Six Guggenheim Fellows in SAS
Six
SAS faculty members have received fellowships from
the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial
Foundation. This represents the School of Arts and
Sciences' largest number of recipients in one year
since 1995.
The new fellows include Dr. Joan
Dayan, professor of English; Dr. Talya Fishman, associate
professor of religious studies; Dr. M. Susan Lindee, professor
of history and sociology of science; Peter Stallybrass,
Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the
Humanities; Dr. David Stern, Ruth Meltzer
Professor of Classical Hebrew Literature; and Dr.
Margo Todd, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of
History.
These
fellowships, for which there were more than 3,200
applicants, are awarded annually
for distinguished scholarly achievement and exceptional
promise for future accomplishment. They include substantial
stipends and are among North America's most prestigious
research awards. This year, 185 individuals from 87
institutions received fellowships. Of those 87 institutions,
only five, including Penn, had six or more fellows.
"I was delighted to learn that so many
of our faculty members received Guggenheim fellowships
this year. These are extremely prestigious awards for
which there is intense competition. That six of them
went to SAS faculty is another very gratifying indicator
of the caliber of scholarship in the School," said
Dean Samuel H. Preston.
Dr. Joan Dayan teaches courses
in Caribbean studies; 19th-century American, French,
and English literary history; and the comparative legal
and religious history of the Americas. The fellowship
will support her research on a legal, cultural, and
religious history of incarceration and slavery and
their impact on identity.
Dr.
Talya Fishman's work focuses
on Judaism in the medieval and early modern periods,
with special interest in Jewish intellectual and cultural
history. She is the Dalk and Rose Feith Fellow at Penn's
Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. She came to the
University in 2001 and holds a Ph.D. from Harvard.
She is studying the inscription of Oral Torah and the
transmission and formation of medieval Jewish culture.
Dr. M. Susan Lindee specializes
in 20th-century biological and biomedical sciences,
particularly radiation biology, human genetics, and
genomics. She has been a member of the faculty since
1990. Her Ph.D. is from Cornell. She is investigating
the convergence of war, science, and the healing arts
of medicine in the United States from 1914 to 2001.
Professor Peter Stallybrass is
co-director of the Penn Humanities Forum, director
of the Center for the History of Material Texts, and
a trustee of the English Institute at Harvard University.
He taught for 12 years at the University of Sussex
before coming to Penn in 1988. He is exploring the
relationship between material forms of writing and
methods of reading and literary composition in early
modern England and America. He is also preparing exhibitions
on "Benjamin Franklin and the Book" at the Library
Company of Philadelphia and New York's Grolier Club
and on "Writing Technologies" at the Folger Shakespeare
Library in Washington, D.C.
Dr. David Stern directs the
Jewish Studies Program and is a scholar of classical
Jewish literature and religion. He has been a member
of the faculty since 1984, and he received his Ph.D.
from Harvard. He is studying the ways in which the
physical forms of the Talmud, the Rabbinic
Bible, the Prayerbook, and the Passover
Haggadah have shaped their meaning and significance
within Jewish culture.
Dr. Margo Todd is an expert
on early modern English and Scottish history and the
culture of Reformed Protestantism in Britain and early
America. She came to Penn last fall from Vanderbilt
University and has a Ph.D. from Washington University.
She is compiling an urban history of the royal burgh
of Perth in 16th- and 17th-century Scotland.
Academy of Osseointegration President:
Dr. Jeffcoat
Dr. Marjorie Jeffcoat, Dean
of Penn Dental, was named president of the Academy
of Osseointegration, during the Academy's 2004
Annual Meeting, last month. Dean Jeffcoat, who will
serve a one-year term as president, has been an officer
of the Academy's Board of Directors for five years,
serving as president-elect and vice president. Dean
Jeffcoat also served on the Board of Directors and
has been a member of the Academy since 1986.
In addition, Dr. Joseph Gian-Grasso,
a member of the School of Dental Medicine's Board of
Overseers has been elected to the Board of Directors
of the Academy of Osseointegration.
The
Academy of Osseointegration, the world's leading
dental implant organization, was established in 1986
to advance the science and application of tissue
replacement in oral and facial care.
