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.

Bayview Medical Center

Michele Bellantoni, associate professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins Geriatric Center, has been named to the new Science Advisory Board of the Alliance for Aging Research in Washington, D.C. Bellantoni's research and writing have focused on osteoporosis and other disorders affecting aging women.

Health Divisions Administration

Susan Cruse has been appointed executive director of the Fund for Johns Hopkins Medicine. She comes to Johns Hopkins from the University of California, Irvine, where she was assistant vice chancellor for corporate, foundations and University Research Park relations and associate director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology. She also has worked at UCLA and in private industry.

Susan T. deMuth has been appointed senior associate director of development for the Department of Medicine at the Fund for Johns Hopkins Medicine. She joined Johns Hopkins in 1977 as associate director of development, School of Medicine, and most recently served as senior associate director of development and alumni relations, Homewood Alumni Office.

Jennifer Goforth is the new associate director of development at the Department of Medicine, Fund for Johns Hopkins Medicine, responsible for raising funds for the Division of Gerontology. She comes to Johns Hopkins from the marketing firm Odell, Simms & Associates and earlier was a development officer for Georgetown University.

Kristin Nock has joined the Fund for Johns Hopkins Medicine as assistant director of corporate relations for the Children's Center. She has held development positions at the Maryland Science Center, Maryland Institute College of Art, the Archdiocese of Baltimore and the Literacy Council of Lancaster-Lebanon, Pa.

In this year's Council for Advancement and Support of Education Circle of Excellence competition, Karen Blum, a senior media relations representative in the Office of Communications and Public Affairs, won a silver medal for her media relations campaign for the specialized kidney transplant programs. Anne Bennett Swingle, also of the OCPA, won a bronze medal in the Internal Audience Newsletters category for Hopkins Nurse.

Homewood Schools

At the annual leadership recognition awards ceremony held by the schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering, the following faculty and staff were honored for their outstanding service to undergraduates:

Shelly Fickau, director of Residential Life, received the Homewood Cup "for distinguished service and loyalty to the Homewood community."

Susan K. Boswell, dean of student life, was awarded the Gold Cup "for outstanding contributions to student life and student activities."

Jeffrey Groden-Thomas, director of the Office of Student Involvement, was recognized with the Gilman Cup "for outstanding service to undergraduates at Homewood."

Paula Phillips Burger, vice provost for academic affairs and vice dean for undergraduate education, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, received the Old Gold and Sable Award from the senior class "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the Homewood community by the recipient during her tenure at The Johns Hopkins University."

The Department of Student Development and Programming was recognized with the Homewood Award "for outstanding service to students, student life and the university."

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Jeff Dubnow has joined the development staff as associate director, after a 20-year career in finance as a private banker and new business officer in New York City and Baltimore.

Young Mi Kim, a researcher with the Center for Communication Programs, has received the MAQie Award (for maximizing access and quality) from the U.S. Agency for International Development. USAID recognized Kim as a leader in the global effort to improve the quality of client-provider communication. An innovative model of client empowerment on which she collaborated for family planning counseling has been adapted to a number of programmatic contexts and is now being implemented at scale in Indonesia, in Kenya to introduce malaria prophylaxis and in the context of primary health care in Peru.

Dean Alfred Sommer was honored with the 15th annual Warren Alpert Foundation Scientific Prize for his pioneering work in the early 1980s that showed that vitamin A capsules can prevent blindness and the death of millions of children in the developing world, at an annual cost of four to six cents per child. The award, which recognizes far-reaching medical breakthroughs, carries a $150,000 prize.

Multidisciplinary

At its recent annual spring luncheon, the Hopkins Women's Network presented its second annual Women's Leadership Award to four women who have provided leadership and acted as mentors to others at the university. Receiving the honor were Sandra Newman, Homewood campus; Kathy J. Helzlsouer, East Baltimore campus; Mary Lasky, Applied Physics Laboratory; and Cynthia Rand, Bayview.

As director of the Institute for Policy Studies, Sandra Newman oversees 40 full-time faculty and administrative staff and 50 graduate students in the Master of Arts in Public Policy program. She teaches two courses each year and at any given time is principal investigator on six to 10 funded research projects. To forge links across university disciplines, IPS sponsors special seminars and visiting scholars who contribute to the intellectual life of the Hopkins community. With the Baltimore-based Abell Foundation, Newman established the annual Abell Award in Urban Policy, which provides a $5,000 cash award to the JHU student who prepares the most compelling paper on a problem facing Baltimore.

