Susan Roth, Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies, announced that Linda Burton, who recently joined the faculty of the Sociology Department at Duke, has been awarded Fellow status by the Gerontological Society of America. GSA is the oldest and largest national multidisciplinary scientific organization devoted to the advancement of gerontological research.
Kim Rorschach, director the Nasher Museum of Art, will moderate a panel at a symposium just prior to the opening of Art Basel/Miami Beach on December 5 and 6 in Miami Beach. The event is being co-organized by Cathy Leff, director, The Wolfsonian-FIU, and Susan Taylor, director, Princeton University Art Museum. The symposium will promote a broad discussion about the university art museum and explore its various distinctive roles. Princeton University President Shirley M. Tilghman will be the keynote speaker.
Ariel Dorfman's short story Gringos has been selected for the O. Henry Prize Stories 2007. The O. Henry Prize is given to the 20 best short stories published in English in North America each year. Dorfman's story about a South American couple's unpleasant encounter with a man on a backstreet of Barcelona first appeared in 2006 in the inaugural issue of the journal Subtropics, published by the University of Florida English Department and edited by David Leavitt, who submitted the story.
Kevin A. Pelphrey, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Duke, who is charting the normal and abnormal development of the social brain, has been named a John Merck Scholar. The John Merck Fund awarded $300,000 in grants over four years to three oustanding neurobiological and congitive post-doctoral researchers. The recipients of the awards were selected from a national pool of applicants who are pursuing promising research projects in neurobiology and related fields.
Duke is among eight universities selected to serve as hosts for the prestigious Doris Duke Conservation Fellows Program during the next two academic years. The program, launched in 1997 by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, is the nation's premier leadership development program for future conservation leaders pursuing master degrees in multidisciplinary environmental studies programs. Each year, the fellowship program will provide support for 36 students, which will comprise up to $30,000 each for tuition, a paid summer internship and support for leadership development and national networking activities.
Darell Bigner, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke, has received the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Medicine, honoris causa, at Lund University in Sweden. He was honored for his career-long contributions to brain-tumor research and for his long-standing collaboration with Swedish investigators, particularly those at the University of Lund. Dr. Bigner is considered one of the world leading authorities on brain tumors.His research concerns the cause and improved diagnosis and treatment of malignant brain tumors in adults and children.
Computer Science Professor Ronald E. Parr has been awarded a Faculty Early Career Development grant by the National Science Foundation for a research project on robotics. The project aims to design a robot that, given a simple description of on object, can find that object in an unknown environment and map its location. The three-year grant is for $256,998.
Charles Lochmuller, professor of chemistry, was awarded the Faculty Distinguished Service Award June 2 by the Center for Biomolecular and Tissue Engineering (CBTE). The CBTE Steering Committee praised Lochmuller for his vision and service to the center and his 37 years of service to Duke.
In the early years of the center, Lochmuller's pioneering efforts led to the establishment of the Center for Biochemical Engineering, the precursor to CBTE. The center is the only multi-departmental Ph.D. granting program at Duke that spans the Pratt School of Engineering, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences and the Basic Medical Sciences. Lochmuller held the title of professor of biochemical engineering and served as the first director of graduate studies and as one of the first center director.
Henry Petroski, Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and professor of history, was elected April 29 to the American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the United States.
The society was founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin for the purpose of "promoting useful knowledge." It supports research, discovery and education through grants and fellowships, lectures, publications, prizes and exhibitions. Early members included George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, James Madison, and John Marshall. In the nineteenth century, John James Audubon, Robert Fulton, Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, and Louis Pasteur were among those elected.
Stanley Martin Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rose Professor of Theological Ethics at the Divinity School, received an honorary Doctor in Divinity degree from the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria on May 18. The seminary praised Hauerwas' theological studies, writings and teachings, calling him "contemporary theology"s foremost intellectual provocateur."
Virginia Seminary is the largest of the eleven accredited seminaries of the Episcopal Church and was founded in 1823.
Bryan Gilliam, Frances Hill Fox Professor in Humanities (Department of Music), has received a major research fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies for 2006-07. He will spend next year working on a new book: Rounding Wagner"s Mountain: Richard Strauss and the Search for Modern German Opera.
