Honors & Other Things

Board of BFTP/SEP: Dr. Bordogna

The Board of Directors for Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania (BFTP/SEP), an innovative economic development organization that grows the region’s economy through science, technology and entrepreneurship–has elected Dr. Joseph Bordogna, Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Engineering and Dean Emeritus of SEAS to serve a three-year term.

“As a founding member of the team that shaped the Ben Franklin Technology Partners here in 1982, Dr. Bordogna is well acquainted with and very supportive of our mission and vision,” said Board Chairman Martin S. Dorph.

Dean of Academic Affairs: Dr. Judd

Dr. Cristle Collins Judd, associate professor of music and associate chair for performance, has been appointed Dean of Academic Affairs of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.

Dr. Collins has been at Penn since 1993. She is also the faculty administrator of the Undergraduate Music Computer Lab and Faculty Director of the College House Music Program. In Spring 2000, she received the Dean’s Award for Innovation in Teaching. 

WHO Task Force: Dr. McGuckin

Dr. Maryanne McGuckin, senior research investigator and adjunct professor in the School of Medicine, has been appointed to the World Health Organization (WHO) Task Force for the Global Patient Safety Challenge.

The task force was established to ensure that action occurs and that expert consensus is achieved on a number of unresolved issues and tasks/deliverables in relation to patient and public involvement in the prevention of Health Care-Associated Infection.

Joan McCord Award: Dr. Sherman

The 3rd Annual Joan McCord Award was given to Dr. Lawrence Sherman, director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, Albert M. Greenfield Professor of Human Relations, and former President of the Academy of Experimental Criminology (1999-2001).

This award is named in honor of Joan McCord, former president of the American Society of Criminology (2003-2004), and professor of criminal justice at Temple University. Recipients are chosen based on the following criteria: contributions to research in experimental criminology, commitment to experimental studies, contributions to policy and practice, contributions to the development of younger colleagues, and work that is done in the “spirit” of Joan McCord’s legacy.

National Academy of Engineering: Dr. Vitek

Dr. Vaclav Vitek, a professor of materials science and engineering, has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Vitek is one of 76 engineers nationwide inducted into the Academy this year.

Election to the Academy is considered one of the highest professional distinctions accorded American engineers. Dr. Vitek was recognized for his “work in the development of the atomistic modeling of crystalline solids and their application to materials engineering.”

Gates Cambridge Scholar: Ms. Zeitels

Lauren Zeitels, C ’06,  has received the 2006 Gates Cambridge Scholarship for study at the University of Cambridge where she plans to pursue a master’s degree in medical science. The scholarship program is funded through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Biometric Society Awards

Three Ph.D. students in the department of biostatistics and epidemiology, were among the International Biometric Society–Eastern North American Region (ENAR) 20 Distinguished Student Paper Award winners this year. The students, along with their paper titles are:

Robert Krafty, Penalized Functional Principal Components Analysis Using a Kullback-Leibler Criterion;

Benjamin Leiby, Identification of Responders in an Interstitial Cystitis Clinical Trial Using a Bayesian Multivariate Growth Curve Latent Class Model;

Tao Liu, Sensitivity of the Kaplan-Meier Estimate to Nonignorable Censoring.

Most Connected Campuses: Penn

Penn is among the top 25 most connected campuses in the nation, The Princeton Review announced in a study released in January. Criteria included the breadth of the computer science curriculum; the sophistication of campus technology, including streaming media of classes and extracurricular offerings; availability of school-owned digital cameras and equipment for student use; wireless Internet access on campus; and support for handheld computing. The schools were not ranked this year.

Best Practice in eProcurement: Penn

Purchasing Services, in collaboration with the Office of the Comptroller and Information Systems and Computing (ISC), has earned the Aberdeen Group’s “Best Practice in eProcurement” award for the use of Business Enterprise Network, or BEN—the suite of web-based applications that supports University-wide financial functions.

According to the Aberdeen Group, implementation of eProcurement technology, such as BEN, can “reduce transactions costs, improve process efficiency, reduce or eliminate “maverick” buying, increase contract compliance, reduce cycle times, and save inventory costs.”