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.

Applied Physics Laboratory

Vincent L. Pisacane has been named assistant director for biomedical programs. Pisacane, who since 1995 has been director of APL's Institute for Advanced Science and Technology in Medicine, is an associate professor in Biomedical Engineering, a joint part-time appointment, in the School of Medicine. He also teaches in the Whiting School of Engineering Part-Time Graduate Programs at APL's Education Center.

Kenneth A. Potocki has been appointed assistant director for research and exploratory development. He has held scientific and management positions in numerous departments at the laboratory and since 1973 has taught applied physics and technical management in the Whiting School of Engineering Part-Time Graduate Programs at APL's Education Center.

Arts and Sciences

Ludwig Brand, professor in the Department of Biology, has received the Jablonski award for outstanding fundamental accomplishments in fluorescent biology. He joins only two other scientists who have been awarded the honor by members of the Biophysical Society. His research emphasizes fluorescence techniques with spectroscopy as a relatively non-invasive probe to further understanding of the static and dynamic structure of proteins, biological membranes and nucleic acids.

Philip D. Curtin has been appointed the Herbert Baxter Adams Professor Emeritus in the Department of History, retroactive to July 1998, when he retired.

Richard Goldthwaite has been appointed professor emeritus in the Department of History.

Nancy Struever has been appointed professor emeritus in the Humanities Center and Department of History, effective July 1.

Engineering

Scott F. Smith has been promoted to professor in the Department of Computer Science, effective July 1.

Health System

Victoria B. Navarro has been elected to the board of directors of the American Society of Ophthalmic Registered Nurses for a three-year term. She is currently president and a founding member of the organization's Chesapeake chapter.

Homewood Student Affairs

William Smedick, director of Student Affairs and the Levering Union, will serve as immediate past chair of the board of directors of the National Association for Campus Activities. In this position, he will serve as chair of NACA's Associate Member Advisory Council, chair of the Past Board Chairs group and as an executive committee member of the board of directors.

Medicine

Jackie Baldick has been named head of development for the Bioethics Institute. From 1984 to 1995, Baldick was director of development for the School of Nursing.

Robert A. Casero Jr. has been promoted to professor in the Department of Oncology.

Katie Coyle has been named senior associate director of development for the School of Medicine at the Fund for Johns Hopkins Medicine. She was previously assistant director of development for Georgetown College at Georgetown University. The fund's new director of development for the Department of Medicine is Dennis McClellan. McClellan comes to Hopkins from Georgetown University, where he was director of development for medical center academic programs.

Edmund Y.S. Chao, Riley Professor of Orthopedic Surgery and vice chairman for research, has received the 1999 Bristol-Myers Squibb/Zimmer Institutional Grant for Excellence in Orthopaedic Research.

Nancy E. Davidson has been promoted to professor of oncology.

Daniel B. Drachman, professor of neurology and neuroscience and director of the Neuromuscular Clinic, has received the Solomon A. Berson Medical Alumni Achievement Award in Basic Science from his alma mater, New York University School of Medicine. He received the award on April 10 during NYU's Medical Alumni Weekend Program.

Carol W. Greider, associate professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, will receive the 1999 Passano Award for determining the molecular nature of telomeres, or chromosome ends, and discovering the replication enzyme, telomerase. Greider's findings were made with Elizabeth H. Blackburn, a professor at UCSF, who will also receive the annual award, which recognizes outstanding research done in this country. Greider and Blackburn delivered the 1999 Passano Foundation Lecture on April 15 at the School of Medicine.

The foundation's annual $100,000 awards program also supports the School of Medicine's clinician scientist research training program through annual Passano Physician Scientist Awards given to young researchers in the early stages of their careers. For 1999, the Hopkins recipient is Carlos A. Pardo-Villamizar, a neurology resident studying neuron-glial interactions and immunopathological mechanisms that mediate central nervous system disorders.

Eric J. Hanley, a third-year medical student, is one of 31 recipients of the 1999 MAP International/Reader's Digest International Fellowship. These annual awards allow North American residents, interns and senior medical students to serve at remote clinics and hospitals in developing countries. Hanley is headed for the Kwai River Hospital near Thailand's border with Burma.

Ralph H. Hruban has been promoted to professor in the Department of Pathology with a secondary appointment in Oncology.

Kenneth W. Kinzler has been promoted to professor of oncology.

Guohua Li, associate professor of emergency medicine, has been selected by the editorial board of Epidemiology to receive the 1999 Roche Epidemiology Prize. The annual $3,000 prize, funded by a grant from Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., honors the first author of an outstanding research paper published in the journal. Li, who studies the relationship between alcohol and trauma, was recognized for a paper titled "Are Female Drivers Safer?"

Eduardo Marban, director of molecular and cellular cardiology, has been named editor in chief of Circulation Research, the American Heart Association journal that covers the cardiovascular sciences. The editorial office will be located at Hopkins for at least five years and will include a staff of four.

Antony Rosen, associate professor in Rheumatology and Cell Biology and Anatomy, has received a $750,000 five-year award from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. The award is one of nine given in the United States for translational research by a clinical scientist.

Pfizer Inc. has awarded a $2,000 grant to the Brady Urological Institute's Urology Department to recognize Mark P. Schoenberg, associate professor of urology and oncology. The 1998 Pfizer Scholars in Urology Award honors Schoenberg for his work to advance the science of urology and improve patient care.

Marvin M. Schuster, professor of medicine and psychiatry, has been appointed to the Janssen/Strauss-Halbreich Professorship in Digestive and Motility Disorders.

Sheila K. West, professor of ophthalmology, has been appointed to the El-Maghraby Professorship in Blindness Prevention.

Jay L. Zweier has been promoted to professor in the Department of Medicine.

Milton S. Eisenhower Library

Virginia Massey-Burzio, head of the Resource Services Department, has been awarded the 1999 Isadore Gilbert Mudge Award by the American Library Association. She will receive the award at the ALA annual conference, to be held in New Orleans in June. This annual award recognizes excellence and national leadership in the area of reference librarianship.

Multidisciplinary

Three researchers from the School of Public Health, along with colleagues from the School of Medicine's Department of Cardiology, have been awarded a field site for a new prospective cohort study ($60 million total) funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and called the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, or MESA. Moyses Szklo, professor, Epidemiology, is the principal investigator. Co-investigators include Robert L. McNamara, instructor, Epidemiology, and Javier Nieto, assistant professor, Epidemiology. The study, now in the design phase, will follow groups of whites, African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans for seven years, looking at subclinical markers of atherosclerosis. Recruitment will begin in spring of 2000.

Nursing

Dean Sue K. Donaldson was recently named to the advisory council of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. A part of the National Institutes of Health, NIAMS leads the federal medical research effort in arthritis and musculoskeletal and skin diseases. Donaldson, who holds a joint appointment in the School of Medicine, is a noted expert on mammalian muscle physiology and pathophysiology and is currently involved in a geriatric medicine and nursing collaborative clinical research program focused on mobility in the elderly.

Public Health

Anthony Alberg has been appointed assistant professor, Epidemiology.

Panyong Mao has been appointed visiting scholar, Molecular Microbiology and Immunology.

A. Ramachandra Reddy has been appointed visiting scholar, Environmental Health Sciences.

Taha El Tahir Taha has been appointed associate professor, Epidemiology.

Xiao-Fang Yu has been promoted to associate professor, Molecular Microbiology and Immunology.