Sonya Bahar, associate professor of physics and astronomy at UMSL, received the Governor's Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Sonya Bahar, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, was named a recipient of the 2011 Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching last week during a luncheon in Jefferson City, Mo.

The governor’s award, which is not monetary, annually honors full-time faculty for outstanding teaching, innovation in course design and delivery, effective advising, service to the institution’s community and commitment to excellence.

“I’m thrilled and honored to receive this award,” Bahar said. “It means a great deal to me to know that my teaching is making a positive difference to my students. That makes it all worth while.”

Bahar, a resident of St. Louis, has been at UMSL since 2006. For the past decade, her research has been primarily focused on synchronization in neural systems. Her lab also investigates brain activity in healthy subjects and epilepsy patients in collaboration with colleagues at SLU Hospital and at Washington University. They hope to understand the fundamental mechanisms behind various brain pathologies, using a combination of the tools of neuroimaging and physics. Ultimately, this work may lead to the developments of new treatments and/or diagnostic methods.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in physics from Drexel University in Philadelphia and her master’s degree and doctorate in biophysics from the University of Rochester in New York.