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Honors and Other Things
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February 9, 2010, Volume 56, No. 21

 

AAAS Fellows
Five faculty members from Penn have been elected Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). These individuals will be recognized for their contributions to science and technology at the Fellows Forum this month. The new Fellows will receive a certificate and a blue and gold rosette as a symbol of their distinguished accomplishments. The Fellows are:

Dr. Nader Engheta, H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering and professor of bioengineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Dr. Ellen Friedman Prince, professor emeritus of linguistics in the School of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Norman Hecht, William Shippen, Jr. Professor of Human Reproduction in the department of obstetrics and gynecology in the School of Medicine.

Dr. Erle S. Robertson, professor of microbiology in the School of Medicine and program director of the tumor virology program in the Abramson Cancer Center.

Dr. Susan Ross, professor of microbiology in the School of Medicine and director of Biomedical Graduate Studies.

Design Competition Winner: Mr. Choi

Umbrella

Penn School of Design student Young-Hwan Choi won this year’s American Institute of Architects urbanSHED International Design Competition for his “Urban Umbrella.” Working with a team of professionals including architect Andrés Cortés and engineer Sarrah Khan, Mr. Choi produced a design that creates an elegant translucent canopy to protect pedestrians without obstructing the view of storefronts in New York City.

The “Urban Umbrella” design allows more light to shine through the canopies and allows more space for pedestrians to walk on sidewalks than the current design. It’s the first time the sheds have been redesigned in more than 50 years.
Mr. Choi, a first-year architecture student, received $10,000, and a full-scale prototype of his design will be constructed at a site in Lower Manhattan.

A video of Mayor Michael Bloomberg making the announcement is available at www.nyc.gov/html/om/html/2010a/media/pc012110_construction_512k.asx

At left, an evening view of the “Urban Umbrella” design, provided courtesy of Mr. Choi.

 

 

 

 

PennMOVES Proceeds to United Way
The $30,000 in proceeds raised during Penn MOVES, a sale of items left behind by students during spring move-out that would have otherwise gone to a landfill, was presented to the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania. Craig Carnaroli, executive vice president; Marie Witt, vice president of business services; and Anne Papageorge, vice president of facilities and real estate services, presented the check to Jill M. Michal, president and CEO of United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania at the RecycleMania kick-off in January. 

Society of Experimental Psychologists: Dr. Baron
Dr. Jonathan Baron, professor of psychology in the School of Arts and Sciences, has been named a Fellow by the Society of Experimental Psychologists. This society admits a limited number of members annually from among the leading experimentalists in North America. Dr. Baron, whose research interests focus on how intuitions and judgment biases impede maximization of utility in democratic government, also holds an appointment in the Wharton School’s department of operations, information management and decision processes and is a senior fellow with the University’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics.

President of American Sociological Association: Dr. Collins
Dr. Randall Collins, the Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor in Sociology, has been elected to serve as the 102nd President of the American Sociological Association (ASA) for 2010-2011. Dr. Collins will assume office in August of 2010, following a year of service as president-elect. 

Dr. Collins is a leading contemporary social theorist whose areas of expertise include the macro-historical sociology of political and economic change; micro-sociology, including face-to-face interaction; and the sociology of intellectuals and social conflict.

As President, Dr. Collins will serve as chair of the ASA Council, which governs the Association and its policies and will work with a program committee to shape the 2011 ASA Annual Meeting.

ARNOVA Editor: Dr. Handy
The Association for Research in Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) announced that Dr. Femida Handy, professor in the School of Social Policy & Practice, is one of three of the new team of editors of its journal Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly. She will assume this role in July. Dr. Handy is an expert on non-profit sector economics, including micro foundational issues, non-profit entrepreneurship, economics of human behavior and organizational life, social welfare and the environment, NGOs and volunteerism.  Additionally, she’s the academic advisor for the Nonprofit/NGO Leadership program at SP2.

Troland Research Award: Dr. Kahana
Dr. Michael J. Kahana, professor in the department of psychology in Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences, and the director of the Computational Memory Lab at Penn, has been awarded the Troland Research Award by the National Academy of Sciences, an honor given for innovative experimental, theoretical, and computational work leading to new insights regarding the dynamics of human episodic memory.

The Troland Research Award provides $50,000 annually to further the empirical research of young investigators studying within the broad spectrum of experimental psychology. Research topics include, sensation, perception, motivation, emotion, learning, memory, cognition, language and action.

An awards ceremony for the recipients will take place in April.

National Board Certification: Ms. Naughton
Kate Naughton, a Penn Alexander School (PAS) first grade teacher, has achieved National Board Certification. She is the school’s first teacher to apply and thus the first to receive the award.  National Board Certification is the highest certification in the teaching profession. The process is based on rigorous standards that evaluate teaching practice through performance-based assessments; the ultimate result is improved performance and achievement for students.

Distinguished Service Award: Dr. Penning
Dr. Trevor M. Penning, director of the Center of Excellence in Environmental Toxicology at the School of Medicine, will receive The National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) 2010 Distinguished Service Award at the NPA’s 8th Annual Meeting in March. Dr. Penning is recognized in the postdoctoral community as a longtime advocate on behalf of postdoctoral scholars, both on the home and national fronts. He is also professor of pharmacology, biochemistry and biophysics, and ob/gyn. Dr. Penning is internationally recognized for his research on steroid hormone enzymology and mechanisms by which polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons cause cancer. He oversaw the formation of the postdoctoral office at Penn, one of the first in the country, and served as the director of the office of postdoctoral programs, and associate dean for postdoctoral research training in the School of Medicine from 1997 to 2001, and as director of biomedical postdoctoral programs from 2001 to 2005.

