Professional News, April 15, 2005

Duke's Social Science Research Institute has selected seven faculty to participate in the inaugural year of its Faculty Fellows program. Fellows Kerry Haynie, Margaret Humphreys, Miller McPherson, Truls Ostbye, Emilio Parrado, Barak Richman and Lynn Smith-Lovin will join seminar co-conveners Phil Costanzo and Frank Sloan to examine "Social Influence, Social Structure, and the Nature of Epidemics: The Social Dynamics of Disease Contagion."

The fellows and conveners will both draw and build on their expertise in economics, history, law, medicine, political science, psychology, public policy and sociology to examine epidemics, broadly understood, from the spread of disease to the communication of ideas.

SSRI's Faculty Fellows will join other members of the institute in SSRI's new facility in Erwin Mill next year.

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Ebrahim Moosa, an associate research professor in the Department of Religion and co-director of the Center for the Study of Muslim Networks, has been named a Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Moosa will receive $100,000 in funding over two years to pursue his research project, "Inside the Madrasa: The `Ulama Search for Authenticity." He was among 16 U.S. scholars chosen through a highly competitive process.

"I will be going back to the madrasas of my youth to see how the world is interpreted in the Islamic seminaries of India and Pakistan," said Moosa, who studied traditional Islamic sciences in an Indian madrasa for six years and received his alimiyya degree. "I'll be looking at questions of contemporary politics and seeing how they are interpreted within the confines of this traditional Muslim setting."

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Professor of economics Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe has been awarded the Benacer Prize, given annually to the best European macro or financial economist under the age of 40.

The prize, given by the Observatory of the European Central Bank, carries a monetary award of 25,000 Euros, a medal and a diploma. Schmitt-Grohe will receive the prize at a ceremony in Madrid in June.

She was the winner, the selection committee wrote, "for her important research devoted to developing and applying [tools for] the evaluation [of] macroeconomic (fiscal and monetary) stabilization policies in the context of economies subject to nominal and real distortions."

The prize recognizes research Schmitt-Grohe has done with her husband, economics professor Martin Uribe. Both arrived at Duke in 2003.

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John Taormina, director of the VisualResourcesCenter in the Department of Art and Art History, was presented with the 2005 Distinguished Service Award by the Visual Resources Association on March 7 at its annual conference in Miami. The Visual Resources Association is the international organization of image media professionals. Taormina was cited for his contributions to the visual resources profession, especially his leadership through publications and educational programs.

At the same ceremony, Taormina also shared the Visual Resources Association's 2005 Nancy DeLaurier Award with Mary Wassermann from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. They received the award for co-chairing the task force that developed and implemented the first Summer Educational Institute for Visual Resources and Image Management, whose inaugural offering took place at Duke in July 2004.

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Duke University Architect John Pearce was one of 66 members of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) elected recently to AIA's College of Fellows. This honor is awarded to members who have made significant contributions to the profession of architecture. Of the nearly 75,000 members in AIA, fewer than 2,500 have been elected to the College of Fellows.

The university architect at Duke since 1992, Pearce is responsible for the University Master Plan, architect selection for all capital projects and the design of all projects. Pearce will receive the Fellowship Medal on May 20 at the 2005 National AIA Convention and Design Expo in Las Vegas.

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Sheila Dillon, assistant professor of art and art history and of classical studies, was awarded the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) fellowship for "The Female Portrait in Greek Art and Society." She was among 195 U.S. scholars recognized for research in the humanities.

NEH fellowships support individuals pursuing advanced research that contributes to scholarly knowledge or to the general public's understanding of the humanities. Recipients usually produce scholarly articles, monographs on specialized subjects, books on broad topics, archaeological site reports, translations, editions, or other scholarly tools.

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Ravi Bansal, professor of finance and economics at the Fuqua School of Business has received one of the 2004 Smith Breeden Awards for Distinguished Papers. Prizes are awarded annually for the top three papers in The Journal of Finance. The winning papers are chosen by the associate editors of The Journal of Finance. The papers eligible for the prizes for a given year are those that appeared in the first five issues of that year and in the December issue from the previous year.

Bansal's paper, co-authored with Amir Yaron, was titled "Risks for the Long Run: A Potential Resolution of Asset Pricing Puzzles." It appeared in the August 2004 issue.

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Fuqua School Deputy Dean John Payne was recently elected president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making. The society is widely respected as an interdisciplinary academic organization dedicated to the study of normative, descriptive and prescriptive theories of decision. Its membership includes economists, psychologists, organizational researchers and other decision researchers.

Payne will serve as president-elect this year and will take over as president this fall. Past presidents of the society have included Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2002.

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Dr. Farshid Guilak, a professor in the Department of Surgery, was recently awarded the 2004 Richard Skalak Best Paper Award for the Journal of Biomechanical Engineering, for the paper entitled, "Alterations in the mechanical properties of the human chondrocyte pericellular matrix with osteoarthritis", published in 2003.

The first author of the paper was Leonidas Alexopoulos, a graduate student in Dr. Guilak's laboratory. The award recognizes the best paper published in the Journal of Biomechanical Engineering in the previous year, as selected by the journal's editorial board.

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Steven B. Smith, a photography professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, has been selected to receive the second DukeCenter for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography for his stunning black-and-white photographs of the surreal intersection of suburbia and desert in California, Utah, Nevada, and Colorado.

Smith will receive a grant of $3,000, publication of a book of photography, and inclusion in an exhibition featuring the first three winners of the prize, set to travel in 2007 “2008. The book will be published in fall 2005 by Duke University Press.