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Honors & Other Things |
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February 9, 2016, Volume 62, No. 22 |
2015 AAAS Fellows
Four Penn faculty members have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). They are among a class of 347 researchers who have been awarded this honor because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.
New Fellows will be presented with an official certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin this month during the 2016 AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.
The new Penn AAAS Fellows are:
Ted Abel, the Brush Family Professor of Biology in Penn Arts & Sciences: for distinguished contributions to the field of neuroscience, particularly for studies of the molecular mechanisms of memory storage and the biological basis of behavior.
Dennis E. Discher, the Robert D. Bent Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering in Penn Engineering: for outstanding contributions to the understanding of the effects of matrix and cytoskeletal physical properties and forces on cell physiology and stem cell development.
A.T. Charlie Johnson, director of Penn’s Nano/Bio Interface Center and professor in the department of physics & astronomy in Penn Arts & Sciences: for distinguished contributions to condensed matter physics, especially for studies of transport in one- and two-dimensional materials, and applications of nano-bio hybrids for chemical detection.
Mark Trodden, department chair and Fay R. and Eugene L. Langberg Professor of Physics: for distinguished contributions to particle cosmology, particularly for theoretical approaches to cosmic acceleration and the baryon asymmetry of the universe, and their dissemination beyond academia.
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Gustavo Aguirre: Louis Braille Award for Blindness Research
The Associated Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired recognized Gustavo D. Aguirre, professor of medical genetics and ophthalmology at Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine, with the 2016 Louis Braille Award for innovative research and treatment of inherited blinding diseases.
The award was presented in January at the 56th Annual Louis Braille Awards Ceremony in Philadelphia.
Dr. Aguirre has investigated the genetic basis of a variety of inherited vision disorders, including Leber’s congenital amaurosis, Best disease, achromatopsia and retinitis pigmentosa. His work on novel gene therapy approaches to treatment, which deliver to the eye a functional copy of a gene that is otherwise lacking, has restored vision in animal models of X-linked retinitis pigmentosa and Leber’s congenital amaurosis. The Leber congenital amaurosis therapy is now in human clinical trials.
Dr. Aguirre earned his VMD in 1968 and his PhD in 1975, both from Penn.
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Cynthia A. Connolly: NEH Fellowship
Cynthia A. Connolly, associate professor of nursing in the department of family & community health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The fellowship, one of the most prestigious in the humanities, will be used to complete her forthcoming book, Children, Drug Therapy, and Pharmaceuticals in the United States, 1906-1979.
Dr. Connolly’s book, which traces the development, use and marketing of pharmaceutical products for children, will be the first history of children and drugs. Even though almost every 20th-century law governing drug safety was enacted in response to a pediatric drug disaster, drug safety only improved for adults, not for children.
Dr. Connolly holds a secondary appointment in SAS’s history & sociology of science department and is also a Fellow at the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and the Alice Paul Center for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality.
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Nader Engheta: NAI Fellow
Nader Engheta, the H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor in the department of electrical & systems engineering at Penn, has been named a National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Fellow. He will be presented with the honor at the NAI 2016 Annual Conference in Washington, DC in April.
Dr. Engheta’s research interests span the fields of nano-optics and nanophotonics, metamaterials and plasmonics, and optical nanostructures, including nanoantennas, nanocircuits and nanosystems. He and his group have been developing the concept of optical lumped nanocircuits based on material nanostructures, with the goal of “modularizing” nanophotonics and providing the possibility of information processing with light at the nanoscale, and also the extreme platforms for unprecedented tailoring and manipulating light-matter interaction.
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Fall Academic All-Ivy Athletes
In December, the Ivy League announced its Academic All-Ivy selections for the fall 2015 season. Each season, ten student-athletes from each Ancient Eight school—five men and five women—are named Academic All-Ivy. In order to be eligible, student-athletes must be in their second year or beyond at Penn and hold a cumulative GPA of 3.00 or higher.
