Johns Hopkins Gazette | May 19, 2008
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The newspaper of The Johns Hopkins University May 19, 2008 | Vol. 37 No. 35
 

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.

 

Applied Physics Laboratory

Alvin Eaton, a senior fellow working on special assignments and former associate director, was among a small group presented with the Missile Defense Agency's Technology Pioneer Award at the sixth annual U.S. Missile Defense Conference, held March 31 in Washington, D.C. Eaton, whose work has spanned more than 60 years, was honored for his "overwhelming breadth and depth of technical contributions to ballistic missile defense" and his "leadership that contributed directly to the success of the Standard Missile, and the Patriot and THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) missile interceptors" used in missile defense today.

 

Bayview Medical Center

Alicia Arbaje, assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Geriatrics, has received the Merck/AGS 2008 New Investigator Award and also been named a Harold Amos Faculty Development Scholar by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The Amos scholarship, a four-year postdoctoral research award, is named for the first African-American to chair a department at the Harvard Medical School. It is given to physicians of minority backgrounds who are committed to developing careers in academic medicine and to advancing the understanding and elimination of health disparities.

Cynthia Boyd, assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Geriatrics, received the Career Development Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Physician Faculty Scholars Program for her research project "Treatment Burden in Older Adults with Multi-Morbidity."

Joe Carrese, associate professor of medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine, received the National Award for Scholarship in Medical Education at the annual meeting of the Society of General Internal Medicine.

Merhan Habibi, assistant professor of surgery, has received a three-year appointment from the American College of Surgeons' Commission on Cancer as the CoC's liaison to Bayview's cancer program. He will spearhead CoC initiatives within the program, collaborate with local affiliates of such agencies as the American Cancer Society and facilitate quality improvement initiatives utilizing data submitted to the CoC's National Cancer Database.

Hendree Jones, associate professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and director of research for the Center for Addiction and Pregnancy, has been named the 2008 recipient of the Joseph Cochin Young Investigator Award from the College on Problems of Drug Dependence. A psychologist, Jones is a leading expert on the pharmacotherapies used to treat drug dependence during pregnancy and the impact of prenatal exposure to these medications and drugs of abuse. She also has created and tested novel behavioral interventions to help prevent relapse to drug use in pregnant women. The CPDD, founded in 1929, is the oldest group in the United States addressing problems of drug dependence and abuse. Cochin is its former director.

Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa, assistant professor of neurosurgery and oncology and director of the Brain Tumor Program at Bayview, has been named a Physician Hero by The Daily Record, Maryland's legal newspaper. Quinones-Hinojosa's award recognizes the significant impact he has had on health care in the region.

George Wang, a fellow in geriatric medicine, has received the T. Franklin Williams Research Scholars Award, which will provide support for his research project "Immunologic Disregulations and Inflammation in the Pathogenesis of Frailty of Old Age: The Role of CMV Infection."

 

Bloomberg School of Public Health

Daniel Scharfstein has been promoted to professor, with tenure, in the Department of Biostatistics.

 

Krieger School of Arts and Sciences

Maurice Bessman has been appointed professor emeritus in the Department of Biology, effective July 1.

Jennifer Culbert has been promoted to associate professor, with tenure, in the Department of Political Science, effective July 1.

 

Multidisciplinary

Nancy Kass, the Phoebe R. Berman Professor of Bioethics and Public Health and professor of health policy and management in the Bloomberg School, and Sean Tunis, adjunct professor in the School of Medicine, will be honored June 7 with the Nina Wood Collier Arts Champion award at Taste the Arts III. Taste the Arts is the annual fundraiser for the Maryland Chapter of Young Audiences/Arts for Learning, a nonprofit organization devoted to enriching the lives and education of Maryland's youth, educators and families. Kass and Tunis sponsor more than 25 projects that actively engage Baltimore City students in arts education programs through their Alison Rose Tunis Fund at Baltimore Community Foundation.

 

Peabody Institute

Faculty artist Larry Williams, horn, has been endorsed as a Yamaha Performing Artist by the Yamaha Corp. of America. He joins a group of elite professional musicians chosen for this distinction and will immediately begin representing the corporation nationally through performances and clinics. He also will be featured on the Yamaha Global Artist Web site. Williams chairs the Preparatory Brass and Winds Department, directs the Adult and Continuing Education program and coaches chamber music for the Peabody Conservatory.

 

School of Education

Four researchers at the Center for Research and Reform in Education were honored at the 89th annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, held recently in New York. Robert E. Slavin, center director, and researchers Bette Chambers, Nancy A. Madden and Anne M. Chamberlain received the Palmer O. Johnson Memorial Award for their September 2007 article in the AERA Journal. The article reported on the outcome of a federally funded evaluation of the Success for All program, which showed that students who attend Success for All schools for three years gained substantially more in reading skills than similar students in other schools. The award, named in honor of a pioneer in educational research and methodology, represents the highest quality of academic research published in one of AERA's four publications.