Kathy J. Helzlsouer is an accomplished physician, public health researcher and professor in the Department of Oncology in the School of Medicine and in the Department of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health. She has guided many students through their doctoral research and supported their professional goals beyond Johns Hopkins. She also is director of a large research specimen bank at the Johns Hopkins Training Center for Public Health Research in Hagerstown, Md.

Mary Lasky worked her way up through the technical ranks to become one of only three department level managers at APL, where she has mentored many women to succeed through their own initiative. Accomplishments include teaching Technical Personnel Management in the Technical Management Master's Program for the Whiting School of Engineering, serving as chair of the United Way Campaign for APL in 2001 and co-chair in 2000 and chairing the board of trustees of the International Peace Scholarship Fund for P.E.O., a philanthropic educational organization for women.

Cynthia Rand, an associate professor of medicine, has been involved with the Task Force for Careers of Women in Academic Medicine at Johns Hopkins since its inception, including serving as chair. Her vision of how to nurture a culture of acceptance and gender equity resulted in a series of critical changes within the infrastructure of the department. Beyond Johns Hopkins, she is widely recognized for her innovation and leadership as an expert in health care behavior and is a consultant to national organizations, including NIH. Rand is also widely sought as a speaker addressing the critical balance of personal and professional responsibilities.

Nitze School of Advanced International Studies

Piero Gleijeses, a professor of American foreign policy, has received the Robert H. Ferrell Book Prize for Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa, 1959-1976. This honor is awarded by the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations for distinguished scholarship in the field.

Gilbert Khadiagala, an associate professor, received a Fulbright Senior Specialists grant in political science at the University of South Africa. The new Senior Specialists program offers two- to six-week grants to leading U.S. academics and professionals to support curricular and faculty development and institutional planning at academic institutions in 140 countries around the world.

Anders Sorensen, assistant professor of international economics, was part of a five-member team awarded the 2003 Grundfos Prize, an international competition administered by Grundfos, a Danish manufacturer. The mission of the prize is to stimulate, support and raise the profile of national and international research into innovative and future-oriented solutions that will benefit society in the areas of new technology, natural science or social science. The title of Sorensen's award-winning project is "Denmark and the Information Society: Challenges for Research and Education Policy."

Peabody Conservatory

Amit Peled has been appointed to a full-time position on the cello faculty, effective in September, following an extensive international search. Born and raised in Kibbutz Yizreel in Israel, Peled made his solo debut at age 16 with the European Philharmonic Orchestra in Paris. The recipient of numerous awards, Peled graduated with distinction in performance from the New England Conservatory, where he was a student of Laurence Lesser. Additional graduate study was with Boris Pergamenchikow at the Hochschule fur Musik "Hanns Eisler," in Berlin.

School of Medicine

Hunter Champion, a research and clinical fellow in cardiovascular medicine, received the Giles F. Filley Memorial Award in Respiratory Physiology and Medicine, a 2003 Young Investigator Award, from the American Physiological Society. On his behalf, an award of $20,000 will be made to Cardiology. Champion's research focuses on the effects of arginase, the breakdown of the amino acid arginine and its role in the function of the lungs and in lung disease.

Donald Coffey, the Catherine Iola and J. Smith Michael Distinguished Professor of Urology, was presented a 2003 Distinguished Recognition Award by the Society of Urological Oncology at the recent annual meeting of the American Urological Association. He also was selected to give the Ferdinand C. Valentine Lecture and receive the Valentine Medal from the New York Section of the AUA.

Robert Hamilton, a professor of medicine in the Department of Clinical Immunology, was selected to present to the Subcommittee of National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations of the U.S. House of Representatives on the subject of environmental testing methods for anthrax detection. His testimony included several recommendations for successful anthrax detection, as Johns Hopkins was drawn into the anthrax testing issue at the Brentwood and Wallingford postal facilities.

Lawrence Lichtenstein, a professor in Clinical Immunology, was recently awarded an honorary degree from the University of Naples Federico II in Italy. The degree recognized Lichtenstein's distinguished scientific career and honored him as the world leader of clinical immunology.

