BIRMINGHAM, AL — The Science Unbound Foundation has announced its 2005 award winners for best scientific papers by young investigators at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York, and Columbia University in New York. The awards, a plaque and a $1,000 prize, are for works published in 2004 in the areas of obesity, nutrition and statistical science.

José R Fernández, Ph.D., UAB assistant professor of nutrition sciences, was awarded Best Paper by a UAB Based Investigator in the Area of Obesity or Nutrition. His paper, “Waist Circumference Percentiles in Nationally Representative Samples of African-American, European-American and Mexican-American Children and Adolescents,” was published in the October 2004 issue of the Journal of Pediatrics.

Tapan Mehta, M.S., programmer/analyst with the Department of Biostatistics in the UAB School of Public Health, was awarded Best Paper by a UAB Based Investigator in the Area of Statistical Genetics. His paper, “Towards Sound Epistemological Foundations of Statistical Methods for High-Dimensional Biology,” was published in the September 2004 issue of Nature Genetics.

Chenxi Wang, M.D., Ph.D., a 2004 doctoral student in nutrition sciences at UAB, now assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Louisville, and David Redden Ph.D., associate professor of public health in the Department of Biostatistics at UAB, each were awarded Best Paper by a UAB Based Investigator in the Area of General Statistics.

Wang won for his paper, “Statistical Methods for Testing Effects on ‘Maximum Lifespan,’” published in the September 2004 issue of Mechanisms of Aging and Development.

Redden won for his paper, “A Simple Significance Test for Quantile Regression,” published in the August 2004 issue of Statistics in Medicine.

Wei Shen M.D., postdoctoral research scientist at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, was awarded Best Paper on Obesity-Related Research by An Investigator Affiliated with the New York Obesity Research Center. Her paper, “Visceral Adipose Tissue: Relations Between Single-Slice Areas and Total Volume,” was published in the August 2004 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The institutions named in the awards were selected on the basis of their demonstrated strength at promoting careers of young investigators in the areas of obesity, nutrition and statistical science.

More information about the Science Unbound Foundation and this year’s awards, including links to award winners’ biographies, published papers and pictures, is available online at www.scienceunboundfoundation.org.

The Science Unbound Foundation’s 2005 awards were supported in part by donations from Cadbury Schweppes; Cargill, Inc.; M&M Mars; and Pfizer, Inc.