Five Cornell faculty members have been chosen for the 2008 Provost's Awards for Distinguished Scholarship.

The $30,000 awards recognize outstanding tenured faculty early in their careers for distinguished research and scholarly achievements, combined with their continuing commitment to Cornell.

The 2008 honorees are:

Brittain was recognized for his work on academic skepticism -- the philosophical position developed by the successors to Plato -- including his groundbreaking translation of Cicero's "Academica."

A reviewer described the Cicero translation as "eminently useful, well thought-out, and expertly executed." Especially praised was the translation's accessibility to philosophical readers, with a reliable introduction on its context and textual history, which for the first time gives the study of ancient skepticism a place in the undergraduate philosophical curriculum.

Brittain, who joined the Cornell faculty in 1996, teaches ancient philosophy including Hellenistic epistemology and ethics and Platonist psychology and ethics. He also is the author of "Philo of Larissa," and co-translator of "Commentary on the Handbook of Epictetus" by Simplicius.

Bustamante, at Cornell since 2002, develops statistical methods to reveal genetic patterns within populations and between species. His research group works with a wide variety of organisms, including humans, dogs, monkeys, rice and fruit flies, to test evolutionary hypotheses regarding natural selection and to find patterns in how genes within populations or species have changed over time.

His recent collaborations have uncovered strong evidence that natural selection has shaped the recent evolution of our species; that human migration from Africa to Europe more than 30,000 years ago appears to have left a mark on the genes of Europeans today; and that a mutation in a single gene plays a key role in determining body-size differences within and among dog breeds and probably is important in determining the size of humans as well.

Kirshner, who also serves as director of the Einaudi Center's International Political Economy Program, studies the political aspects of the international economy, particularly specialized interests in economics and national security and the politics of money.

He is the author of "Appeasing Bankers: Financial Caution on the Road to War" (1997), in which he considers how such financial interests as banks and international financial markets can shape and constrain states' grand strategies and influence decisions about war and peace. He also is co-editor of a forthcoming special issue of the journal Review of International Political Economy on the future of the dollar.

Lipson works in evolutionary computation and robotics, seeking to develop robots that can self-assemble and self-repair using modular designs. He programs computers to design new mechanisms by supplying a set of initial conditions, such as a set of parts for a robot, and specifying a desired result. The computer creates random designs, tests each one to see if it approaches the result, chooses the best and modifies them, repeating until it evolves a workable design.

He has used the method to design circuits and optimize wave guides for photonic devices and to build "self-modeling" robots that can figure out for themselves how they are put together, and if necessary, repair themselves or adapt to injury or changing conditions.

Lipson also works to improve the technology of 3-D printing, which can build solid objects from computer designs, and hopes some day to have a robot design and fabricate itself.

Wang works on developing novel instrumentation for manipulating and detecting single biological molecules. She studies single-molecule biophysics, specifically biophysical measurements such as the packing of DNA in nucleosomes. Wang also studies molecules involved in gene expression and regulation.

She plans to use the award to continue developing instruments for molecular manipulation, using a pioneering technique called angular optical trapping, which allows a researcher to rotate molecules and measure their torques.