Duke University Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta will be among many of the world's most respected university presidents and Jewish communal leaders who will present at "Inspiring Values, Creating Leaders," the first international summit of academia and Jewish communal leadership. The Hillel-sponsored event, to be held May 21-23 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., will explore the relationship between the Jewish community and academia and how they can work together to advance common goals.
The summit is open to all university administrators, faculty and donors who are interested in strengthening relationships with the Jewish community and Jewish campus life. Registration is open through May 12 at www.hillel.org/summit.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $378,928 to Duke University for the continuation of the Ralph Bunche Summer Institute, which seeks to get minority undergraduates interested in graduate school.
The NSF grant will allow the institute to be held during the summers of 2006, 2007 and 2008. Duke is the host for the RBSI.
"We are thrilled that NSF has such confidence in this program and its ability to prepare minority students for graduate school and beyond," said Duke political science professor Paula McClain, the institute"s director. "This is also an indication of the respect NSF has for Duke's commitment to the RBSI and for the faculty and graduate students that give of their time and energy each summer. It is a very important and rewarding program."
The five-week summer program is designed to simulate the academically intensive graduate school experience as well as provide mentoring for African American, Hispanic and American Indian students. Sponsored by the American Political Science Association (APSA), the RBSI is funded by the National Science Foundation and Duke.
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Duke"s Social Science Research Institute has selected seven faculty to participate in its Faculty Fellows program. Susan Alberts, Peter Arcidiacono, Linda Burton, Christina Gibson-Davis, Nancy Hill, Felicia Kornbluh and Suzanne Shanahan will join seminar co-conveners Ken Dodge and Phil Morgan to examine "Understanding Family Change and Diversity". The fellows and conveners will both draw and build on their expertise in sociology, public policy, biology, economics, psychology and history.
SSRI"s Faculty Fellows program brings Duke faculty members from multiple departments and schools together to promote collaborative initiatives in high-priority areas that build on existing faculty strength and that exploit areas of significant intellectual potential.
Andrew Cunningham, a sophomore from Rutland, Vt., was recently selected as one of only 16 undergraduates from the United States to be honored as a Goldman Sachs Global Leader.
Each Global Leader receives a $3,000 grant for educational expenses. In addition, eight of the 16 Global Leaders will be selected to participate in the annual Goldman Sachs Global Leadership Institute in New York City in July.
Curtis J. Richardson , professor of resource ecology at the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences and director of the Duke University Wetland Center, has won the Environmental Law Institute's 2006 National Wetlands Award for Science Research.
The Science Research award is one of six awards presented annually by the non-profit institute to individuals who exemplify excellence and innovation in wetlands protection, restoration and education.
In selecting Richardson for the honor, the institute cited his "singularly impressive" contribution to wetlands science through research on wetlands loss and restoration in the Everglades; along the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast; in rapidly developing urban landscapes of North Carolina; in the heavily degraded Mesopotamian marshes of southern Iraq, which some scholars believe to be the site of the Biblical Garden of Eden; and in other threatened wetland ecosystems worldwide.
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An essay by Anne Firor Scott , the W.K. Boyd Professor of History Emerita at Duke, is included in the latest issue of its quarterly online journal, History Now. The issue is focused on Women's Suffrage. Scott's essay is on "Thinking about Women: Nineteenth Century Feminist Writings."
Each issue of History Now addresses a major figure or theme in American history with articles by eminent historians, lesson plans, links to related websites, bibliographies, and many other resources. The journal receives more than 65,000 visits for each issue.
Scott is the author of many books on the history of women in the United States, including The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830-1930 and Natural Allies: Women"s Associations in American History.
The International Academy of Cardiovascular Sciences (IACS) has presented its prestigious Medal of Merit for 2006 to Victor J. Dzau, M.D., chancellor for health affairs and president/ CEO of Duke University Health System. The Medal of Merit is the IACS's highest honor.
The IACS was founded in 1996 and provides the organizational structure for the world-wide sharing of research and education information in the field of heart health.
Dzau was given the Medal of Merit for his work in cardiovascular translational research. His research has studied the molecular and genetic mechanisms of cardiovascular disease and applied genomic and gene transfer technologies to develop novel therapeutic approaches.
