Utah State University faculty members Peter Crooks and Felipe Valencia have been named Faculty Researchers of the Year in the USU College of Arts and Sciences. The two will be honored at the ArtSci awards ceremony March 25 during ArtSci Week 2026.
Crooks and Valencia will also be recognized at the USU Faculty Awards Ceremony slated for Wednesday, April 1, from 3-5 p.m. in the Russell/Wanless Performance Hall on campus. They are among eight nominees for the university Faculty Researcher of the Year award.
Crooks, who joined USU’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics as an assistant professor of pure mathematics in 2022, is nominated for his original and influential work in symplectic Lie theory. His 12 peer-reviewed publications and preprints in just three years include articles in Compositio Mathematica and other top-tier journals. Crooks’ contributions have been recognized by the National Science Foundation and Simons Foundation, marking him as an outstanding junior career mathematician in his field.
“Each of us has intuitive notions of symmetry; for example, those exhibited by a butterfly lying on a table,” Crooks says. “At the same time, it is difficult to make such notions precise and actionable. I find my research meaningful because it realizes intuitive symmetries in clear, mathematical terms, with a view to elucidating structures in quantum physics.”
Valencia, associate professor of Spanish in the Department of World Languages and Cultures, has been nominated in recognition of his distinguished research profile in early modern Spanish studies.
As president of the Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry from 2022-2025 and an invited plenary speaker at the 2026 triennial conference of the Asociación Internacional Siglo de Oro (AISO) conference in Buenos Aires, he occupies a leading role in the field’s most prestigious scholarly societies.
Valencia’s record of publications in top-tier journals, including Hispanic Review and Modern Language Notes, his widely acclaimed monograph The Melancholy Void, his invited lectures at institutions including the University of Oxford, Paris-Nanterre and Milan, and his competitive research fellowships collectively attest to his international reputation, scholarly authority and transformative impact on Hispanic studies.
“In my research, I explore how the women and men of the 16th- and 17th-century Hispanic world forged ways of making and reading poetry thoroughly inflected by distinctly early modern understandings of gender, sexuality and the materiality of the body,” says Valencia, who joined USU’s faculty in 2015. “My research is meaningful to me because it contributes to our collective understanding of the mentality of a period different from ours, and perhaps it may also contribute to lyric theory and the larger critique of sexual violence and patriarchy.”
Both faculty members are actively involved in mentoring undergraduates and graduate students, equipping them with skills and knowledge for career success beyond their USU journeys.
Valencia and Crooks are featured speakers in ArtSci’s “Faculty in Focus” lecture series. Valencia will speak from 12:30-1:30 p.m. April 1 in ESLC 245D. Crooks will speak from 12:30-1:30 p.m. April 10, also in ESLC 245D. All are welcome.