 

School of Medicine

Thomas Brushart, professor of orthopedic surgery, received the Hanno Millesi Award from the World Federation of Neurological Societies at its March meeting in Vienna, Austria. The award, named in honor of the pioneering peripheral nerve surgeon who developed modern techniques of nerve grafting, recognizes Brushart's "outstanding contributions to peripheral nerve research."

Peter Burger, professor of pathology, has been given the 2007 Fred Waldorf Stewart Award from the Department of Pathology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. The award recognizes Burger's contributions to understanding human disease.

Hal Dietz, professor of genetics and medicine, received the Hero with a Heart Award at the National Marfan Foundation's annual benefit, Heartworks: The Marfan Gala, last month. Dietz is part of the team, originally headed by Victor McKusick, that identified the gene for Marfan syndrome in 1991 and is researching a medication for the disorder, which affects the connective tissue of the heart, blood vessels, eyes, joints, bones and lungs.

Jim Erickson has been named executive director of finance. Erickson joined Johns Hopkins as a senior cost analyst in the Controller's Office in 1987. Since 1992, he has been senior director of financial affairs. In his new job, Erickson aims to stabilize HopkinsOne by improving training, reporting and transactions. He also hopes to develop strategies to build reserves and diversify revenue streams.

Edbert Hsu, associate professor of emergency medicine, has received a 2008 Leadership Award from the American Medical Association Foundation. The honor provides its recipients with the opportunity to receive special training to develop their skills as future leaders in medicine and community affairs. Hsu serves on the leadership group of Johns Hopkins' Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response and is associate editor of the AMA's Journal of Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness.

Richard Johns has been appointed University Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of biomedical engineering and professor emeritus of biomedical engineering, retroactive to Sept. 1, 2006.

Thomas Lloyd, resident in neurology, has received the American Academy of Neurology's 2008 S. Weir Mitchell Award for his research in amyotrophic lateral schlerosis. Lloyd's studies, funded by Johns Hopkins' Packard ALS Center and conducted in the laboratory of Alex Kolodkin, involved genetically engineering fruit flies to mimic the effects of ALS. The new technique will help future researchers study ALS and similar neurodegenerative disorders using an animal that is relatively easy to work with and quick to produce results.

Elizabeth Montgomery has been promoted to professor in the Department of Pathology, with a secondary appointment in Oncology.

Srinivasa Raja, professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine and director of pain research and the Division of Pain Medicine, has been honored with the 2008 Wilbert E. Fordyce Clinical Investigator Award by the American Pain Society. This award recognizes individual excellence and achievements in clinical pain scholarship and is presented to a professional whose total career achievements have made outstanding contributions to the field of clinical pain research and/or practice.

 

School of Nursing

Dennis W. Jones, clinical instructor in Acute and Chronic Care, was awarded the JHH Department of Nursing 2008 Shirley Somer Award for his research proposal "An Investigation to Determine Best Practice for the Care of the Critically Ill Morbidly Obese Patient During Air Medical Transport." This research is reflective of Jones' role as a critical care flight nurse with the Johns Hopkins Lifeline Ground and Air Medical Transportation Department.

Joan Kub, associate professor in the Department of Community Public Health, and graduate student Sonya Emmerson have been inducted into Delta Omega, an honorary society for faculty and those pursuing graduate studies in public health.

Sarah Langford, a traditional student graduating this week, has co-authored a children's book, Grandfather's Story Cloth. The book speaks about love, remembrance and Alzheimer's disease and is written in both English and Hmong. Langford collaborated on the project with Linda Gerdner, a researcher whose expertise involves family care-giving issues for Hmong elders with dementia. Story cloth is a Hmong traditional handcrafted visual depiction of a family's history and in this instance is used to provide information about Alzheimer's.

SOURCE (Student Outreach Resource Center) Community Service Awards were recently presented to Carmalyn D. Dorsey, clinical instructor in Community Public Health Nursing, Faculty Award; Melissa Latorra, traditional student, Individual Award; JHU chapter of the National Student Nurses' Association, Student Group Award; and Programa Salud, Tri-School Student Group Award.

 

Whiting School of Engineering

Susan Hohenberger, assistant professor in Computer Science, has received a $200,000 Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship to support her project "Cryptographic Challenges in Verifying Authenticity of Incoming Messages and Encrypting Outgoing Ones in Energy-, Data- and Time-Constrained Applications, Computer Security, Algorithms and Complexity Theory."

Peter Searson has been appointed first holder of the Joseph R. and Lynn C. Reynolds Professorship, effective July 1.

 
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