American Studies Book Prize
Embodied History: the Lives of the
Poor in Early Philadelphia, published by Penn
Press in 2003 has been awarded the American Studies
Network Book Prize. The author Simon Newman was
a Philadelphia Center dissertation fellow in 1990-1991
at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies.
He is currently the Sir Denis Brogan Professor of
American Studies at the University of Glasgow. The
Prize is awarded every other year by a consortium
of European centers and institutes of American studies
for the best book in all fields of American studies
published by an European scholar.
Penn
Professional Women's Network Awards
The
Penn
Professional Women's Network (formerly AWFA) created a new award in honor of President
Judith Rodin--the Judith Seitz Rodin Award for Innovative
Leadership--at their annual Alice Paul Awards Breakfast
last week. This award will be given annually, beginning
next year to a Penn woman, in her junior or senior
year, who has demonstrated evidence of innovative leadership
while a student here. It will be given through the
Penn Professional Women's Network, co-sponsored
by the Trustees' Council for Penn Women.
The 2004 Award recipients, and excerpts
from their citations follow.
Lenore Rowe Williams Award: Dr.
Lila Gleitman, professor of
psychology, SAS: "You
have produced kaleidoscopic scholarship on first
language acquisition, reaching into the work of ancient
thought, across cultures, and into the elements of
a child's mind to examine and explain processes vastly
underestimated and oversimplified. An extraordinary
body of work stands witness to your dedication, as
does the globe-spanning constellation of faculty
and students tracing their scholarly origins to you."
Robert E. Davies Award: Dr.
Loretta Sweet Jemmott, assistant provost,
and
van Ameringen Professor in Psychiatric Mental Health
Nursing, and director, Center for Urban Health
Research in the School of Nursing: "A spectacular model for
how to combine a faculty career with community activism,
you have done so with the greatest impact in your
own neighborhood. Your commitment to urban health
study has produced coalitions aiming to reduce disparities
in health care delivery to minorities, and risk reduction
and education in diseases such as AIDS."
Alice Paul Awards: Daphnee
Saget, Law and Social Work: "Through leadership,
fundraising and advocacy you have raised awareness
of justice issues for persons of color, and for women
and children. Your dedication has built a platform
for examination of these and other critical contemporary
issues both in and out of the Penn community."
Smita Jain and Jennifer Rakjumar,
CAS: "By creating venues for dialogue on women's careers,
health and politics, and through works of activism,
you have brought students to the table to examine critical
issues for themselves and for others."
Katherine Lee,
CAS: "Through
direct networking and organizing, you have effectively
quintupled interest in and participation in Penn For
Choice. Your dedicated activism had mobilized individuals
on behalf of reproductive rights and reproductive health,
not only at Penn, but also in regional and national
arenas."
Radhika Gupta,
SEAS: "Your dedication
and leadership in advancing the organization Women
In Computing. Your energy and strategic thought
created an essential resource network for women in
Computing and Information Science..."
The Lynda Hart Award: Jessica
Brand, CAS: "Through numerous contributions of
leadership, advocacy, and community service, you
enhanced the performing arts community at Penn and
served the Philadelphia community."
HERS: Drs. Bhutani and MacNamara
Two women from Penn were selected to
attend the HERS Summer Institute for Women in Higher
Education at Bryn Mawr College this year. Dr. Shalini
Dev Bhutani, director of International Student
and Scholar Services, Office of International Programs
and Dr. Lois MacNamara, assistant dean of Student
Affairs, Graduate School of Education. They will join
women from all over the country in a month-long program
co-sponsored by Bryn Mawr College and Higher Education
Resources (HERS) Mid-Atlantic. Penn has been sending
women to this institute since 1976; 72 Penn women have
become HERS alumnae in the past 27 years.
Genomics Institute Seed
Awards
Below
is a listing of fall 2003 awards for the 2003-04 award
cycle. Coordination with a P-20 planning grant awarded
for development of a National Center of Excellence
in Biomedical Computing enabled additional awards to
be made in Bioinformatics. The spring 2004 award cycle
will be announced in May.
Please refer to www.genomics.upenn.edu/ for
additional information including the seed grant guidelines.
