For the Record: Cheers

Cheers is a monthly listing of honors and awards received by faculty, staff and students plus recent appointments and promotions. Contributions must be submitted in writing and be accompanied by a phone number.

 

School of Medicine Appointments

William B. Guggino, who has spent most of his professional career at Johns Hopkins, has been named the director of Physiology.

Guggino has served since 1996 as vice chairman of research in the Department of Pediatrics and since 1989 as director of the Cystic Fibrosis Development Program. His own work on CF was recognized last year, when he won the prestigious Doris F. Tulcin Cystic Fibrosis Research Award, an honor that marked not only his research achievements but also his role in the training of a significant number of research and clinician scientists, dedicated to unraveling CF's mysteries and bringing new treatments to patients quickly.

In 1992, Guggino, along with Peter Agre, authored a seminal paper, published in Science, which detailed the discovery of the very first water channel protein. That line of research, 11 years later, won Agre the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

For 24 years Guggino has been the course director in organ systems physiology and histology and has served as the director of the curriculum for first-year medical students.

A graduate of Brooklyn College, Guggino received his master's degree from Long Island University and doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, both in comparative physiology.

David L. Thomas, a world-renowned expert on hepatitis C and a faculty member since 1993, will be the new head of the Division of Infectious Diseases, beginning July 1. He succeeds John Bartlett, who led the department for 26 years and will remain active on the faculty.

The author of more than 100 articles and many book chapters on various aspects of hepatitis, Thomas also has investigated how co-infections with hepatic C viruses and HIV progress in intravenous drug users with weakened immune systems.

In his new role, Thomas will lead the division's 55 faculty and 177 staff who treat more than 5,100 patients a year and run the nation's third-largest AIDS clinic. He also will oversee an annual research budget of more than $40 million, one of the largest at Hopkins, with major research initiatives under way in HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, avian flu and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, in addition to hepatitis C.

Thomas begins his new job after a year living in Uganda, where he and other infectious disease experts from across North America have been helping Ugandan health professionals set up an institute for combating the effects of AIDS and other infectious diseases. The institute provides free medical and social services for HIV-1-infected Ugandans and training for physicians and nurses from across sub-Saharan Africa.

Thomas earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry and his medical degree from West Virginia University. He completed his medical training and residency at Wake Forest University before coming to Johns Hopkins as a research fellow in infectious diseases. He went on to earn his master's in public health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health and joined the faculty of both schools, Medicine in 1993 and Public Health in 1994. For his commitment to translating medical research into advances in the care of people living with both hepatitis C and HIV, the American Society of Clinical Investigation named him in 2001 to its honor list of physician-scientists.

 

Applied Physics Laboratory

Helen Worth has been named group supervisor of the Office of Communications and Public Affairs in Central Laboratory Operations.

 

Bayview Medical Center

David Hellmann, director of the Department of Medicine and vice dean for the Bayview campus, has been appointed the Aliki Perroti Professor of the Center for Innovative Medicine.

Antony Rosen, professor of medicine, cell biology and pathology and director of the Rheumatology Division, has been named the Mary Betty Stevens Professor of Medicine.

Chester Schmidt Jr., head of the Department of Psychiatry, has been re-elected to a two-year term as chair of the Johns Hopkins Bayview medical board.

 

Bloomberg School of Public Health

Yun Lu, a PhD candidate in biostatistics, has received a travel award to the 2006 Joint Statistical Meetings from the American Statistical Association's Statistics in Epidemiology Section.

Marjorie Opuni-Akuamoa, a doctoral candidate in Population and Family Health Sciences, is a winner of a 2006 Dissertation Fellowship in Population, Reproductive Health and Economic Development. The awards are given annually by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Population Reference Bureau. Opuni-Akuamoa's dissertation topic is "Young Adult Mortality and the Well-Being of Older Persons: Evidence from Kwa-Zulu-Natal."

 

Johns Hopkins Health System

Umbreen Idrees, clinical pharmacy specialist for the Department of Emergency Medicine, will serve as vice chair of the American Society of Health System Pharmacists' Section Advisory Group on Emergency Care.

Joanne Pollak, JHM vice president and general counsel, has received the Distinguished Graduate Award from the University of Maryland School of Law.

