way and other galaxies. His most influential work includes co-authoring the paper ‘A Direct Empirical Proof of the Existence of Dark Matter,’” the UA release said.