Don
Baldwin (Pathology/SoM) & Zissimos
Mourelatos (Pathology/SoM) Novel Technology for
Analyzing Regulatory RNA Expression
Andrew
Dancis (Medicine/SoM) & Fevzi
Daldal (Biology/SAS) Mitochondria of Sideroblastic
Bone Marrow Cells: Proteomics and Analysis of Cofactors
by Activity Staining
Ivan Julian Dmochowski (Chemistry/SAS) Laser-Activated
Spatiotemporal Gene Regulation
Junhyong
Kim (Biology/SAS), Sampath Kannan (CIS/SEAS) & Sanjeev
Khanna (CIS/SEAS) Phylogeny
Construction from Non-standard Data
Fernando Pereira (CIS/SEAS) et al Collective
Inference: Integrating Multiple Types of Data from
Multiple Species for more Effective Exploratory Analysis
and Automated Annotation
Peter
White (Pediatrics/CHOP), Susan Davidson (CIS/SEAS) & Mark
Liberman (CIS/SEAS) Extracting
and Integrating Cancer Mutation Data
Genomics
Institute Seed Grant Committee
Academic
Year 2003-2004 (Bioinformatics awards were made
in consultation with the P-20
grant executive committee)
Top Researcher Awards
The
American Heart Association will honor six researchers
at the Association's Presidents' Reception: In
Celebration of Research. The awardees are:
Karen S. Brown,
a Ph.D. candidate in pharmacology in the School of
Medicine. Ms. Brown's
thesis research is focused on the effects of low or
deficient folate, a necessary nutrient, and high homocysteine,
a chemical that is frequently elevated in diseases
of the heart and blood vessels found in cells that
line human blood vessels.
Dr. Carol Deutsch, professor
of physiology in the School of Medicine. Dr. Deutsch
focuses her primary research on the function and assembly
of potassium channels.
Kyle D. Mansfield, a graduate
student in the biomedical graduate studies program
in the department of cell and molecular biology in
the School of Medicine. Mr. Mansfield is studying the
role of mitochondria in cellular oxygen sensing.
Lawrence M. Szewczuk,
a pre-doctoral fellow in the department of biochemistry
and biophysics
in the School of Medicine. Mr. Szewczuk's research
focuses on resveratrol, a polyphenolic compound found
in red wine and known to have cardiovascular protective,
cancer chemopreventive, and anti-inflammatory activities.
Dr. Frank H. Wilkinson, a post-doctoral
Fellow in the School of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Wilkinson
is currently studying the role of a human protein,
Yin Yang 1 (YY1) , during embryonic development.
Dr. Serge V. Yarovoi,
a research associate in the department of pathology
and laboratory
medicine in the School of Medicine. Dr. Yarovoi's current
research involves studying the basic mechanisms underlying
the interaction of urokinase-type plasminogen activator
(uPA) and its receptor (uPAR).
Distinguished
Researcher: Dr.
Medoff-Cooper
Dr. Barbara Medoff-Cooper, the
Helen M. Shearer Term Professor in Nutrition, at the
School of Nursing, has been selected the second annual
Claire Fagin Distinguished Researcher for 2004.
"Dr. Medoff-Cooper's advancement of
the science of nursing, behavioral psychology, and
neurobiology, as well as her considerable mentorship
of scholars nationally and internationally embodies
all the characteristics of this award in Claire Fagin's
honor," said Dean Afaf Meleis. The award was established
last year in honor of Dean Emeritus Claire Fagin, who
has consistently promoted the importance of nursing.
Ivy Film Festival Winners
Josh Gorin,
a junior in Cinema Studies and Kiran Pallegadda (SEAS '03,
W '03), took top honors at this year's annual Ivy Film
Festival. Mr. Gorin was awarded Best Undergraduate
Comedy for his 23-minute satire Winning Caroline. Produced
in collaboration with students at Harvard, Princeton,
and Penn State, the movie is a fast-paced romantic
comedy. Last year Mr. Gorin and a group of fellow Penn
students won the grand prize in a national contest
for a short film, The Ninja Movie. Mr. Pallegadda
won the Best Undergraduate Drama award for his film Elevator
View, a 12-minute short shot in West Philadelphia.
The film tells the story of a bored apartment security
guard whose dreams of heroism quickly become a dangerous
reality. Both films can be viewed at www.iFilm.com.