Penn’s Academic All-Ivy athletes for fall 2015 are:
Thomas Awad, C’16; health & societies
major; men’s cross country
Alexis Genske; C’16; philosophy, politics & economics (PPE) major; volleyball
Elizabeth Hitti; SEAS’16; mechanical engineering & applied mechanics major; field hockey
Alexa Hoover; C’18; undeclared major; field hockey
Paige Lombard; C’16; anthropology major; women’s soccer
Mike McCurdy; C’17; biological basis of behavior (BBB) major; football
Ashley Montgomery, W’17; management concentration; women’s cross country
Alec Neumann; C’16; philosophy, politics & economics (PPE) major; men’s soccer
Tanner Thexton, W’16; statistics concentration; football
Justin Watson; W’18; undeclared concentration; football
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Eli J. Lesser: Fulbright-Nehru International Education Administrator Seminar
Eli J. Lesser, senior director, Penn Summer and Non-Degree Programs in the College of Liberal and Professional Studies, has been selected for the 2016 Fulbright-Nehru International Education Administrator Seminar.
The seminar will take place in India next month. Mr. Lesser will join ten peer administrators from other US institutions to study and engage higher education institutions in India.
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Fermento: 2016 Y Prize Winners
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Siddharth Shah, Shashwata Narain and Alexander David. |
The annual Y Prize—co-sponsored by Penn Engineering, Wharton’s Mack Institute, Wharton Entrepreneurship and the Penn Center for Innovation—awarded top honors to the Wharton and Penn Engineering student founders of Fermento, a system to speed up the fermentation process in beer production by up to nine times while maintaining alcohol quality and composition at an industrial scale, leading to substantial cost reductions. The Fermento team, consisting of Siddharth Shah, Shashwata Narain and Alexander David, selected microfluidic fabrication technology developed by David Issadore’s lab as the basis for a technological solution to this problem.
The Y Prize gives students the chance to show how Penn technology can be used in creating a compelling and viable product. Fermento won $10,000 and the right to commercialize their application of Penn-owned biomedical engineering technology. The prize was awarded at the fourth annual Y-Prize Grand Finale in January.
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Denis Mukwege: 2016 Penn Nursing Renfield Foundation Award
Denis Mukwege, a humanitarian and advocate for women’s rights, will receive the 2016 Penn Nursing Renfield Foundation Award for Global Women’s Health for his work in treating and highlighting the plight of women in the war-torn eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The award, which comes with a $100,000 cash prize, was established in 2012 by the Beatrice Renfield Foundation and is presented biennially to a leader, or leaders, in the field of global women’s health. Dr. Mukwege will receive the honor during an event at Penn on March 24, 2016.
Dr. Mukwege is an obstetrician and gynecologist who lives and works in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 1999, he established the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, which has become known worldwide for the treatment of survivors of sexual violence and women with severe gynecological problems. He and his staff have performed reconstructive gynecological surgery on more than 21,000 women injured as a consequence of war, including those subjected to rape. He also established a nurses’ training program, the Institut des Techniques Medicales de Panzi, to provide education and clinical training to about 50 nurses per year.
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Penn Alexander School: High SPR Achievement
Penn Alexander School, one of 19 schools recognized by the School District of Philadelphia for high achievement on the 2014-2015 School Progress Report (SPR), is the City Leader for K-8 schools. Penn Alexander School attained the highest performance ratings in the District in the categories of Achievement, Climate and Growth.
Now in its third year, the SPR evaluates schools in multiple areas, including student achievement, student growth, school climate, and for high schools, college- and career-readiness. Unlike the state’s School Performance Profiles, the SPR places greater emphasis on overall progress rather than standardized test performance alone.
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Three Penn Engineering Students: Forbes ‘30 Under 30’
Three students at Penn’s School of Engineering & Applied Science are among the Forbes 2016 ‘30 Under 30’ honorees. Since 2012, the list has spotlighted “entrepreneurial-minded bright young stars who are transforming the world.” The 2016 class includes 600 of the greatest young entrepreneurs, breakout talents and change agents in 20 different industries.
