Their names have long been synonymous with the biological sciences department, and thanks to their recent gifts to the ODU capital campaign, their legendary contributions to the program will be felt for many years to come in yet another way.

Emeriti professors Daniel Sonenshine and Harold Marshall this spring announced gifts of $100,000 each to fund a lecture series and scholarship, respectively.

The Daniel E. and Helen N. Sonenshine Endowed Lectureship in Infectious Diseases is an outgrowth of Sonenshine’s research interests. Not long after joining the faculty in 1961, he began his first tick research here and has been involved in acarology, the study of mites and ticks, ever since. His primary emphasis has been the study of tick-borne diseases.

The lecture series will cover the general area of infectious diseases. “The goal is to attract top-notch speakers to stimulate our faculty and students with the exciting work in this discipline,” he said. He also envisions speakers giving general lectures for the community.

Sonenshine began his research on tick pheromones, tick immunity and tick-borne diseases in 1984. Patents have derived from his work and he is in the process of developing a “tick decoy.” His research and the publication of his definitive two-volume text, “The Biology of Ticks” (1991) and “Dynamics of Tick-Borne Zoonoses” (1993), have placed him among the world’s experts in the field of acarology.

Sonenshine, who received Virginia’s Outstanding Scientist award in 1994, continues to conduct research. “I’ve had a more than 40-year association with the university. I’m pretty much here every day doing research, so ODU is quite important to me.”

Marshall, who came to the university two years after Sonenshine and retired in 1995, also has had a distinguished career that continues in the form of research on phytoplankton and toxin-producing algae, most notably the fish-attacking microbe called pfiesteria, in Chesapeake Bay and Virginia rivers.

His gift will establish the Harold G. and Vivian J. Marshall Endowed Scholarship in Biology, which will go to a graduate student whose concentration is ecology.

Marshall served as chair of the biology department from 1969-90. He has conducted research of phytoplankton ecology in the North Atlantic, equatorial Pacific and Caribbean Sea. Overall, he has received more than $5 million in research funding.

He is especially proud of the ongoing graduate student research exchange program he established and has supported over the past decade between ODU and Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland.

Asked about his gift, Marshall said, “As a newly married college student, completing my graduate studies and earning a doctoral degree were made possible by the scholarships that I received. This scholarship program is our way of helping other students attain their academic goals.”