The Skills Enhancement Program has been recognized by the Baltimore Workforce Investment Board with a 2006 Baltimore Encore Award for workplace literacy. Skills Enhancement, directed by Barbara Edwards, workforce development specialist, is an on-site training program that includes GED prep. Deborah Knight-Kerr, director of Human Resources community and education projects, accepted the award.

 

JHPIEGO

Anne Hyre, senior midwifery adviser in Jakarta, Indonesia, has been honored by the American College of Nurse-Midwives with its 2006 Kitty Ernst Award. Hyre, an alumna of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, received the award last month during ACNM's 51st Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City. Hyre's tireless efforts to re-establish and strengthen midwifery services and education since the December 2004 South Asian tsunami were among the highlights of her work cited during the ceremony. The Kitty Ernst Award honors a nurse-midwife who has been certified for less than 10 years and has demonstrated innovative, creative endeavors in clinical practice, education, administration or research relating to midwifery and women's health.

 

Krieger School of Arts and Sciences

Karl L. Alexander, the John Dewey Professor of Sociology, presented his National Science Foundation-funded research, "The Beginning School Study: Life Course Patterns of Urban Youth through the 3rd Decade," on June 7 at the 12th Annual Exhibition and Reception sponsored by the Coalition for National Science Funding. Alexander's poster was one of 34 research exhibits--ranging from nanotechnology to racial bias--at the popular summer reception in the Rayburn House Office Building at which members of Congress and their staff see some of the fruits of NSF basic research.

Bruce Barnett, a professor in Physics and Astronomy, is the recipient of the 2006 George E. Owen Teaching Award, which is awarded by the Homewood Student Council for outstanding teaching and devotion to undergraduates.

John T. Irwin, the Decker Professor in the Humanities in the Writing Seminars and the English Department, won the Helen C. Smith Memorial Award from the Texas Institute of Letters for his book of poetry As Long As It's Big, published under his pen name, John Bricuth, by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Don Selby, a doctoral candidate in the Anthropology Department, has been selected as a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellow. The fellowship, a highly competitive national award, provides $18,500 for 12 months of work on a dissertation in the humanities or social sciences that addresses questions of religious or ethical value. Selby's topic is "The Politics and Morality of Human Rights in Thailand."

Recipients of the 2006 Teaching Assistant Award are Yifei Chin, Mathematics; Simon Sheppard, Political Science; and Hyun Youk, Physics and Astronomy. The award recognizes the care and concern that recipients take with their subject and their students.

 

Peabody Institute

Rebecca Henry has been named the inaugural holder of the Scott Bendann Faculty Chair in Classical Music. The dedication took place during the Peabody Preparatory Awards Ceremony on June 4. The endowed chair was established in 1996 by the estate of Dorothy Scott Pauline Bendann. Henry joined the faculty of the Peabody Preparatory as chair of the Preparatory String Department in 1987. Since her initial appointment, she has served as a faculty member of the Peabody Conservatory, where she teaches pedagogy courses in music education.

 

School of Medicine

Marilyn Albert, professor and chief of the Division of Cognitive Neuroscience and co-director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, has received the 2006 Ronald and Nancy Reagan Research Institute Award. Presented by the Alzheimer's Association, the honor recognizes Albert's contributions to Alzheimer's research.

H. Ballentine Carter, professor of urology, has been elected to membership in the American Association of Genitourinary Surgeons.

Richard Chaisson, professor of medicine, epidemiology and international health, has received the 2006 World Lung Health Award for scientific achievement from the American Thoracic Society. Chaisson, an internationally renowned authority on tuberculosis, received the award at a ceremony held May 21 at the organization's annual meeting in San Diego. Founding director of Hopkins' Center for Tuberculosis Research, Chaisson leads the largest TB-related research effort in the United States, with more than $100 million in research grants and supported by 50 scientists.

Donald Coffey, professor of pharmacology, molecular science and pathology, has been appointed to the National Cancer Institute's advisory board. He also has received an award from the Joy McCann Foundation for exceptional mentoring.

Ronald Cohn, a resident in the combined pediatrics and genetics program and chief resident at the McKusick-Nathans Institute for Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins, has been awarded the first Harvard-Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics Award in medical genetics. The award honors an outstanding, emerging medical geneticist, recognizing a physician or scientist who is completing or has completed training in the area of medical genetics or a combined training program in medical genetics. Cohn, whose research focuses on muscle regeneration in various muscle diseases, received a $20,000 cash prize at a dinner held in his honor on June 21 in Boston and presented at grand rounds at Harvard Medical School earlier that day. The first Hopkins resident to train in a combined pediatric and genetics program, Cohn will join the faculty of Pediatrics, Neurology and the McKusick-Nathans Institute later this year.