Peter J. McDonnell has been selected as the sixth William Holland Wilmer Professor of Ophthalmology and director of the Wilmer Eye Institute. A graduate of the Wilmer residency and chief residency programs, McDonnell was most recently the Irving Leopold Professor and Chairman of Ophthalmology at the University of California, Irvine. He replaces Morton Goldberg, who has led the department since 1969 and who will continue on at Johns Hopkins in a variety of capacities, including working to develop new techniques of cold laser treatment.

Khalid Minhas, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, has won the American Head and Neck Society's Trainee Award for his presentation at the Sixth Research Workshop on the Biology, Prevention and Treatment of Head and Neck Cancer in October.

David Valle, professor of pediatrics, has won the March of Dimes' Colonel Harland Sanders Award for Lifetime Excellence in Teaching and Genetics. The award is given annually to an individual whose lifetime body of research and education has made a significant contribution to the genetic sciences.

Michael VanRooyen, associate professor and vice chairman of emergency medicine and director of the department's Center for International Emergency, Disaster and Refugee Studies, has been selected as one of four recipients of the inaugural Pride in the Profession Award--the most prestigious of the American Medical Association's first annual Excellence in Medicine Awards. VanRooyen was honored for his work in disaster relief and humanitarian assistance throughout the world, including Somalia, Bosnia, North Korea, Kosovo and India.

Patrick Walsh, director of Urology, has been named an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. While in Dublin, Walsh delivered the 75th Abraham Colles Lecture, the college's most prestigious lecture and an honor reserved for senior surgeons who have achieved eminence in their field.

Stephen Wegener, associate professor and vice chairman of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, has been elected to the American Board of Rehabilitation Psychology.

Peter Agre, professor of biological chemistry; Philip Beachy, professor of molecular biology and genetics and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator; and Carol Greider, professor and interim director of molecular biology and genetics, have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an international society of the world's leading scientists, scholars, artists, business people and public leaders. They share the honor this year with Kofi Annan, Walter Cronkite and William H. Gates Sr., among others.

A feature article on pain management in the May issue of Good Housekeeping includes the Johns Hopkins Pain Treatment Center and its director, Peter Staats, in its list of the country's 35 top pain centers and an exceptional physician at each. Johns Hopkins' Pain Treatment Center was the only one in Maryland to make the list.

University Administration

Lynn Kingsley has been promoted to director of Cost and Research Accounting. She replaces Jim Aumiller, who has been named the Research Program lead for HopkinsOne, the institutionswide initiative to replace existing business systems. Prior to joining Johns Hopkins six years ago, Kingsley was an auditor for KPMG Peat Marwick. She holds a bachelor of arts degree in accounting from the University of Delaware and a master of science in information and telecommunication systems degree from Johns Hopkins. She is a licensed certified public accountant and currently serves on the faculty for the National Association of College and University Business Officers' F&A Rate Long Form course.

India Lowres has been promoted to the newly created position of director of alumni programs in the Office of Alumni Relations. Lowres began her career at Johns Hopkins 27 years ago in the Homewood Admissions Office and most recently served as senior associate director of alumni relations.

Greg Oler has been named director of General Accounting in the Controller's Office. Oler formerly worked at KPMG, where he spent nine years working on the JHU audit, including a period of time as director of that audit. Most recently, he was associated with a venture capital-backed software firm in Rockville. He is a graduate of Loyola College of Maryland.

The staff of Johns Hopkins Magazine earned a silver medal in periodical staff writing in the national Council for the Advancement and Support of Education awards program. The magazine's editor is Sue De Pasquale.

The staff of the Office of News and Information won a bronze medal for excellence in general news writing in the CASE national awards category.

A video produced by the Development Office, Johns Hopkins: Around the World, Around the Clock, received a gold medal from CASE in the Video Fund Raising Features category. The script was written by Mike Field, of the President's Office. Jim Trone, who teaches video at Hopkins, provided much of the film of the U.S. campuses. John Waterhouse, Sue McLaughlin and Margaret Hindman, all of Development Communications, acted as production managers, working with Current-Rutledge, a Seattle company, which did the interviews, filming and editing.