Vice President For Research

Douglas R. Hofstadter

Appointed to IU faculty in 1977 (Assistant Professor in Computer Science) College Professor of Cognitive Science and of Computer Science (1988) Distinguished Professor (2007) Indiana University Bloomington

Awarded the Pulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction category) 1980

A fitting description for Douglas Hofstadter is "Renaissance person." Though his Ph.D. is in physics (University of Oregon, 1975) and he was hired in computer science at Indiana University , his intellectual explorations involve fields as diverse as mathematics, psychology, music, linguistics, and art. He is considered a pioneer in cognitive science; a field he has helped shape. Hofstadter's contributions to academia began with his doctorate in theoretical physics. His thesis research, published in Physical Review in 1976, concerned electrons in a crystal in a magnetic field. Hofstadter discovered the highly intricate pattern of their energy spectrum. Such structures later became known as "fractals," and this one, now called the "Hofstadter butterfly," was the first fractal discovered in physics.

Douglas Hofstadter's first book, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, an idiosyncratic exploration of self-reference and consciousness, won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award. Despite its pervasive wordplay, GEB has been translated into many languages (often with Hofstadter's direct personal involvement), and for nearly three decades has inspired worldwide interest in cognitive science. Hofstadter is noted for his development (with the Fluid Analogies Research Group) of computational models of cognition; in these models, analogy plays the starring role.

James Polk

Graduated from Indiana University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government in 1964

Awarded the Pulitzer Prize (National reporting) 1974

"Name any big national or international story of misdeed, fraud, extortion, espionage, terrorism, crime, or corruption from the last 20 years, and it's a safe bet it will carry Jim Polk's byline or broadcast imprimatur." So begins the entry commemorating Jim Polk's 1994 induction into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame. IU graduate Polk earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1974 while working at the Washington Star . He earned the prize in the national reporting category for his coverage of Watergate, disclosing irregularities in the financing of the campaign to re-elect Nixon in 1972.

A native of Oaktown, Ind., Polk wrote his first stories as an eight year-old sports reporter for the weekly Oaktown Press . While at IU, he became a full-time reporter for the Bloomington Herald-Telephone while also attending school. After college, he joined the Associated Press bureau in Indianapolis, eventually landing in Washington with the AP.

From 1975 to 1992, Polk worked for NBC News, covering stories such as the CIA's role in flying arms to Nicaragua in the Iran-Contra scandal, the downfall of baseball great Pete Rose, and the racketeering case against Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. He is now an executive producer at CNN, where he continues his involvement in special investigations, such as CNN's coverage of the terrorist bombing of the World Trace Center .

Tom French

Graduated from Indiana University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism in 1981

Awarded the Pulitzer Prize (Feature Writing) 1998

Thomas French has spent the past quarter century redefining the possibilities of journalistic storytelling, both in his writing and in his teaching around the world. French grew up in Indiana and attended journalism school at Indiana University's Bloomington campus, where he was a Poynter scholar and editor-in-chief at the Indiana Daily Student, and where he won a Hearst award for a profile of a giant hog at the Indiana State Fair. An editor at the St. Petersburg Times read the hog story and hired French, just as he was graduating from IU, as a night cops reporter.

French spent the next 27 years at the Times, covering hurricanes and criminal trials and the secret lives of high school students. He experimented with narrative techniques both on deadline and nondeadline work and specialized in serial narratives, book-length stories published one chapter at a time. In 1998, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing and a Sigma Delta Chi award for Angels & Demons, a series that chronicled the murder of an Ohio woman and her two teenage daughters as they vacationed in Tampa. Two of his other serials, A Cry in the Night and South of Heaven, were later published as books. His most recent project, Zoo Story, explored the inner world of Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo and was published in book form by Hyperion in 2010.

French is a Writing Fellow at the Poynter Institute and has taught there for more than 20 years. He also teaches in a nonfiction masters program at Goucher College, outside Baltimore, and has led narrative workshops across the United States and around the world, from the Nieman conference at Harvard to newsrooms in Dubai, Singapore, and Johannesburg. He is married to Kelley Benham, a national award-winning reporter and editor at the St. Petersburg Times, and has two sons.

