September | August | July | June
September
Ryan Bailey, associate professor of chemistry, was awarded the 2007 National Institutes of Health Director's New Innovator Award. The award recognizes bold ideas from some of the nation's most innovative new scientists. Bailey's award is $1.5 million in direct costs over five years, which he will use to develop an ultrasensitive measurement technology to provide a picture of disease onset and progression at the molecular level. Posted: September 2007
Jay D. Bass, professor of geology and materials science, has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University Claude Bernard Lyon 1, in France. Bass was recognized for his work on elastic properties of materials of "geological or technological interest, under extreme conditions of pressure and temperature." Posted: September 2007
August
Vernon Burton, professor of history and sociology, was awarded the Chicago Tribune's Heartland Society prize for his book, The Age of Lincoln (Hill and Wang, 2007). The prize is awarded annually for a work of non-fiction and a novel that embody the spirit of the nation's heartland. Posted: August 2007
Adrian Burgos, associate professor of history, has been named as the winner of the first Latino/a Book Award by the selection committee of Latin American Studies Association (LASA) for Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line (University of California Press, 2007). Posted: August 2007
Virginia Dominguez, professor of anthropology, was named president-elect of the American Anthropological Association, an association with 12,000 members worldwide. Previous presidents of the AAA have included such pioneers as Margaret Mead and Franz Boas. Dominguez is well-known for her work on social, political, and legal history of notions of race in the Americas, peoplehood in the Middle East, and culture in the Pacific. She becomes president-elect of AAA in December 2007 and then president in December 2009. Posted: August 2007
Lillian Hoddeson, professor of history, has been named the first Thomas Siebel Chair in the History of Science. A PhD in physics, Hoddeson is internationally known and respected by both historians and scientists for her study of the history of 20th century science and technology, specializing in modern physics and "megascience." Posted: August 2007
July
Steve Sligar, professor of chemistry, biochemistry, and medicine, has been named a Fellow of the Biophysical Society. Much of Sligar's research involves the development and utilization of novel technologies to understand the central mechanisms of biological function at the cellular and molecular level. Posted: July 2007
June
Ed Diener, Alumni Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois, recently won the Jack Block award for contributions to personality, given out by the Society of Personality and Social Psychology. Diener's research mainly focuses on the concept of subjective well-being and how it can be measured and influenced by a multitude of factors like personality, income, and culture. Diener has more than 210 publications and, according to the Institute of Scientific Information, has been cited more than 11,000 times in the works of other psychologists. Posted: June 2007
John F. Hartwig, professor of chemistry, was awarded the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in Physical Sciences-Chemistry 2007. Hartwig was honored for his work with "catalysis based on late-transition metal complexes, enabling widely applicable organic synthesis and deep mechanistic insight." Posted: June 2007
Neil L. Kelleher, associate professor of chemistry, received the 2007 Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry. Kelleher was honored for his "pioneering development of mass spectrometry to examine intermediates in natural product synthesis and to characterize of post-translational modifications of proteins." Posted: June 2007
John Rogers, professor of chemistry and founding professor of materials science and engineering, will be honored with the 2007 Leo Hendrick Baekeland Award for the American Chemical Society, at an upcoming symposium. Rogers is renown for his multidisciplinary work in developing soft materials for molecular electronics, flexible "macroelectronic" circuits, nanophotonic structures, microfluidic devices, and microelectromechanical systems. He has published more than 175 papers and has nearly 60 patents, more than 30 of which are licensed or in active use. Posted: June 2007
Ben McCall, assistant professor of chemistry and astronomy, was awarded the 2007 Cottrell Scholar Award from the Research Corporation. McCall's research interests lie in the areas of high-resolution molecular spectroscopy and interstellar chemistry. McCall was awarded for his grant proposal, "New Approaches to Research and Teaching in Astrochemistry: Carbocation Spectroscopy and a Novel Laboratory Course."
