Honors & Other Things |
|
October 29, 2013, Volume 60, No. 11 |
John Reps Prize: Dr. Ammon
|
Francesca Ammon, assistant professor of city and regional planning in PennDesign, won the John Reps Prize from the Society for American City and Regional Planning History (SACRPH) for her dissertation, “Culture of Clearance: Waging War on the Landscape in Postwar America” (Yale 2012). The award is given to the best doctoral dissertation in American city and regional planning history completed in the past two years. |
Service Award: Ms. Wilson
|
Fatou Wilson, a chef at Houston Market, was recognized by the Bon Appétit Management Company for her customer service as part of its Star One Program. Chef Wilson was singled out from among all employees at the over 500 accounts in 32 states including corporate campuses such as Google and Starbucks and universities such as John Hopkins. A native of Senegal who is credited with creating many of the recipes now served in the Hemispheres section of Houston Market, Chef Wilson was recognized on October 17 in Orlando, Florida. For more about her visit: www.upenn.edu/dining |
AAU Vice Chair: Dr. Gutmann
|
The Association of American Universities has elected University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann as its vice chair for the 2013-2014 term.
A non-profit association of 60 US and two Canadian leading public and private research universities, AAU focuses on national and institutional issues that are important to research-intensive universities, including funding for research, research and education policy and graduate and undergraduate education.
“I am honored to be selected Vice Chair of the AAU. By the discoveries they make, the new knowledge they generate and the students they educate, America’s leading research and teaching universities are vital to our nation’s future,” President Gutmann said. “There is no more exciting place to be than on the cusp of discovery and the AAU has a proud history of supporting and advancing vitally important work that benefits all Americans.”
Dr. Gutmann is the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science in the School of Arts & Sciences and professor of communication in the Annenberg School for Communication at Penn, with secondary faculty appointments in philosophy in SAS and the Graduate School of Education. She has published widely on the value of education and deliberation in democracy, on the importance of access to higher education and health care, on “the good, the bad and the ugly” of identity politics and on the essential role of ethics—especially professional and political ethics—in public affairs. |
Undergraduate Research Prize
The 2013 Electrical and Systems Engineering (ESE) Senior Design team—consisting of Sam Lim, Fred Abiprabowo, Palm Harinsuit and Willis Zhang—is the recipient of the 2013 INFORMS Undergraduate Operations Research Prize presented by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). Their paper “Designing a Simulation Tool for Commercial Cross-Docking Application” was selected by INFORMS to be presented by the team at the 2013 INFORMS Annual Meeting held earlier this month in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Peter Hahn, adjunct associate professor in ESE and Monique Guignard, professor of operations and information management in the Wharton School, advised the students.
For their project, the team developed a discrete-event simulation model, using ExtendSim© software to dynamically replicate the operations of a large cross docking facility. Working closely with a large multinational transportation company, they constructed a prototype model to determine the impact of resource assignments on the cost of shipping per inbound container. Their simulation model depicts the operational processes executed at a fully operating cross dock and tracks important metrics, including facility throughput, total cost, resource utilization and idle time. They validated the accuracy of their model by comparing model performance measures against actual historical data provided by the company. The prototype simulation model serves as a tool that enables cross-dock operators to evaluate assignment strategies in a risk-free, costless environment.
INFORMS is the largest professional society in the world for professionals in the field of operations research, management science and analytics.
Institute of Medicine Elects Seven New Members from Penn Medicine
Seven professors from the Perelman School of Medicine have been elected members of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), one of the nation’s highest honors in biomedicine. In addition to their appointments in the Perelman School of Medicine, the new inductees also hold positions within the School of Arts & Sciences (SAS), the School of Nursing, the Scheie Eye Institute, the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economic (LDI) and The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).
The new members bring Penn Medicine’s total to 68.
Established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences, IOM has become recognized as a national resource for independent, scientifically informed analysis and recommendations on health issues. With their election, members make a commitment to volunteer their service on IOM committees, boards and other activities.
The new Penn IOM members:
Charles L. Bosk is professor of anesthesiology and critical care, Perelman School of Medicine; professor of sociology, SAS; and senior fellow, LDI. His research areas are medical sociology and the professionalization, deviance and social control and field methods of research. His current projects focus on the ethics of research and on medical mistakes in the guise of patient safety.
Phyllis A. Dennery is professor of pediatrics; director, Newborn Services, HUP; and chief of the Division of Neonatology and Newborn Services at CHOP. She holds the Werner and Gertrude Henle Endowed Chair in Pediatrics. Her research is focused on oxidative stress-mediated neonatal lung gene regulation and on the biology of lung injury and repair. Her clinical interests are in neonatal jaundice, bronchopulmonary dysplasia and the long-term consequences of prematurity.
Jeffrey A. Drebin is chair of the department of surgery at Penn Medicine, and the John Rhea Barton Professor of Surgery. Dr. Drebin’s research has contributed significantly to the understanding of the genetic origins of cancer. His many clinical interests include pancreatic cancer, acute and chronic pancreatitis, the use of new technologies to manage liver tumors, disorders of the bile ducts and management of gallbladder disease.
Gideon Dreyfuss is the Isaac Norris Professor of Biochemistry & Biophysics and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Dr. Dreyfuss’ laboratory is interested in post-transcriptional gene regulation and its central mediators, RNA-binding proteins and non-coding RNAs. The Dreyfuss laboratory is also pursuing its recent surprising discovery of a fundamental new step in gene expression—protection of nascent gene transcripts from pre-mature termination, a U1 snRNP function (named telescripting), and its potential role in cancer, cell proliferation and activation of immune cells and neurons.
Karen Glanz is a Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) Professor and George A. Weiss University Professor, professor of epidemiology and nursing in the Perelman School of Medicine and in the School of Nursing, and director of the Center for Health Behavior Research. She is also a senior fellow in LDI. Dr. Glanz’s research bridges public health and social science disciplines and focuses on nutrition and obesity, skin cancer prevention, tobacco control and cancer screening. Her pathbreaking work integrates theory and research methods from social and behavioral sciences into public health and medicine.
Joan M. O’Brien is the George E. de Schweinitz and William F. Norris Professor of Ophthalmology, chair of the department of ophthalmology and director of the Scheie Eye Institute at the Perelman School of Medicine. Her research focuses on the genetics of eye disease, including retinoblastoma, melanoma and glaucoma.
George M. Shaw is professor of medicine and microbiology. His investigative work focuses on the transmission and immunopathogenesis of HIV-1 and hepatitis C virus (HCV), human pathogens that infect more than 200 million individuals worldwide. Dr. Shaw is recognized for having developed the first molecular clones of HIV-1, which led to the development of antibody and nucleic acid tests to protect the blood supply and diagnose and monitor HIV-1 infections.
|