Nancy E. Davidson, who holds the Breast Cancer Research Chair in Oncology and is director of the breast cancer program at the Kimmel Cancer Center, has been elected president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology for a one-year term beginning in June 2007. She took office as president-elect during ASCO's annual meeting, held June 2 in Atlanta.

Ted Dawson and Valina Dawson, professors in the Department of Neurology in the Institute for Cell Engineering, were nominated to the Faculty of 1000 Biology in the section of neurobiology of disease and regeneration. Faculty of 1000 Biology is an online literature service that evaluates and highlights the most noteworthy research papers, based on reviews by a select faculty of over 1,600 of the world's leading scientists, published in the biological sciences. Faculty members selected to take part in this voluntary program are well respected by their peers and perceived as being fair-minded and experts in their respective research fields. In addition, Ted Dawson was named chairman of the scientific advisory board of the Bachmann-Strauss Dystonia and Parkinson Foundation. As chair of the SAB, Dawson will be responsible for directing the research program and funding of the foundation.

John F. Dicello has been appointed professor emeritus in the Department of Radiation Oncology and Molecular Radiation Sciences. It is believed to be the first such appointment in Radiation Oncology as both a division and department. Dicello's research has focused on determining radiation's effect on promoting cancer growth and developing new methods of using radiation to treat cancer while minimizing its effects on healthy tissues. As part of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, Dicello also studies the effects of space radiation on astronauts.

Julia Haller, an ophthalmologist specializing in vitreoretinal disease, has been awarded the inaugural Robert Welch Professorship at the Wilmer Institute.

Ellen Hess, associate professor of neurology and neurosciences, has received a $70,000 grant from the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation to fund her studies on how dystonia, a debilitating movement disorder, originates in the brain.

Kay Redfield Jamison, professor of psychiatry, has received an honorary doctor of medical science degree from Brown University. An authority on bipolar disease, Jamison was cited for having "gone far to demystify mental illness."

Hongjun Song, an assistant professor of neurology at the Institute for Cell Engineering and its Program for Neuroregeneration and Repair, known as NeuroICE, has been awarded the McKnight Scholar Award by the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience. Song will receive $75,000 in research funding each year for the next three years. Song studies the ways and means used by stem cells to self-renew; in particular, how adult nerve stem cells become nerves.

Eden Stotsky, a health educator at the Colon Cancer Center, has been selected as one of the nation's outstanding cancer care providers, awarded with the American Cancer Society's Lane Adams Quality of Life Award.

Patrick Walsh, University Distinguished Service Professor of Urology, has been elected president of the American Association of Genitourinary Surgeons.

At the School of Medicine's Convocation on May 25, awards for teaching went to Michael Choi, associate professor of renal medicine, and Robert Siliciano, professor of medicine (W. Barry Wood Jr. Award); Ryan Tedford, house staff, medicine (House Staff Award); Jonathan Pevsner, associate professor of neuroscience (Graduate Teaching Award); and Roy Ziegelstein, associate professor of cardiology (George J. Stuart Award). The Professors' Award for Excellence in Teaching went to Eric Howell, assistant professor and chief of the Collaborative Inpatient Medical Service; Howard Moses, associate professor of neurology; Brent Petty, associate professor of medicine; and Mark Teaford, professor of functional anatomy and evolution. As reported earlier, John Flynn, the D. William Schlott, M.D. Professor of Medicine, received the Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award.

Three members of NeuroICE have received awards from the American Heart Association. Zhikai Chi, an MD/PhD candidate in neuroscience, has received a pre-doctoral award, and research fellows Shaoyo Ge and Shaida Andrabi received postdoctoral awards. Andrabi also won the Best Oral Presentation Award by a Student or Postdoctoral Fellow for a presentation titled "The Role of Poly-(ADP-ribose) Polymer in Neuronal Cell Death" at the 2006 East Coast PARP conference held May 18-20 in Quebec City, Canada.

 

School of Nursing

Phyllis Sharps, associate professor and director of the master's program, was honored in May by her alma mater, the University of Delaware, as one of four alumni inducted into the Alumni Wall of Fame.