Robert Morris Award: Dr. Winegrad
On February 27, the Welsh Society of Philadelphia will present its prestigious Robert Morris Award to Dr. Dilys Winegrad, GR’70, founding director of Penn’s Arthur Ross Gallery, which she helped establish in 1983. This presentation by the oldest ethnic society in the country, is awarded to an outstanding American of Welsh heritage. It takes place annually at the Society’s St. David’s Day Banquet commemorating the Patron Saint of Wales.

Oliver Cromwell Cox Prize: Dr. Zuberi
Dr. Tukufu Zuberi, the Lasry Family Professor of Race Relations and chair of the department of sociology in the School of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded the 2009 Oliver Cromwell Cox Award from the American Sociological Association (ASA) for his book White Logic, White Methods: Racism and Methodology. Dr. Zuberi shares the honor with his co-editor, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a professor of sociology at Duke University. The award, which is selected by the ASA’s Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities, recognizes sociologically related books published in the last two years that make a distinguished and significant contribution to the eradication of racism.

Global MBA Rankings
The Wharton School ranked #2 in this year’s Global MBA Rankings by Financial Times.

ITMAT Transdisciplinary Award Recipients
We are delighted to announce the fifth round of successful applications for the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics’ (ITMAT) Transdisciplinary Award Program (TAPITMAT), supported by the School of Medicine. The quality of all applications was extremely high and the funding decisions, made by members of the Internal Advisory Board, were extremely difficult.

The selected projects range across the breadth of biology, integrate diverse disciplines and investigators from many schools of Penn and The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia reflecting their interaction in the context of the Clinical and Translational Science Award. They are uniformly of high scientific quality, interdisciplinary and translational in nature.

ITMAT is delighted with the number and quality of applications responsive to this call for awards and will continue to develop the program further in future years.

Recipients

Dr. Joseph Gorman, department of surgery, SOM; Dr. Jason Burdick, department of bioengineering, SEAS—Minimally Invasive Off-Pump Mitral Valve Replacement

Dr. George Coukos, department of obstetrics and gynecology, SOM; Dr. Divgi Chaitany, department of radiology, SOM— Non-invasive detection of adoptive immunotherapy

Dr. Peter Klein, department of medicine, division of hematology-oncology, SOM; Dr. Wenli Yang, Institute for Regenerative Medicine, SOM; Dr. Elizabeth Hexner, department of medicine, division of hematology-oncology, SOM—Modulation of Wnt and mTOR signaling to expand hematopoietic stem cells

Dr. Andrew Maidment, department of radiology, SOM; Dr. Angela DeMichele, department of medicine, division of hematology-oncology, SOM; Dr. Emily Conant, department of radiology, SOM; Dr. Mark Rosen, department of radiology, SOM; Dr. Regina Troxel, department of biostatistics and epidemiology, SOM—Functional Digital Breast Tomosynthesis as a Predictive Biomarker in Neoadjuvant Therapy

Dr. Mortimer Poncz, department of pediatrics, division of hematology-oncology, SOM; Dr. Sergei Zaytsev, department of pharmacology, SOM; Dr. X. Long Zheng, department of pathology and laboratory medicine, SOM—Platelet targeted ADAMTS 13 as a novel thrombolytic agent

Dr. Gupreet Kapoor, department of neurosurgery, SOM; Dr. Elias Melhem, department of radiology, SOM; Dr. Harish Poptani, department of radiology, SOM; Dr. Donald O’Rourke, department of neurosurgery, SOM—Characterization of genes on 1p and 19q loci of oligodendroglioma that modulate tumor angiogenesis and chemosensitivity

For more information, please visit our website at www.itmat.upenn.edu.

—Dr. Garret A. FitzGerald, Director, ITMAT

Thouron Award Winners
Two Penn seniors and a Penn graduate student have received Thouron Awards to pursue graduate degrees in the United Kingdom next year. The Thouron Award is a graduate exchange program between British universities and Penn created to reinforce the “special relationship” between the US and the UK.

Veyom Bahl, C’07, political science major with minors in urban studies and economics. He has been working on Wall Street for the past two years, but was a Fulbright Scholar to Mexico following graduation. Mr. Bahl wants to do an MSc in development administration and planning at University College London.

Samuel Levine, M&T’10—Won a Thouron Prize for Summer Study at Cambridge his junior year at Penn. He serves on the Engineering Dean’s Advisory Board and the Weiss Tech House Innovation Fund Projects. Mr. Levine wants to pursue an MSc in management and regulation risk at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Stefan Sabo, C’10, math major, submatriculated into the mathematics graduate program. He will attend the University of Cambridge. Mr. Sabo is a University Scholar, on CURF’s Undergraduate Advisory Board, and is a Dean’s Scholar. He has done research with Dean of the College Dennis DeTurck.

Macy’s Marketing Case Competition
Students from Penn are this year’s winners of the Macy’s Marketing Case Competition. The 3st (pronounced “Thirst”), included Tony Wang, W’12, Flora Liu, W’12 and Charley Ma, C’12. In addition to the cash prize of $500, the winners’ ideas will be used in a national campaign. The team proposed a store-design change that showcased the Macy’s “Impulse” section—aimed at juniors—which has not been widely used throughout the company stores but has a pilot program on the West Coast.

 

 

Almanac - February 9, 2010, Volume 56, No. 21