Meet the 2023 Regents Professors

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Established in 1965 by the Board of Regents to recognize the national and international prominence of faculty members, the Regents Professorship is the highest honor the University of Minnesota bestows on its faculty. It recognizes faculty who have made exceptional contributions to the University through teaching, research, scholarship, or creative work, and contributions to the public good.

Sarah Hobbie, Dianne Neumark-Sztainer and Jean O'Brien have been named 2023 Regents Professors. Read more about these accomplished professors below.

Dr. Sarah Hobbie

Professor Sarah Hobbie is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor, Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, College of Biological Sciences, who began her position at the University of Minnesota in 1998. Her contributions to the University of Minnesota have fundamentally transformed the ecological research landscape at the University and in the Minnesota region. Hobbie is a member of the National Academy of Sciences; a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and a fellow of the Ecological Society of America. She has over 220 peer-reviewed publications, over 44,000 citations, an h-index of 97, and regularly publishes in high impact journals such as Science, Nature, and PNAS. While at the University of Minnesota, Hobbie has received $49.3 million in external funding as either lead- or co-PI, from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The scope and scale of Hobbie’s scientific accomplishments are truly extraordinary, and her scholarly work has significantly shaped how we understand human impacts on ecosystems. Hobbie considers how human social, economic, and political layers shape ecological cycles, how these cycles interact, and what this means for the services that ecosystems provide. She has worked with a team of collaborators across seven U.S. cities to document how human planting practices in cities are creating homogenization of biological communities and significant reductions in biodiversity. Ongoing work in this area considers the intersection of urban nature and socioeconomic status and how urban ecological restoration could reduce disparities in toxin exposure and well-being.

Hobbie is recognized widely as a critical and careful thinker, highly respected by her colleagues, and consistently asked to take on leadership roles within the ecosystem science community. She explicitly seeks to understand the research and professional goals of her students and postdocs, and works to connect them to resources and personal connections that support their specific goals. Former students and mentees have noted that their successes in the field are directly attributable to Hobbie’s practice of supporting the development of critical skills in scientific research.

Hobbie has been active in service at the University at the departmental, collegiate, and University level, serving on numerous committees, including as director of Graduate Admissions and director of Graduate Studies in the Ecology, Evolution and Behavior (EEB) Graduate Program; as EEB faculty liaison to the Writing Enriched Curriculum program; and more. Locally, since 2021, Hobbie has led the Minneapolis-St. Paul Urban Long-term Ecological Research Program (MSP-LTER), a vision conceived in 2019 and brought into existence with a massive collaborative grant-writing effort. Nationally, Hobbie has provided editorial service to three journals, including the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. She also served as a member of the Ecological Society of America (ESA) for two years before being appointed as chair of the ESA Fellows and Early Career Fellows Selection Committee. In addition, Hobbie has contributed long-term service to the Leopold Leadership Program (now Earth Leadership Program), a leadership development program for mid-career faculty that equips academic researchers with the skills, approaches, and theoretical frameworks for catalyzing change to address the world’s most pressing sustainability challenges.

Dr. Dianne Neumark-Sztainer

Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, professor and head of the School of Public Health Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, University of Minnesota, is an esteemed researcher and world-renowned scholar with a remarkable commitment to and love for the University of Minnesota. Neumark-Sztainer’s innovative, accomplished, and exemplary work has transformed our collective understanding of eating, activity, and weight-related health in young people, helping to set them on the path to healthy lifestyles. A factor that distinguishes Neumark-Sztainer from many other scholars is her commitment to sharing her research findings with the broader public, and ensuring that her work continues to positively impact the health of the public through clinical practice, school programming, and policy.

Neumark-Sztainer began her career with the University of Minnesota as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Pediatrics’ Leadership Education in Adolescent Health Programs (LEAH), University of Minnesota Medical School. She joined the School of Public Health as an assistant professor in 1995, was promoted to tenured associate professor in 1999, and full professor in 2004. Her achievements have garnered her numerous awards at the University, including the Distinguished Women Scholars Award; the Outstanding Faculty Award for Excellence in Postdoctoral Advising; membership in the Academy for Excellence in Health Research (2017); and being named a McKnight Presidential Professor (2020).