Winners of the 2006 SOURCE Community Service Awards were Kitty Poon in the individual student category and Programa Salud in the student group category.

 

School of Professional Studies in Business and Education

Jay Liebowitz, professor, Department of Information Technology in the Graduate Division of Business and Management, has had his book, Strategic Intelligence--Business Intelligence, Competitive Intelligence, and Knowledge Management, published by Auerbach Publications. The book features case studies that apply strategic intelligence in major organizations while recognizing synergies among component pieces of strategic intelligence, and how decision makers can best use this internal and external information to make better business decisions.

 

University Administration

Johns Hopkins Magazine, produced by the Office of Communications and Public Affairs, received four medals in the annual CASE awards competition: silver in the best articles category for "Separate Fates" by Gary Logan (February 2005), silver in staff writing, bronze in the college and university general interest magazine category and bronze in periodical special issues for the Seven Deadly Sins issue (September 2005). Contributing staff members were Sue De Pasquale, Catherine Pierre, Dale Keiger, Maria Blackburn and Shaul Tsemach.

 

Whiting School of Engineering

Joel Bader, an assistant professor in Biomedical Engineering, has received the National Science Foundation's Early Career Development award, known as CAREER, which recognizes young scientists' commitment to both research and education. His research in "Mapping Biological Networks" will involve the prediction of specific interactions between protein transcription factors and DNA regulatory elements purely from genome sequence and inferred protein structure. This project will have broader impact through the dissemination of algorithms and data sets generated by the research plan, including public databases of protein-DNA and protein-protein interactions.

Pam Carey, senior academic adviser, has received the Whiting School Staff Service Award.

Kevin Dungey, a lecturer in the Center for Leadership Education, is the recipient of the Professional Communication Program Faculty Teaching Excellence Award.

Ralph Etienne-Cummings, an associate professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been selected as a Fulbright Scholar grantee by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. In fall 2006, he will take a sabbatical to study "Curriculum in Electronic Systems Design and Research on Biomorphic Ultrasonic Imaging and Mapping Systems" at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. There, Etienne-Cummings will offer a course on integrated circuits design while supervising design projects that integrate sensors and actuators to realize intelligent behaving systems; contribute to the development of UCT's Brain and Behavior Institute by participating in defining the direction of the institute and by assisting in identifying and recruiting qualified faculty members; and conduct research in biologically inspired ultrasonic signal processing, specifically developing algorithms and neuromorphic chips to perform imaging and mapping for ultrasonic image-guided medical robotics.

Gabor Fichtinger, associate research professor in the departments of Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering and Radiology, has received the Capers and Marion McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising, which honors those teachers, researchers and administrators who have consistently supported the personal and professional development of their students. Fichtinger is also research thrust leader and director of engineering for the Engineering Research Center for Computer-Integrated Surgical Systems and Technologies.

Donniell Fishkind, a senior lecturer in Applied Mathematics and Statistics, is the 2006 recipient of the Robert B. Pond Sr. Excellence in Teaching Award, which is given for commitment to and excellence in instruction in the school, success in instilling the desire to learn and dedication to undergraduate students.

Dan Horn, assistant dean for academic programs, has received the University Member of the Year Award from the National Consortium for Minorities in Engineering and Science, known as GEM. The award is given annually to the representative of a university member in good standing "who sets a new standard of excellence in developing, growing and institutionalizing his/her institution's partnership with the consortium."

Take Nakama, of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, has received the 2006 George M.L. Sommerman Engineering Graduate Teaching Assistant Award, which recognizes outstanding performance.

Jack Powell, a lecturer in the Center for Leadership Education, is the recipient of this year's W.P. Carey Program in Entrepreneurship and Management Faculty Teaching Excellence Award.

Lester Su, an assistant professor in Mechanical Engineering, is the recipient of the 2006 William H. Huggins Excellence in Teaching Award, given in recognition of outstanding teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and also a demonstrated dedication to students.

James Spall, Christian Utara and David Zaret have received the school's Engineering and Applied Science Programs for Professionals Excellence in Teaching Awards. Spall is a member of the principal professional staff at APL and program chair of the EPP Applied and Computational Mathematics program. Utara, chief engineer of NAVAIR St. Inigoes, has been an instructor in EPP for seven years. Zaret is a member of the senior professional staff at APL, working in information security.

 
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