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Mitchell E. Horwitz, M.D., a member of the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center and an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine in the Division of Cellular Therapy, received the 2006 Stafford Award on Feb. 14.
Horwitz won the $10,000 award for his proposal to develop a technique that is used to reduce graft-versus-host-disease following an allogeneic stem cell transplant. Graft-versus-host-disease results when the immune cells of a transplant from a donor attack the tissues of the person receiving the transplant.
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Alexander Rosenberg, R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy at Duke, has been awarded the Romanell-Phi Beta Kappa Professorship in Philosophy for 2006-07.
Each year, the professorship is presented to a philosophy scholar in recognition of distinguished achievement and the scholar's past or potential contribution to public understanding of philosophy. Recipients receive a stipend of $7,500 and are expected to present three public lectures at their institutions.
Society Secretary John Churchill said the Romanell Professorship, with its three thematically related lectures, "is an opportunity for PBK to promote philosophical inquiry and to honor the recipient's important contributions to the field."
Rosenberg's lecture series is called "The Meaning of Darwinism" and proposes to guide the listener through the theoretical place and role of Darwinism within the natural sciences, humanities and social and behavioral sciences.
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Margaret Riley, director of the Office of Study Abroad, has been promoted from assistant to associate dean of Trinity College, effective March 1, Trinity College Dean Robert Thompson announced.
The promotion came after the regular fifth-year review of Riley by a committee led by Chemistry Professor Al Crumbliss. The committee noted the development of Duke's study abroad programs under Riley's leadership and the commitment to enhancing the quality of study abroad experiences for Duke undergraduates.
Victor J. Dzau, M.D., chancellor for health affairs at Duke and president/CEO of Duke University Health System, will receive the prestigious Robert H. Williams, M.D., Award at a Feb. 17 awards banquet honoring him and past recipients.
The award is presented annually by the Association of Professors of Medicine (APM), the national organization of departments of internal medicine at U.S. medical schools and affiliated teaching hospitals. It is given to a distinguished physician who has demonstrated outstanding leadership as a current or former chair of a department of internal medicine. The award is named in honor of APM's first president.
Dzau joins two other Duke faculty members as recipients of this award: James Wyngaarden, M.D., who served the Duke Department of Medicine as chair from 1967-1983, and Eugene Stead Jr., M.D., who served as chair of the department from 1946 - 1967.
Kathryn D'Arcy Blanchard, a Ph.D. candidate in theology and ethics, has won the 2005-2006 Essay Prize for Doctoral Candidates awarded by World & World: Theology for Christian Ministry, a quarterly journal published by Luther Seminary in Minnesota.
Blanchard's winning essay, titled "‘If You Do Not Do This You Are Not Now a Christian: Martin Luther's Pastoral Teachings on Money," will be published in the journal's summer 2006 issue and she will receive a $1,000 cash prize. Blanchard is the third Duke doctoral student to win the Word &World essay prize since the annual contest began six years ago.
Blanchard earned a B.A. degree in religious studies from KenyonCollege in 1992 and a M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1997. She is married to Chris Moody, an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church; the couple has a 1-year-old son. Her dissertation topic at Duke is "Freedom to Serve: Why Calvinist Christianity is Incompatible with Capitalist Theory."
Duke University Medical Center and Health System received several awards in the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) District III Awards Competition for 2005.
The awards were: • Grand Prize Award for Annual Reports to "Integrating Research and Practice," the Duke University School of Nursing's Progress Report for 2004-2005. Writing and editing was by Marty Fisher, director of communications for the Duke University Medical Center Office of Development and Alumni Affairs. It was designed by Angela Rowell of the Office of Creative Services and Marketing Communications for Duke University Health System (DUHS), and photography was by Les Todd of Duke University Photography.
• Grand Prize Award in External Tabloids and Newsletters to DukeHealthLine, the quarterly consumer health newsletter for DUHS. The editor was Barbara Pierce and the winning issues were designed by Angela Rowell and Jessica Schindhelm, all of Creative Services.
• Grand Prize Award in Tabloid and Newsletter Improvement for Partners in Care, an annual external publication highlighting DUHS community services and programs. The editor is Sherry Williamson and the designer is Chad Roberts, both of Creative Services.
