Zhanjiang (John) Liu
Alumni Professor and Director of Aquatic Genomics Unit
Department of Fisheries and Allied Aquacultures
College of Agriculture

John Liu graduated with a Bachelor of Science from Northwest Sci-Tech University of Agriculture and Forestry and from the University of Minnesota with a master’s and doctorate. He is the Aquaculture Coordinator for the U.S. National Animal Genome Project and serves on the National Scientific Advisory Panel for Oceans and Human Health for the U.S. Department of Commerce. He was a panelist for Aquaculture in the 3rd Millennium, and Aquaculture and Aquatic Resources of Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. He is the editor forMarine Biotechnology, the scientific advisor for the Chinese Academy of Fisheries Science and China’s Agricultural High Tech Demonstration Zone, and editor/author of 13 chapters of Aquaculture Genome Technologies. Liu’s research objective uses genomic approaches to improve catfish performance traits. His major research achievements include developed more than 10,000 molecular markers, constructed catfish genetic linkage and physical maps, generated more than 100,000 catfish and oysters expressed sequence tags, developed/applied catfish microarray technology and developed of higher generations of channel catfish and blue catfish interspecific hybrids for genetic improvements. His research was exhibited to the U.S. Congress in 1999. He received the 2000 Alabama Catfish Industry Outstanding Contributions Award; the 2002 AU Alumni Professorship; the 2004 Jin Ding Award from the governor of the Sichuan Province in China (the highest award to foreign experts); and the 2006 Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station Director’s Research Award. The Chinese Ministry of Education recently named Liu as one of the most famous overseas Chinese professors and invited him to serve as the “111 Plan” Academic Master at Ocean University, China.

Mona El-Sheikh
Alumni Professor, Department of Human Development and Family Studies
College of Human Sciences

Mona El-Sheikh received her undergraduate degree from the American University in Cairo, Egypt, and her master’s and doctorate degrees from West Virginia University. She started her career at Auburn University in 1990 as an assistant professor and was tenured and promoted to associate professor in 1995, to professor in 2002 and to alumni professor in 2005. Her research focuses on child development in the context of family risk. Her publications have appeared in the leading journals (e.g., Child Development, Abnormal Psychology and Developmental Psychology) in her field, and her work has become increasingly cited by other scholars. She serves in editorial and review capacities for top journals (e.g., Journal of Family Psychology andChild Development) and organizations in her field, as well as the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation. She has been awarded more than $3 million in research grants from the NIH and NSF. El-Sheikh is considered one of the nation’s foremost experts in the area of physiological measurement of children’s emotion regulation. A recognized feature of her research is its multi-disciplinary nature, and her research has received attention for building bridges across several disciplines concerned with child health. This research has advanced a biopsychosocial model for understanding the development of psychological, social, cognitive and physical health problems in the context of family risk.