Spencer Penn, a mechanical engineering & applied mechanics major, and Morgan Snyder, a digital media design major, were selected as co-honorees in recognition of their company, Sweet Bites. The aim of Sweet Bites is to solve the global issue of oral disease and its complications in challenged urban areas via xylitol-enhanced chewing gum. By employing local women to distribute the gum packaged with medical information, they hope to enable female entrepreneurship, close the information gap around healthcare access and improve the lives of millions suffering from preventable dental health problems.
Yash Mulgaonkar, a PhD student in the department of mechanical engineering & applied mechanics, was selected for his achievements in developing the world’s smallest autonomous drone. He is focusing on how to make drones and other robots accessible to the general public by developing rapid fabrication methods. Additionally, he is researching training methods for robots so that they can better work together to complete tasks.
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Monroe Price: International Communication Association’s C. Edwin Baker Award
Monroe E. Price, director of the Center for Global Communication Studies at Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication, is the 2016 recipient of the C. Edwin Baker Award for the Advancement of Scholarship on Media, Markets and Democracy. The award, given annually by the Philosophy of Communication and Communication Law and Policy Divisions of the International Communication Association, will be presented in June at the International Communication Association Annual Conference in Fukuoka, Japan.
Dr. Price’s award recognizes his book, Free Expression, Globalism and the New Strategic Communication (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Building upon themes pioneered by C. Edwin Baker in his masterworks, Dr. Price questions how intense strategic flows of information mesh with contemporary theories of press freedom.
The award also recognizes Dr. Price’s extensive work developing nodes of global communications study and practice. In addition to establishing the Center for Global Communication Studies and serving as a full adjunct professor at Annenberg School for Communication, he founded Oxford University’s Programme in Comparative Media Law & Policy and the Center for Data & Media Studies at Central European University.
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Megan Ryerson: WTS Philadelphia 2015 Woman of the Year
Megan Ryerson, assistant professor of city & regional planning in PennDesign, who also holds an appointment in electrical & systems engineering (transportation) at Penn Engineering, is the 2015 recipient of the Women’s Transportation Seminar (WTS)—Philadelphia Chapter Woman of the Year Award. The WTS is an organization committed to the advancement of women within the transportation industry.
Dr. Ryerson’s dedication to mentorship—actively recruiting women to pursue careers in aviation engineering and helping them to overcome any barriers to success—played a crucial factor in the WTS’s decision. Her current research areas include airports and airport planning; aviation network resilience in the aftermath of a climate event, using mathematical algorithms in re-routing planes; municipal subsidies for airlines; and theoretical and actual links between economical development and airport capacity.
She leads a research group of doctoral and master’s students, along with an undergraduate student, investigating air traffic in Philadelphia.
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Deborah Thomas: Editor-in-Chief, American Anthropologist
Deborah Thomas, a professor of anthropology and Africana studies in the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts & Sciences, has been named editor-in-chief of the American Anthropological Association’s (AAA) flagship journal, American Anthropologist, effective July 1. The position will run through June 30, 2020.
Dr. Thomas also holds appointments in Penn’s Graduate School of Education and School of Social Policy & Practice. She is a core faculty member of the Alice Paul Center for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality.
Her vision for the quarterly journal, which reaches the nearly 10,000 AAA members and tens of thousands of researchers, also includes the development of an online presence that will cultivate broad awareness of the work done by the association’s scholars. This spans the main fields of anthropology: cultural anthropology, biological/physical anthropology, archaeology and linguistic anthropology.
Dr. Thomas has served as a member of the American Anthropologist editorial board and as co-editor of one of its sections, “Visual Anthropology.” From 2007 until 2010, she edited the AAA’s journal, Transforming Anthropology.
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Almanac -
February 9, 2016, Volume 62, No. 22
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