• Award of Excellence in Multimedia Programs for the new, permanent Duke University Hospital Lobby Display. The project was managed by Ellen Luken, executive director of alumni affairs and external relations for Medical Center Development.
• Award of Excellence for Internal Newsletters & Tabloids to INSIDE, the employee newsletter for DUHS and Medical Center. The senior editor is Marsha Green and the editor is Sherry Williamson, both of Creative Services. INSIDE also recently received an Award of Distinction for Internal Newsletters from the Association of American Medical Colleges in its 2005 awards competition.
• Award of Excellence for Four-Color Annual Reports to "Redefining the Future," the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center 2004-2005 Annual Report. Jill Boy, director of communications for the Cancer Center, is the editor and Jessica Schindhelm of Creative Services is the designer.
• Special Merit Award for Other Publications to DukeMed Magazine, the biannual magazine of Duke Medicine. The editor is Minnie Glymph and the designer is Jessica Schindhelm, both of Creative Services.
• Special Merit Award in Feature Writing for an article published in DukeMed Alumni News about Peter Kussin, M.D., a Duke physician who did medical relief work in Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami. It was written by Marty Fisher.
District III of CASE is comprised of states in the Southeast region of the United States. CASE is a professional organization for advancement professionals who work in alumni relations, communications and development. Its membership includes more than 22,0000 professionals from more than 3,200 colleges, universities and independent elementary and secondary schools around the world.
The Duke Law team of third-year law students Audry Casusol, Sara Wickware and April Nelson won the National Moot Court Competition in New York City on Feb. 2. More than 250 teams entered the competition, which is sponsored by the AmericanCollege of Trial Lawyers and the New York City Bar. This Duke team also won first place in the regional finals in the fall. Among other honors, their brief was recognized as the best in the competition, and April Nelson was named second best oralist. This is the first time DukeLawSchool has won this competition.
"This is a fantastic achievement, requiring enormous talent, hard work, and commitment," said Dean Katharine Bartlett. Bartlett also thanked team Coach Jim Maxwell and Associate Dean for Student Affairs Jill Miller.
After competing in preliminary rounds against DrakeUniversity and MercerUniversity, the Duke Law team eliminated Brooklyn Law School in the round of 16, and the University of Washington in the quarterfinals. In the semifinal round, they avenged a preliminary round loss, eliminating Drake. They defeated Memphis Law School in the finals.
January 2006
Alice Kaplan, Gilbert, Louis, and Edward Lehrman Professor of Romance Studies, history and literature, will receive the Henry James Prize for 2005 for her book The Interpreter. The award is given by the Society for History in the Federal Government for the best book on some aspect of federal government history written by an author who is not employed by the federal government. The society, established in 1979, is made up of historians employed by the various agencies of the Federal Government.
Richard J. Powell, the John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History, was one of the panelists Jan. 27 at a conference on "New Orleans Culture in a Post-Katrina Environment." Held at the ArthurRogerGallery in New Orleans, the conference will also include historian Douglas Brinkley and Dan Cameron, art curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York.
Author of such books as Black Art: A Cultural History and The Blues Aesthetic: Black Culture and Modernism, Powell has researched and lectured extensively in the areas of American art, African-American art, and theories of race and representation in the African diaspora.
William H. Schlesinger, dean of the NicholasSchool of the Environment and Earth Sciences, has been elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).
The AGU confers Fellowship to scientists who have attained acknowledged eminence in one or more branches of geophysics. The number of Fellows elected each year is limited to no more than 0.1 percent of the union's membership.
Schlesinger, who holds the James B. Duke Chair in Biogeochemistry at Duke, was cited for his seminal work on the biogeochemistry of global climate change, particularly the role of soils in the global carbon cycle and on desert ecosystems.
He will receive his award during the AGU's annual meeting, May 23-26 in Baltimore.
The AGU is a nonprofit scientific organization established in 1919 by the National Research Council to promote interdisciplinary global research in four fundamental areas: atmospheric and ocean sciences; solid-Earth sciences; hydrologic sciences; and space sciences. It has more than 41,000 members in 130 countries.
Norman L. Christensen, professor of ecology and founding dean of the NicholasSchool of the Environment and Earth Sciences at DukeUniversity, has been elected president of the 9,000-member Ecological Society of America (ESA), beginning August 2006.
