Introduction of Julián F. Hillyer, Recipient of the Henry Baldwin Ward Medal For 2015

Fellow members of the American Society of Parasitologists and distinguished guests, welcome to the 2015 Henry Baldwin Ward Medal Lecture. It is with great pleasure that I introduce Dr. Julian F. Hillyer as this year’s Ward Medalist. This pleasure results not just from the fact that I served as Julian’s mentor for his doctorate but also because I have known Julian and have been friends with his parents, George and Josefina, for many years before he began his doctoral studies in my laboratory almost 20 years ago. It almost seems like family. I will tell you a bit about these relationships and Julian’s years in my laboratory a bit later, but for now you should know that I stand here with great pride because of Julian’s accomplishments, even though I know full well that he would have been equally successful training in many different laboratories. So let’s review these accomplishments and see why Dr. Hillyer is so eminently qualified to be this year’s H. B. Ward Medalist. Our Society requires that a candidate for the Medal shall be a member of ASP for no less than 3 years at the time of the nomination, be in mid-career, and shall have, by self-directed investigations, attained a position of leadership in some aspect of parasitological research. Julian fits these standards exceedingly well. First, he has been an active and outstanding member of ASP since 2000, serving on numerous committees, as session chair multiple times, and presently as a member of Council. Second, Julian is truly mid-career, having only reached the age of 40 in the year of his nomination. And finally, in order to detail his accomplishments and reputation in research, I am going to have to take some time. So let me begin by giving you some data. Julian has already published 45 papers, averaging 2.6 papers per year—but this includes his years as a graduate student. Since assuming his present faculty position at Vanderbilt this average has climbed to over 4 papers a year. And, in response to the oftasked question of what have you done for me lately, his publication rate over the last few years has been around one paper every month and a half. How good are these contributions to science? There are several metrics we can use to measure this, and the simplest involves the number of times other scientists deemed his science worthy for use as a reference for their own work. In Julian’s case his papers have been referenced 1,068 times in 720 different papers, with 5 of his articles having been cited over 60 times and 10 over 30 times (as of 15 June 2015). And clearly the significance of his work is on the upswing. In addition, his work has been highlighted by the Faculty of 1,000, on the cover of 3 different journals, on the NSF website, and as recommended reading in general textbooks. Finally, one can get a more-comprehensive evaluation by using the Hirsch Index, or more commonly called the H-index, which is an algorithm that measures scientific productivity and impact. Julian’s score of 18 places him at the level of a highly successful full Professor, not a recently minted Associate Professor. In Julian’s area of research, to publish good science one has to have the financial support to do the experiments, and for quite some time now the funding resources from the federal government have been excruciatingly tight. But this has not deterred Julian, who firmly believes in the adage that no matter what the level of funding might be, it is a certainty that one will not receive research funding if one does not submit a proposal. And Julian started early, successfully competing for pre-doctoral fellowships from both the NIH and NSF and a postdoctoral fellowship from the NIH to support his research in my laboratory as well as in those of Ralph Albrecht and Ken Vernick. Julian immediately began writing his elegant grant proposals as a new Assistant Professor and his success has been impressive, having received four NSF grants and one NIH grant since he arrived at Vanderbilt in 2007. Finally, we can evaluate his reputation in science by looking at a number of activities that are garnered by invitation only and, for Julian, this includes serving on the Advisory Panel on ‘‘Symbiosis, Defense, and Self Recognition’’ for the NSF, on the Editorial Board of the American Entomologist, editing a Current Opinion in Insect Science issue on ‘‘Vectors and Medical and Veterinary Entomology,’’ writing the chapter on mosquito immunity for Kenneth Soderhall’s recent book on Invertebrate Immunity, serving as an ad hoc reviewer for 46 different peer-reviewed journals, and presenting 27 invited presentations at various national and international venues. In sum I can say, without hesitation, that Dr. Hillyer is the leading scientist in the world working on hemolymph circulatory dynamics and how this impacts humoral and cellular aspects of innate immunity in mosquito vectors. So how did this all begin? Personally, I think it actually started a long time ago as Julian was growing up in Puerto Rico in the company of his dad, George Hillyer, a long-standing member of our Society and an internationally recognized parasitologist. I first met Julian in his home sometime in the 1980s following an invitation from George to speak at the University of Puerto Rico. Had I been smart I would have started to recruit Julian then. He followed somewhat in his dad’s footsteps by doing his undergraduate work in Biology at the University of Chicago where George did his doctoral studies. A very good choice—and the only negative resulting from Julian’s tenure in Chicago was his silly decision to become a Chicago Bears’ fan—totally unlike all of the learned decisions he had made before and since that time. But fortunately for me, and many others in Packerland, he traveled north to Madison to pursue graduate studies. While a Master’s student in Ralph Albrecht’s lab he learned microscopy from one of the very best and produced 2 first-authored publications. I was elated (but didn’t tell him this) when he asked to join my lab for his doctoral DOI: 10.1645/15-865