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

Carl Bostrom and Gary Smith, APL's fifth and sixth directors, respectively, have both been appointed director emeritus.

The Precision Strike Association's prestigious William J. Perry award will be presented to APL at the organization's Winter Roundtable 2000 meeting in January.

Ken Potocki, assistant director for research and exploratory development, and John Sommerer, head of the Research and Technology Development Center, were cited by the Army for their participation in the recent Technology & Materiel Game. TMG brought together soldiers, businessmen, and scientists from government, industry and academia to examine the Army's science and technology program and suggest alternative strategies for achieving capabilities that would enhance the effectiveness of the future Army.

Arts and Sciences

Mark Robbins, professor of physics, has been named a fellow of the American Physical Society. No more than half of 1 percent of the society's membership are named as fellows. Robbins was recognized for his "contributions to our understanding of the molecular origins of friction, lubrication, spreading and adhesion."

Centers and Affiliates

Kevin Cuffie, a Talent Development Schools facilitator at the Center for Social Organization of Schools, has received a 1999 TRIO Achiever Award from the Maryland Executive Council for Educational Opportunities. TRIO is the group of federal programs, including Upward Bound, Talent Search and Student Support Services, aimed at helping disadvantaged students progress from middle schools through postbaccalaureate programs. TRIO Achievers are individuals who attribute some of their career success to the academic and personal support received as participants in a TRIO program.

Engineering

Katrice Lippa, a doctoral candidate in DOGEE, was recently selected as first-place winner of this year's Young Scientist Predoctoral Research Award competition sponsored by the American Chemical Society's Agrochemicals Division. Lippa's research focuses on environmental transformations of herbicides in coastal marine environments. She will present her research at a special recognition symposium during the American Chemical Society's meeting in San Francisco, in March 2000.

Timothy Strathmann, a graduate student in DOGEE, received the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry 2000 Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, sponsored by Procter and Gamble. The award provides a $15,000 stipend for a full calendar year. The fellowship is awarded to a predoctoral student with dissertation research in the areas of environmental toxicology, environmental chemistry or risk assessment.

Health System

Howard W. Califano has been appointed CEO of Johns Hopkins Singapore and Johns Hopkins Singapore Clinical Services. He has since 1995 directed the School of Medicine's Office of Technology Licensing. Califano joined Hopkins in 1981 as a patent attorney at APL. In 1990, he was appointed associate director of OTL, assuming directorship five years later. He has a bachelor of science degree in engineering from Cornell and a juris doctorate from the University of Maryland School of Law.

Medicine

Third-year medical student Sona Lee Aggarwal has been recognized for outstanding community service by the Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. Aggarwal, 24, from Rockland County, N.Y., was tapped for helping organize and run a community health fair sponsored by the American College of Physicians in which 200 medical students from Hopkins and the University of Maryland worked at a free health fair in northeast Baltimore's Waverly community. She also was cited for numerous other community services.

Evelyn J. Ellington has been named administrator of equal opportunity/affirmative action for the Office of Employee/Labor Relations, Diversity & EEO/AA and Human Resources departments. Ellington, former manager of the National Education Association Human and Civil Rights Unit and of the Human Rights Commission in Prince William County, Va., is trained in mediation and diversity issues.

John P. Gearhart, director of pediatric urology at the Brady Urological Institute, was named an honorary member of the British Association of Pediatric Urologists at the association's recent annual meeting at Cambridge University in England.

Nina Ossanna has been appointed director of the Office of Technology Licensing. She was previously associate director. Prior to joining the office in 1993 as a licensing associate, Ossanna was a patent examiner at the U.S. Patent Office working in the biotechnology area. Ossanna holds a doctorate in molecular biology from the University of Arizona and is licensed to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Alan W. Partin has been named the Bernard L. Schwartz Distinguished Professor in Urological Oncology. Partin is the second to hold this chair, following Fray F. Marshall.

Nancy K. Roderer has been named director of the William H. Welch Medical Library, effective Jan. 1. She also will be the interim director of the Division of Biomedical Information Sciences at the library. Roderer was coordinator of the National Library of Medicine's postgraduate training program for medical librarians and prior to that director of the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library at Yale. Roderer is regarded as an expert in planning health information systems and curriculum support as part of the Integrated Advanced Information Management Systems.

Antony Rosen, associate professor of medicine, rheumatology and cell biology and anatomy, was awarded the Henry Kunkel Award from the American College of Rheumatology at the association's recent annual meeting in Boston. The award is given to an investigator under the age of 45 who has advanced the study of rheumatology during the past year. Rosen's research, conducted with his wife, Livia Casciola-Rosen, centered on the role of the apoptosis in the autoimmune rheumatic diseases.

Nursing

Fannie Gaston-Johansson, director of international and extramural affairs, was elected to the board of directors of Sigma Theta Tau International, a 77-year-old honor society whose mission is to improve the health of people worldwide by improving nursing scholarship. She was installed in November during the society's biennial convention and will serve a four-year term.

Public Health

Suzanne Maman-Charles, a graduate student in international health, is a 1999 winner of the Woodrow Wilson/Johnson & Johnson Dissertation Grants in Women's and Children's Health. Fifteen grants of $2,000 each were awarded. These grants encourage original and significant research on issues related to women's and children's health, from a public policy perspective. Maman-Charles' topic was "HIV and Violence in the Context of Women's Lives: Implications for HIV Counseling and Testing Programs in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania."

University Administration

Derrell G. Owens, an administrative secretary in the Homewood division of Human Resources, is the winner of the 1999 Black History Month Drama Competition sponsored by WMAR-TV and the Arena Players. The Family Mantle, a drama of three successful brothers who return home to settle affairs and scores, will be staged by the Arena Players for a February broadcast on WMAR, Channel 2.

WJHU's Media Matters has won a 1999 Achievement in Radio Award for best long-form interview. The winning entry was "An Interview with Journalist Gary Webb," in which Webb discussed his book Dark Alliance. The interview aired in June on Media Matters. The award was presented to program hosts David Zurawik and Sheri Parks and producer Lisa Morgan.