Michel du Cille

Graduated from Indiana University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism in 1985

Awarded the Pulitzer Prize (Spot News Photography) 1986; the Pulitzer Prize (Feature Photography) 1988; and the Pulitzer Prize (Public Service) 2008

Michel du Cille began work for The Miami Herald after graduation. His first Pulitzer Prize was shared with fellow Miami Herald staffer Carol Guzy for coverage of the November 1985 eruption of Colombia 's Nevado Del Ruiz volcano. Du Cille won his second Pulitzer for a photo story about crack cocaine addicts in a Miami housing project. In April 2008, he shared the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service with writers Anne Hull and Dana Priest of The Washington Post, exposing mistreatment of wounded veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The work evoked a national outcry, producing reforms by federal officials. Du Cille has served as picture editor at The Washington Post where he has shot photo stories in Iraq, Sudan, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. He was was appointed assistant managing editor for photography in November 2007. While a student at IU, du Cille worked on the Indiana Daily Student newspaper.

Bill Foley

Studied photojournalism and telecommunications at Indiana University from 1973 to 1977

Awarded the Pulitzer Prize (Spot News Photography) 1983

Shortly after leaving Indiana University in 1977, Bill Foley became a staff photographer for the Associated Press. For the next six years, Foley lived and worked in the Middle East, covering major stories, including the Camp David peace negotiations, the assassination of Anwar Sadat, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon , and bombings of the US Embassy and Marine barracks. Foley's photographs of the 1982 Sabra and Chatilla massacre, where a Lebanese militia group murdered hundreds of Palestinian refugees, earned him the Pulitzer Prize. Since then, Foley has also worked as a contract photographer for TIME magazine, and has photographed for the Children's Aid Society, the Columbia University Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and the Center for the Advancement of Children's Mental Health in New York City . Foley is currently an adjunct professor in the Tisch School of the Arts in New York City .

Gene Miller

Graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism in 1950

Awarded the Pulitzer Prize ( Local Investigative Specialized Reporting) 1967 and the Pulitzer Prize ( Local General Spot News Reporting) 1976

Received an Honorary IU degree in 1977

After graduating from IU in 1950, Gene Miller held several different newspaper jobs, until he landed a job working for the Miami Herald in 1957. For the next 48 years, the Evansville native worked as a reporter and editor at the Herald , winning two Pulitzer Prizes along the way. The first prize in 1967 was for investigative reporting that cleared two people convicted in separate murder cases. The second prize, awarded in 1976, was based on Miller's eight-year examination of a 1963 murder case that resulted in two men sentenced to death row. Over 130 stories, most by Miller, documented police beatings and evidence of a confession by a third man never charged in the murder. Both men convicted of the murder were freed in 1975. In 1977, Miller earned an honorary degree from IU. Miller even wrote his own obituary, which was published in the Miami Herald the day of his death in June 2005.

Ernie Pyle

Awarded the Pulitzer Prize (Correspondence) 1944

Received an Honorary IU degree in 1944

Ernie Pyle, perhaps America 's most famous war correspondent, studied journalism at Indiana University in the early 1920s before beginning his career as a professional journalist. Pyle traveled America in the 20s and 30s, reporting on American life while he worked alongside some of America's best and brightest young journalists. A trip to London at the end of 1940 to report on the Nazi bombing there catapulted Pyle to fame — his brilliant writing on the destruction of London helped earn him his reputation as a war reporter. That reputation was cemented when Pyle returned to the European theater in 1942 to continue reporting on the war. Pyle didn't file daily stories on the fighting and strategic situation — instead, he looked for stories and stored them up in his mind, then went back from the front lines and wrote them up. It was Pyle's knack for telling stories about the common soldier in his columns that earned him the Pulitzer Prize. In 1944, Pyle returned home to receive his honorary degree from IU, and early in 1945, Pyle traveled to the Pacific theater, where he was killed by a machine gun bullet on the Japanese island of Ie Shima .