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Honors & Other Things |
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March 17, 2015, Volume 61, No. 26 |
Susan Davidson: Computing Research Association
Amy Gutmann: Reginald Wilson Diversity Leadership Award
EHRS: Collegiate Safety Award
David Srolovitz: National Academy of Enineering
Alain Rook: ASA’s Research Achievement Award
Sloan Research Fellowships
Two Penn Medicine Gene Therapy Researchers: Bio Awards
Susan Davidson: Computing Research Association
Susan Davidson, Weiss Professor in Computer and Information Science,was elected chair of the Computing Research Association (CRA) Board of Directors, effective July 2015.
CRA’s mission is to enhance innovation by joining with industry, government and academia to strengthen research and advanced education in computing. CRA executes this mission by leading the computing research community, informing policymakers and the public and facilitating the development of strong, diverse talent in the field.
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Amy Gutmann: Reginald Wilson Diversity Leadership Award
The American Council on Education (ACE) presented University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann with the 2015 Reginald Wilson Diversity Leadership Award and at their 97th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC earlier this week. The award is given annually to an individual who has made outstanding contributions and demonstrated sustained commitment to diversity in higher education.
The award is named in honor of Reginald Wilson, senior scholar emeritus at ACE and founding director of the Council’s Office of Minority Concerns. “It is a privilege to present the 2015 Reginald Wilson Diversity Leadership Award to Amy Gutmann, whose vision and leadership at the University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere has shown her dedication to increasing access to higher education to all students,” said ACE President Molly Corbett Broad. “She has worked tirelessly to assist students in pursuing their dream of a college degree.”
As a first-generation college student, President Gutmann has significantly increased the number of students from low-income, middle-income and first-generation college families attending Penn.
Dr. Gutmann became president in 2004 and has been an outspoken advocate for increased access to higher education, leading Penn to become the largest university in the United States to establish an all-grant policy for all undergraduate students who qualify for financial aid. As a first-generation college student, Gutmann has significantly increased the number of students from low-income, middle-income, and first-generation college families attending Penn.
In 2011, Gutmann launched the university’s $100 million Action Plan for Faculty Diversity and Excellence in partnership with Penn’s provost and the deans of the university’s 12 schools, which has further strengthened Penn’s eminent faculty.
Gutmann is the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Professor of Communication at Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication. She has published widely on the value of and the importance of access to higher education.
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EHRS: Collegiate Safety Award
The University of Pennsylvania Office of Environmental Health and Radiation Safety (EHRS) was selected to receive the American Chemical Society (ACS) Division of Chemical Health and Safety (CHAS) Stratus Collegiate Safety Award. The award is presented annually in recognition of a comprehensive laboratory and chemical safety program at an institution of higher learning. Nominations for the award are made by peers and the program is evaluated in ten categories by ACS inspectors. EHRS and SAS’s department of chemistry worked in collaboration to develop and maintain laboratory safety programs that made this award possible.
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David Srolovitz: National Academy of Enineering
David Srolovitz, Joseph Bordogna Professor of Engineering & Applied Science, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) for his accomplishments in theory and simulation of microstructure and properties of materials and leadership in computational materials engineering.
Election to the NAE is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature,” and to the “pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.”
Dr. Srolovitz holds joint appointments in materials science and engineering and mechanical engineering and applied mechanics, and a secondary appointment in computer and information science. He is a Fellow of the Materials Research Society, Institute of Physics, The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society and ASM International.
He is a leading scholar in theoretical and computational materials science who has coauthored more than 400 publications with over 15,000 citations in the areas of crystal defects, microstructure, deformation and morphology and their evolution with papers appearing in venues such as Nature, Science, PNAS, Physical Review Letters, Nano Letters and Acta Materialia. He is particularly well known for his work on surface stability, grain growth, mechanical behavior and film growth.
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Alain Rook: ASA’s Research Achievement Award
Alain Rook, professor of dermatology in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, has been named the recipient of the American Skin Association’s (ASA) 2015 Research Achievement Award in Melanoma and Skin Cancer. The award will be presented during the Annual Meeting of the Society of Investigative Dermatology, which will be held this May in Atlanta, Georgia.
The Research Achievement Awards were instituted in 1989 to identify and recognize established scientists in investigative dermatology and cutaneous biology who have greatly advanced work related to vitiligo and pigment cell disorders, melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer, psoriasis, autoimmune and inflammatory skin diseases and public policy.
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Sloan Research Fellowships
Three University of Pennsylvania faculty members are among this year’s Sloan Research Fellowship recipients.
Since 1955, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has granted yearly fellowships to early-career scientists and scholars whose achievements and potential identify them as the next generation of scientific leaders.
To qualify, candidates must be nominated by their peers and selected by an independent panel of senior scholars. Each Fellow receives a $50,000 award to further his or her research.
