Faculty honors

Carol Symes, professor of history, has been awarded the John Nicholas Brown Prize of the Medieval Academy of America for her book A Common Stage: Theater and Public Life in Medieval Arras (Cornell University Press, 2007). The prize recognizes an outstanding first book in the field of medieval studies. The book also won the 2008 Herbert Baxter Adams Prize from the American Historical Association, the David Pinkney Prize from the Society for French Historical Studies, and the 2008 David Bevington Award for Best New Book in Early Drama Studies from the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society.

Adrian Burgos, professor of history, has been named to a 12-member panel of experts and historians who will seek to determine the facts of baseball’s beginnings and its evolution. The committee, named by Major League Baseball commissioner Allan H. “Bud” Selig, will compile and evaluate information that pertains to the game’s founding and its growth. The panel also will seek to tell the story of baseball’s beginnings and explore not only the game’s broadest origins, but also its development in local communities.

Scott Denmark, professor of chemistry, will receive the Senior Award in Heterocyclic Chemistry from the International Society of Heterocyclic Chemistry. Denmark will receive the award at the 23rd International Congress on Heterocyclic Chemistry in July in Glasgow, Scotland.

Cathy Murphy, professor of chemistry, will receive the 2011 Inorganic Nanoscience Award, given by the Division of Inorganic Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. This award recognizes a mid-career scientist who has demonstrated sustained excellence, dedication, and perseverance in research in the area of inorganic nanoscience. Murphy will receive the award at the fall ACS meeting.

Richard T. Rodriguez, professor of English, will receive the 2011 Book Award from the National Association for Chicano and Chicana Studies for his work, Next of Kin: The Family in Chicano/a Cultural Politics. The judges were drawn to the singular importance of its subject—the family as a cultural and political entity.

Edelyn Verona, professor of psychology, has won the 2011 Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to the Scientific Study of Psychology from the Society for the Scientific Study of Psychopathy.

Ralph Nuzzo, professor of chemistry, has received the Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The award is granted to researchers whose fundamental discoveries, inventions, or novel theories have influenced essentially their fields of research and who are expected to continue as top researchers. The award winners work on research projects of their choice in Germany together with a native colleague for up to one year.

May Berenbaum, head and professor of entomology, will receive the 2011 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, an international award that recognizes outstanding “scientific knowledge and public leadership to preserve and enhance the environment of the world.” Berenbaum was lauded for her expertise on bees and the causes behind declining bee populations, as well as advancing the field of entomology and explaining its significance. The Tyler Prize consists of a $200,000 cash prize and a gold medal. Berenbaum will deliver a public lecture at the Davidson Conference Center of the University of Southern California, which administers the Tyler Prize, on April 14.

Helaine Silverman, professor of anthropology, was invited to Geneva by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights to participate in a meeting on access to cultural heritage and human rights. Silverman was the only American in the small group of international cultural heritage experts convened to discuss this topic, present opinions, and answer questions with participating representatives of the U.N. member states.

Richard Powers, professor of English, has been included on a shortlist for the 2011 Arthur C. Clarke Award for his book, Generosity, which explores the biochemistry of happiness. This award is the United Kingdom’s premier prize for the best science fiction literature. This year’s award will be announced April 27.

Eric Oldfield, professor of chemistry, will be awarded the 2011 Avanti Award in Lipids for his pioneering research using NMR methods to investigate lipid membrane structure and for his work in drug discovery, targeting lipid biosynthesis. The award is given annually by the Biophysical Society to an investigator who has made “outstanding contributions to our understanding of lipid biophysics.” The winner receives an honorarium.

Benjamin McCall, assistant professor of chemistry, was designated a 2011-2012 Helen Corley Petit Scholar by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. This scholarship is in recognition of McCall’s outstanding research and teaching accomplishments.

Lisa Ainsworth, professor of plant biology, was named one of the President’s Medallists for 2011 by the Society for Experimental Biology. These medals are the society’s major award for research and are presented annually to biologists of outstanding merit in the early phases of their career. The award is presented at the society's annual meeting, which will be in Glasgow, Scotland, this year.

Ryan Bailey, professor of chemistry, has been selected to receive a 2011 Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The two-year fellowship program awards fellows $50,000 to pursue their choice of research topics. Bailey’s research interests lie at the interface of bioanalytical and biomaterials chemistry. His group is developing chip-integrated arrays of photonic sensors to detect signatures of diseases at their earliest stages and then help clinicians choose the best course of personalized treatment.

Ping Ma, professor of statistics, received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation. The award supports the early career development of professors who best exemplify the role of teacher-scholars. To facilitate geophysical discoveries that can enhance our understanding of the Earth’s deep interior using current computing resources, Ma proposed a family of novel statistical methods under a subsampling framework. The theory to be established will benefit a wide spectrum of research in science and engineering.

Donald Burkholder, an emeritus professor of mathematics, has been elected a 2011 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was cited for “distinguished contributions to probability theory, particularly the theory of martingales, and his work in stochastic processes, functional analysis, and Fourier analysis.”

Ramona Curry, professor of English and media and cinema studies, won a 2011 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, which will give her time to finish her book, Trading in Cultural Spaces: How Chinese Film Came to America.