Neumark-Sztainer’s research has shaped and is cited in the federal dietary guidelines for the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, and is referenced by many non-governmental organizations, including the World Health Organization and medical associations in America, Canada, Australia, Germany, and Mexico. She has published roughly 600 scientific publications, which have been cited nearly 85,000 times. In 2014, Thomson Reuters recognized her among the top 1% of cited researchers in her field, while in 2022, Research.com named her as a leading female scientist (ranked in the top 100 female scientists across all fields in the United States). In 1997, Neumark-Sztainer established what has become the world’s largest and most comprehensive longitudinal body of research examining patterns and predictors of eating, activity, and weight-related health in young people - the ongoing and groundbreaking Project EAT (Eating and Activity among Teens and Young Adults).

Students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty at all levels and from all corners of the world, seek out Neumark-Sztainer as a mentor. She is deeply dedicated to ensuring that her mentees have successful and productive careers. In line with her desire to enhance the spectrum of researchers working in this area, most program fellows have diverse ethnic and/or racial identities or come from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. As recognition of her devotion to teaching and mentoring, she received the School of Public Health’s Leonard M. Schuman Award for Excellence in Teaching.

The School of Public Health appointed Neumark-Sztainer as interim division head of the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health in December 2014 and as division head in the fall of 2015. The division has flourished under her leadership and has had great research success. Currently, the division holds the second-largest research portfolio among all departments at the University of Minnesota, with an annual research expenditure of approximately $25M, primarily from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Within the division, she established a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Action Team to ensure that diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice drive the development of all policies and practices.

Dr. Jean O’Brien

Distinguished McKnight Professor Jean O’Brien, Department of History, joined the University of Minnesota in 1989. She is an award-winning historian and scholar, an intellectual leader who has helped to transform the field of Indigenous Studies, a prodigious and acclaimed author, the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, a nationally-recognized teacher and graduate mentor, a dynamic institution builder who has helped the University of Minnesota achieve its highest academic goals and social ideals, an active public historian, and a generous professional citizen. In short, O’Brien epitomizes the highest standard of excellence the Regents Professorship seeks to recognize.

O’Brien is an historian of Indigenous peoples within the long history of colonialism in what became the United States and in dialogue with the experience of Indigenous peoples globally. She has written three books, co-edited four anthologies, and published more than twenty articles and essays. Her research and publications are reshaping the fields of Native American and Indigenous history. As a scholar working initially in eighteenth and more recently nineteenth century Native New England, O'Brien has systematically and persuasively forced historians to reconsider the nature of Indigenous survival in the region, rewriting our understanding of the Indigenous experience in colonial North America. These achievements have earned her the highest accolades from the most established historical organizations, including the American Antiquarian Association (2000), the Society of American Historians (2016), and, most recently, elected membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2022). Among her many honors, perhaps none speaks more clearly of her extraordinary stature than her American Indian History Lifetime Achievement Award from an organization that brings together older and newer strands of scholarship: the Western History Association (2014). The impact of O’Brien’s scholarship has profoundly re-shaped the field. In 2013, she also co-founded (and co-edited until 2019) a journal published at the University of Minnesota that has gained an international reputation. Native American and Indigenous Studies promotes exciting new scholarship from around the world. The journal enjoys a stellar reputation that supports the work of students, professors, and Indigenous intellectuals. O’Brien has also created opportunities for new scholarship and consciously rejects barriers to inclusion based on rank, prestige, or disciplinary background.

O'Brien is a superb teacher who has taught hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students in core courses in the Departments of History, American Studies, and American Indian Studies. She won the Graduate Teaching Award, Outstanding Contributions to Postbaccalaureate, Graduate, and Professional Education Award from the University of Minnesota (2006), the Richard A. Yarborough Mentoring Award from the American Studies Association (2022), and she is a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers (2006). She has advised or co-advised 31 PhD students (fourteen of whom are Indigenous) who have gone on to successful careers, with another thirteen (nine of whom are Indigenous) currently being advised or co-advised.

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