Penn’s 2015 Sloan Fellows are:
Zahra Fakhraai, assistant professor of chemistry, School of Arts & Sciences—At the nanoscale, materials display extraordinary behavior. A plastic water bottle, for instance, behaves more like a viscous liquid when zoomed within a nanometer of its surface. Dr. Fakhraai is interested in understanding how the properties of materials at the nanoscale differ from bulk. This includes understanding properties of amorphous solids, biopolymers and interaction of light with matter at surface and interfaces. To do so, she and her colleagues probe surfaces with nanoparticles and nanoscale probes and observe how the molecules respond. Developing experiments and theories to explain how molecules and biomolecules pack on surfaces will help materials scientists design more effective and longer-lasting nanomaterials or predict properties of biomaterials on cell surfaces.
Jennifer Phillips-Cremins, assistant professor of bioengineering, School of Engineering & Applied Science—Layered on top of DNA is another chemical code, one that determines how genes are expressed, when and where. This so-called “epigenome” causes cells with the same genetic code to diverge into everything from heart-forming cardiomyocytes to information-processing neurons. Her laboratory uses computational, molecular and cellular tools to study how the 3-D folding of the epigenome directs development of the human brain. Her research may one day allow scientists to engineer the epigenome to prevent or reverse neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease or Fragile X syndrome.
Aaron Roth, assistant professor of computer and information science, School of Engineering & Applied Science—In the Internet age, the practice of mining consumer data for useful information is widespread and has raised concerns about individual privacy. Dr. Roth’s interests lie in designing new algorithms for querying large datasets that protect an individual’s personal information while leading to more reliable outcomes. Dr. Roth and his colleagues are developing a “differentially private” approach that allows a company like Google to examine consumer trends in data while ensuring that individual information is not revealed. The same tool may help scientists reduce the rate of false positive discoveries, which often stem from patterns driven by outlying individuals in a dataset, rather than generalizable trends that apply to the set at large.
“The beginning of one’s career is a crucial time in the life of a scientist. Building a lab, attracting funding in an increasingly competitive environment and securing tenure all depend on doing innovative, original, high-quality work and having that work recognized,” said Paul L. Joskow, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “For more than 50 years the Sloan Foundation has been proud to celebrate the achievements of extraordinary young scientists who are pushing the boundaries of scientific knowledge.”
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Two Penn Medicine Gene Therapy Researchers: Bio Awards
Two researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania were honored last week for their contributions to the burgeoning field of gene therapy by Pennsylvania Bio at their annual dinner. Pennsylvania Bio is the statewide bioscience trade organization that works to make the Keystone State a life sciences hub by creating an environment that cultivates progress and success.
Carl June, the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the department of pathology and laboratory medicine and director of translational research in Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center, received the 2015 Hubert J.P. Schoemaker Leadership Award. The award is presented each year to a Pennsylvania scientist who has shown a “spirit of innovation” throughout his or her career.
James M. Wilson, director of the Orphan Disease Center, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, and director of the Gene Therapy Program, received the Scientific Achievement Award, which is given each year to a Pennsylvania scientist who advanced scientific knowledge, innovation and/or patient care.
Dr. June is recognized for his decades of work to advance cancer therapies, specifically his work as leader of the team responsible for the first successful and sustained demonstration of the use of CAR T cell therapy, an investigational approach in which a patient’s cells are removed through an apheresis process similar to dialysis and modified in Penn’s cell and vaccine production facility. Scientists there reprogram the patients’ T cells through a gene modification technique using a viral vector that trains them to recognize specific types of cancer cells. The modified cells—known as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells—are then infused back into the patient’s body, where they multiply, hunt and attack tumor cells. Dr. Wilson has also been a pioneer in the use of gene editing for HIV.
The latest results of clinical trials utilizing CAR T cells to treat blood cancers at Penn showed a response rate of 90 percent among pediatric and adult acute lymphoblastic leukemia patients. Among patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, the earliest group the research team began clinical trials with in 2010, about 50 percent of patients respond to the therapy, and remissions among some of the first patients treated with the approach now exceed four and a half years. Early results in studies of patients with lymphoma and myeloma are also promising, and clinical trials are now underway to test this approach in patients with solid tumors.
Stretching back to the earliest days of work with gene therapy in the 1980s, Dr. Wilson’s research focus has been rare inherited diseases, ranging from cystic fibrosis to dyslipidemias to a variety of metabolic disorders. Most recently, Dr. Wilson’s laboratory discovered a family of viruses from primates that could be engineered to be very effective gene transfer vehicles. These so-called “vectors” have become the technology platform of choice and have set the stage for the recent resurgence of the field of gene therapy.
Dr. Wilson has also been active in facilitating the commercial development of these new gene therapy platforms through the establishment of several biotechnology companies. Since joining Penn in 1993, his discoveries have been translated into more than 90 issued patents. |
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Almanac -
March 17, 2015, Volume 61, No. 26
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