Duke Professional News, Sept. 3, 2003

Jun Yang, an assistant professor of computer science at Duke University, has been awarded a Faculty Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The award is one of the highest honors given by NSF to young tenure-track university faculty.

As part of the award, NSF will provide $400,000 in funding over the next five years. Yang will use the award to support his research project titled 'Techniques and Applications of Derived Data Maintenance.' Yang's research interests include database and information management systems. Yang received his undergraduate degree in 1995 from University of California, Berkeley, and his doctorate in 2001 from Stanford University.

Joel Fleishman, professor of public policy studies and law and director of the Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Center for Ethics, Public Policy and the Professions, has been elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Fleishman joined Duke in 1971 as a member of the law faculty and as director of the Institute of Policy Sciences and Public Affairs.

The academy's purpose, according to its Charter of 1780, is 'to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.' The academy, now in its 223rd year, honors distinguished scientists, scholars and leaders in public affairs, business, administration and the arts. It has numbered among its members George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Daniel Webster, Albert Einstein and Woodrow Wilson.

Helen F. Ladd, Edgar T. Thompson Professor of Public Policy Studies and professor of economics at Duke's Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, has been selected to receive the 2003 Aaron B. Wildavsky Award for Lifetime Scholarly Achievement in Public Budgeting. The award has been given annually since 1993 by the American Society for Public Administration's Association for Budgeting and Financial Management. The award will be presented Sept. 19 in Washington, D.C., during the association's annual conference.Ladd is also associate director of the Sanford Institute and an expert on education policy.

The Comparative Democratization Section of American Political Science Association has given the award for best journal article to Anirudh Krishna, assistant professor of public policy studies and political science, for his essay, 'Enhancing Political Participation in Democracies: What is the Role of Social Capital?' in the May 2002 issue of Comparative Political Studies. The committee cited the essay for using 'a remarkable new data set to examine the political role of social capital in a nuanced and theoretically interesting manner.' Krishna also is author of the book 'Active Social Capital: Tracing the Roots of Development and Democracy' (Columbia University Press, 2002).