The ESA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization of scientists founded in 1915 to promote ecological sciences and raise policymakers' and the public's awareness of the importance of ecology in everyday life.
"I look forward to serving ESA at a time when ecological issues such as global climate change and the sustainable management of our public lands and waters need to be placed at the forefront of national and international policy," said Christensen.
"As a society of scientists, we have an opportunity, and a responsibility, to work with governments, industry, landowners and others to safeguard the health and productivity of our planet's natural resources for future generations," he said.
Election as ESA's president represents a three-year commitment. During the first year, Christensen will serve as president-elect and oversee the society's committees and serve on its governing board. The second year, he will serve as president and formally preside over the society. The third year, as past president, he'll once again serve on the governing board, as well as chairing the nominating committee and giving the presidential address at the annual meeting.
Christensen, who completed a three-year term of ESA's vice president for finance in 2005, is widely cited for his work on sustainable forest management, wildfire management, and the impact of disturbance and succession in forest ecosystems. He is the recipient of the A. Starker Leopold Award from the National Park Service and a Distinguished Teaching Award from Duke University, and was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1993. He served two five-year terms as the NicholasSchool's dean from 1991 to 2001.
Associate professor Nimmi Ramanujam of the Pratt School of Engineering is a recipient of the 2005 Global Indus Technovators Award for her work developing minimally invasive, light-based technologies for early cancer detection. An awards reception was held on Jan. 24 in Boston.
The honor is bestowed on top scientists and engineers by the Indian Business Club at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to inspire a culture of innovation among young people of South Asian descent.
"It's an honor to be named among such an impressive group of previous awardees, and anything that helps to get young people interested in cancer research is great," Ramanujam said. "If it helps the next generation of South Asian students to get interested in innovation, that's all positive." Ramanujam is of Indian origin and grew up in Malaysia before coming to the United States to pursue a college education.
Selected from a pool of more than 100 nominees under the age of 40, Ramanujam is one of 10 to receive this year's award.
Ramanujam's research is focused on the use of light to aid in the clinical diagnosis of cancer. Light is a safe form of radiation and is unusual in its ability to unravel physiologic, metabolic and structural properties of molecules in tissues, many of which may differ between cancerous and healthy cells, she said.
Christopher Gelpi, an associate professor of political science, has been awarded the 2006 Karl Deutsch Award, given by the International Studies Association.
Established in 1981, the Karl Deutsch Award is presented annually to a scholar under 40 years of age who is judged to have made, through a body of publications, the most significant contribution to the study of international relations and peace research.
Gelpi's primary research interests are the sources of international military conflict and strategies for international conflict resolution. He is currently engaged in research on American public opinion and the use of military force, and on statistical models for forecasting military conflict. He has also published works on American civil-military relations and the use of force, the effect of democracy and trade on international conflict, the role of norms in crisis bargaining, alliances as instruments of control, diversionary wars, deterrence theory and the influence of the international system on the outbreak of violence.
Frank Borchardt, professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literature, was one of 50 language experts who produced 52 essays, called "Talkin' About Talk," that were broadcast on public radio and university radio stations across the country in 2005 as part of the celebration of the U.S. Senate-designed Year of Languages.
The materials also have been used in undergraduate and graduate programs as well as in high schools and literacy centers. This summer, the series will be published as a book -- including a chapter by Borchardt on technology in language learning -- as The Five-Minute Linguist: Bite-sized Essays on Language and Languages.
Talkin' About Talk is online here.
John Finan, a graduate student at the Pratt School of Engineering, has won a $10,000 scholarship and new car from Motorola Inc. for an essay proposing a "Mood Phone" that may be able to interpret the mood of the people speaking by analyzing variations in tone and speech patterns.
Finan was the grand prize winner Jan. 17 of Motorola's first "MOTOFWRD" competition. He was chosen from a pool of entries representing more than 500 students at 220 universities.
Designed to improve social interactions, especially for people who suffer from a mild form of autism called Asberger's Syndrome, Finan's theoretical "Mood Phone" would light up in a spectrum of color -- from warm reds to cool blues -- based on the verbal patterns of everyday speech received through the handset. Seen through the corner of the eye, the visual stimulus would help users interpret the mood and inflection communicated through the words and phrases they hear.