The Angie Warren Perkins Award is named for the first dean of women at UT. This award honors outstanding leadership in campus governance or administration at the level of department head, director, or below.
Cynthia Peterson
Cynthia Peterson, the Kenneth and Blaire Mossman Professor of Biomedicine, is known as a champion for students and faculty. While head of the Department of Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology from 2008 to 2012, she began a monetary awards program to recognize the good work of faculty, staff, and students. During her tenure as director of the UT Center of Excellence in Structural Biology, she secured funding to purchase instruments now heavily used by faculty. From 2005 to 2009, while director of the UT Genome Science and Technology program, a joint initiative between UT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, she negotiated with ORNL to continue the program when money was tight. She also was principal investigator on a National Science Foundation grant that brought $7.5 million to the university to support research efforts. Peterson is currently interim associate dean of academic personnel for the College of Arts and Sciences and associate director of the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis. She is a celebrated scientist whose research focuses primarily on the regulation of protease activity in the body. The National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association have continually funded her research for the past nineteen years.