Wayne State University professor Steven Stack of Troy is the recipient of an Ig Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking research that found a correlation between country music and suicide rates among fans of that music genre.
Stack, a sociology professor in WSU's criminal justice department, uncovered and reported on the link in 1992 along with co-researcher James Gundlach of Auburn University.

Their research on the connection, which gained international attention at the time, is once again in the limelight thanks to the annual Ig Nobel awards ceremony held at Harvard University. The tongue-in-cheek awards celebrate unusual and imaginative research achievements "that first make people laugh, and then make them think." Stack and Gundlach won in the "medicine" category for their country music study.

During an Undergraduate Research Conference at Wayne State on Friday, Oct. 29, Stack (who did not attend the ceremony at Harvard) will receive his award certificate from Marc Abrahams, founder of the Ig Nobel competition. Abrahams will be at WSU to deliver the keynote speech at the conference, which is arranged by the university's Honors Program to recognize and encourage research by students. He will discuss how research can be fun as well as important.

Stack has conducted several other studies over the years, examining suicide rates among various occupational categories.