Christopher Fennell, associate professor and associate head of anthropology, received the Council of Graduate Schools’ Gustave O. Arlt Award for outstanding scholarship in the humanities. Fennell was honored for his book Crossroads and Cosmologies: Diasporas and Ethnogenesis in the New World.

Cathy Murphy, professor of chemistry, has been named the Peter C. and Gretchen Miller Markunas Professor of Analytical Chemistry. Murphy earned the honor through her research focused on developing inorganic nanomaterials for biological and energy-related applicateions and understanding the chemical interactions of nanomaterials in their surroundings.

Yi Lu, professor of chemistry, has been named the Jay and Ann Schenck Professor of Chemistry. Lu’s research lies at the intersection of chemistry and biology. He has pioneered products that test for water contaminations using catalytic DNA technologies.

LeAnne Howe, professor of English and American Indian studies, will be awarded the Tulsa Library Trust’s American Indian Author Award in a ceremony next March. The award recognizes literary contributions of outstanding American Indian authors; recipients receive $5,000 and a medallion.

Lauren M.E. Goodlad, director of the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory and professor of English, was recognized as a University Scholar; the program provides $10,000 to the scholar for each of three years to use to enhance his or her academic career. She has earned international renown in the field of Victorian literary and cultural studies and is becoming a campus leader for interdisciplinary humanities scholarship and cultural theory.

Kristin Hoganson, professor of history, was recognized as a University Scholar; the program provides $10,000 to the scholar for each of three years to use to enhance his or her academic career. She has taken the fields of U.S. diplomatic/political history and transnational gender/cultural studies and placed them in scholarly conversation, bringing about mutual transformation, insight, and a new orientation to both. She is a well-respected, often-cited leader in the field of U.S. history and international American studies, and gender and women's history.

Andrew Suarez, professor of entomology, was recognized as a University Scholar; the program provides $10,000 to the scholar for each of three years to use to enhance his or her academic career. He is a leading figure in two of the most rapidly growing and central disciplines within integrative biology: conservation biology and invasion biology. He is among the leading authorities on the globally invasive Argentine ant, Linepithema humile, the first person to examine the species scientifically in its native area, and among the first to demonstrate the extraordinary utility of a biogeographic approach to understanding invasion success.

Dianne Harris, director of the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities and professor of history, art history, landscape architecture, and architecture, has been named to a three-year term on the advisory board of the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University. The center strives to advance the interdisciplinary study of American architecture, urbanism, and landscape.

James Treat, professor of religion, received a 2010 Media Award from the Native American Journalists Association for second place in the Best Column category for “West Texas or Worse.”

Harry C. Triandis, professor emeritus of psychology, won the 2010 William James Book Award for his book, Fooling Ourselves: Self-deception in Politics, Religion, and Terrorism. Presented by the American Psychological Association Division 1, the award honors a recent book that serves to integrate material across psychological subfields or to provide coherence to the diverse subject matter of psychology.

Xuming He, professor of statistics, was appointed by the American Statistical Association as co-editor of the Theory and Methods section of the Journal of the American Statistical Association. He has been an associate editor of the journal for six years.

Kara Federmeier, professor of psychology, received a James S. McDonnell Foundation Scholar Award in the Understanding Human Cognition program. The awards support research on the relationship between neural systems, cognition, and behavior. Federmeier will research cognitive and neural mechanisms of meaning comprehension.

Dan Newman, professor of psychology, received the 2010 Early Career Achievement Award from the Research Methods Division of the Academy of Management. The award recognizes distinguished contributions to research, practice, and/or education in research methods in one’s early career (defined as within seven years of receiving a PhD). Newman also won the 2010 Robert McDonald Advancement of Organizational Research Methodology Award for an article on organizational research methods.

Peter Beak, the James R. Eiszner Endowed Emeritus Chair in Chemistry, was elected a 2010 fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS) for his contributions to chemistry and to ACS. Working at the forefront of physical organic chemistry, Beak has advanced the characterization and understanding of organic reactions and has made significant contributions to stereochemistry through his study of reaction geometry at nonstereogenic atoms.

Theodore Brown, professor emeritus of chemistry, was elected a 2010 fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS) for his contributions to chemistry and to ACS. He was the founding director of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and has been an active leader and advisor within the scientific community. His research group broke ground in several research areas in organometallic chemistry. He also co-authored a best-selling general chemistry text.

Jeffrey Moore, the Murchison-Mallory Professor of Chemistry, was elected a 2010 fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS) for his contributions to chemistry and to ACS. An alumnus of Illinois, Moore returned to the University to research large organic molecules and polymers in three main areas: macro-molecule construction, self-healing polymers, and materials for energy storage.

Kenneth Suslick, the Marvin T. Schmidt Professor of Chemistry, was elected a 2010 fellow of the American Chemical Society for his contributions to chemistry and to ACS. Suslick has made advances in the study of the chemical effects of ultrasound waves. He and his team are leaders in chemical sensing and developed an artificial nose capable of molecular recognition.

