The University System of Georgia Board of Regents today appointed three Georgia Tech faculty members as Regents' Professors and two as Regents' Researchers.

The three new Regents' Professors at Georgia Tech are Mark Prausnitz, professor and director of the Center for Drug Design, Development and Delivery in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering; Seth Marder, professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and founding director of the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics in the colleges of Engineering and Sciences; and Gary Schuster, Vasser Woolley Professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

Two Regents' Researchers appointed include Gisele Bennett, professor and director of the Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory in the Georgia Tech Research Institute; and Suzanne Eskin, principal research scientist in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.

"We are immensely proud of our new Georgia Tech Regents' Professors and Researchers," said G. P. "Bud" Peterson, Georgia Tech's president. "They are conducting breakthrough research that is gaining national attention. The fact that we have five Georgia Tech faculty members receiving this honor from the Board of Regents in one year is a reflection of the caliber of scholars we have at Tech."

A Regents' Professorship and Regents' Researcher title represents the highest academic status bestowed by the University System of Georgia. It is meant to recognize a substantial, significant and ongoing record of scholarly achievement that has earned high national esteem over a sustained period.

Prausnitz has received international acclaim for his research on biophysical methods of drug delivery, which employ microneedles, ultrasound, lasers, electric fields, heat, convective forces and other physical means to control the transport of drugs, proteins, genes and vaccines into and within the body.

Marder is working on bringing nanotechnology out of the lab and into the marketplace. Using a process known as two-photon absorption, the research groups of Marder and colleague Joseph Perry are developing a broad set of materials for 3D micro- and nanolithography.

Schuster is a nationally known scholar and researcher with an extensive list of published articles on topics ranging from biochemistry through physical chemistry, as well as a number of scientific discoveries with commercial applications. He also held top leadership roles at Georgia Tech such as interim president, provost and dean of the College of Sciences.

Bennett has been praised for the programs she has built around automatic identification technologies using radio frequency identification and container security. Her research activities include the study of optical coherence imaging systems.

Eskin has contributed to research on vascular biology, cardiovascular tissue engineering and gene expression of vascular cells. She studies the comparative effects of mechanical forces accompanying blood flow and pressure on the blood vessel wall.

The titles are awarded by the Board of Regents, which governs the University System of Georgia, upon the unanimous recommendation of the president, the chief academic officer, the appropriate academic dean and three other faculty members named by the president, and upon the approval of the chancellor and the committee on academic affairs.