Matti Bunzl, professor of anthropology, gender and women’s studies, Germanic languages and literatures, history, Jewish culture and society, and Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies, has been appointed artistic director of the Chicago Humanities Festival, effective after this fall’s festival for which he is associate artistic director.

Allan Borst, a lecturer in the Department of English, was named a New Faculty Fellow by the American Council of Learned Societies. He was awarded a two-year position at the University of California at Los Angeles. The council, a private nonprofit federation of 70 national scholarly organizations, is the preeminent representative of American scholarship in the humanities and related social sciences.

Louise Fitzgerald, professor emeritus of psychology, has been named the 2010 recipient of the Heritage Award from Division 35 (Psychology of Women) of the American Psychological Association. She is being recognized for distinguished lifetime research contributions to the psychology of women.

Ronald Toby, professor of history and East Asian languages and cultures, and Akira Iriye, recently a visiting professor of history at Illinois following his retirement from Harvard, presented lectures at a recent Library of Congress event marking the 150th anniversary of the “Samurai Mission,” the 1860 Japanese diplomatic mission to the U.S., which was the first official delegation from Japan to any Western government. The Illinois representation in the program was appropriate, according to Toby, because of a long history of U of I links to Japan. Illinois “was among the very first U.S. universities to graduate a student from Japan, in 1873,” he says.

Bruce Fouke, associate professor of geology, microbiology, and the Institute for Genomic Biology, received the 2010 Broadrick-Allen Award. The award is given annually to “a CHP faculty member who makes an extraordinary contribution to the well-being of Chancellor’s Scholars and the development and energy of the Campus Honors Program.”

Cary Nelson, professor of English and Jewish culture and society and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, was re-elected president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) for a third two-year term. He has served on the AAUP’s National Council for 10 years, six as second vice president and the last four as president. The AAUP is an educational organization that promotes academic freedom by supporting tenure, academic due process, shared governance, and standards of quality in universities throughout the United States.

John Gerlt, professor of biochemistry, and his team of researchers received a five-year, $33.9 million grant from the National Institutes of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) to study the functions of unknown enzymes discovered in genome-sequencing projects. The Enzyme Function Initiative (or “glue grant,” because it brings together multidisciplinary groups of investigators) provides resources to tackle the “complex problems that are of central importance to biomedical science but are beyond the means of any one research group,” according to the NIGMS.

William Metcalf, professor of microbiology and the Institute for Genomic Biology, has been elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. Fellows of the Academy are “elected annually through a highly selective, peer-review process, based on their records of scientific achievement and original contributions that have advanced microbiology.”

Lisa Cacho, assistant professor of Asian American studies, English, and Latina/Latino studies, received the 2010 Outstanding Asian American Faculty/Staff Award. This award is given in recognition of “years of commitment to the Asian American campus community in providing mentoring, advising, programming, counseling, teaching, and research opportunities that develop students’ self-awareness and promote understanding of Asian American issues.” Cacho was presented with the award at the annual Asian American Leadership Awards ceremony on May 3.

Hua-Hua Chang, professor of psychology, educational psychology, and statistics, was elected as a fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Fellows are elected in recognition of “exceptional scientific or scholarly contributions to education research or significant contributions to the field through the development of research opportunities and settings.” Chang was inducted at AERA’s annual meeting in Denver, Colo., on May 1.

Antoinette Burton, professor and head of history and Bastian professor of Global and Transitional Studies, has won a 2010 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. She was awarded the fellowship to work on her book entitled Empire from Below: Resistance in the British Empire from the Opium Wars to Mau Mau. Guggenheim fellowships are awarded “on the basis of achievement and exceptional promise.”

Martin Gruebele, James R. Eiszner Endowed Chair in Chemistry and professor of physics, has been named a 2010 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The academy was founded in 1780 and honors outstanding leadership and scholarship; past members include Albert Einstein, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and many others. Gruebele has distinguished himself in chemical and biological physics with laser manipulation techniques and computational modeling.

Richard Powers, Swanlund Chair and Center for Advanced Study Professor of English and member of the Beckman Institute Cognitive Neuroscience Group, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The Academy is an honor society of 250 architects, composers, artists, and writers who are elected for life; past members include Sinclair Lewis, Carl Sandburg, and Edith Wharton. The honor of election is considered “the highest formal recognition of artistic merit in the United States.”

Elizabeth Lowe, director of the Center for Translation Studies, will be honored at the Brazilian Academy of Letters for her work on translating Brazilian literature and will give a presentation on her translation of Euclides da Cunha’s Os Sertões at the Academy in Rio de Janeiro on August 12, 2010.

Stephen Marshak, professor of geology and director of the School of Earth, Society, and Environment, won the 2009 Chicago Book Clinic Book & Media Show in the category of school publishing for his book Essentials of Geology, 3rd edition. His book also won second place at the 2009 New York Book Show in the category of college book. This new textbook dominates the field for introductory geology texts and has changed the way geology is taught to undergraduates.

Cynthia Fisher, professor of psychology, has been elected as a fellow in the Association for Psychological Science (APS). Fellow status is awarded to APS members who have “made sustained outstanding contributions to the science of psychology in the areas of research, teaching, and/or application.”