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.

Milestones, which accompanies Cheers in the third issue published each month, could not be compiled this week because of a technical problem. They will appear in the Sept. 27 Gazette.

 

Johns Hopkins Bayview

John Meyer, associate professor of psychiatry and consulting psychiatrist for the Bayview Community Psychiatry program, has been elected president of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

Lisa Shirk, residency program coordinator for the Medical Center's house staff program in internal medicine, has been honored as the inaugural recipient of The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine's Award for Excellence in Graduate Medical Education Administration.

Chester Smith, chair of Psychiatry, has been elected to a two-year term as chairman of the medical board of Bayview Medical Center. He replaces John R. Burton, former director of the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology, who has served as the board chairman since 1997.

 

Bloomberg School of Public Health

Diane Griffin, chair of the W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, has been elected to fellowship in the American Academy of Microbiology.

 

Krieger School of Arts and Sciences

Melissa Huang, a senior majoring in neuroscience, has received an Undergraduate Research Fellowship from the American Society for Microbiology. The fellowships, aimed at highly competitive students who wish to pursue graduate careers in microbiology, give recipients the opportunity to conduct full-time summer research at their institution with an ASM mentor and present their research results at the 2005 ASM general meeting in Atlanta. Each fellow receives a $4,000 stipend, a one-year ASM student membership and reimbursement for travel expenses to the meeting. Huang's mentor is Beverly Wendland, an associate professor in Biology.

Sara Finley and Rebecca Morley, graduate students in Cognitive Science, have been selected by the U.S. Department of Education as Jacob K. Javits Fellows for the 2004-2005 academic year. The fellowships are awarded for one year and, based upon availability of funds and the recipients' continued academic progress, may be renewed for the lesser of three years or the time required to complete the recipients' programs of study.

 

Nitze School of Advanced International Studies

Francis Fukuyama, the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy, recently published State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century (Cornell University Press).

 

School of Medicine

Steve Baylin, professor of oncology, has received an award from the National Cancer Institute for the most outstanding research in all Specialized Programs of Research Excellence for his pioneering research on DNA methylation in tumors.

Joseph V. Brady, professor of behavioral biology, has been appointed associate team leader for the Neurobehavioral and Psychosocial Factors Team of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute. He will help manage scientists working on projects identifying how stress and isolation affect crew health, safety and productivity during long-duration missions. Objectives include developing methods to detect and alleviate individual and group risk in space flight and identifying ways to enhance performance, crew motivation and quality of life.

Gregory Clark, a clinical fellow in the Department of Endocrinology, is one of two recipients of the Diabetes Trust Foundation's Clinical Scholars in Diabetes Fellowship. The fellowship was established to provide education and specialized training in the diagnosis and care of endocrine disorders.

Ted Dawson, professor of neurology and neuroscience and co-director of the Program in Neuroregeneration and Repair at the Institute for Cell Engineering, has received one of 10 research grants from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. The 10 grants total approximately $2.1 million.

Charley C. Della Santina, assistant professor of otolaryngology, has received the 2004 Young Scientist Award from the Barany Society. Della Santina was honored for his research underlying the development of an implantable electronic inner ear prosthesis for restoring balance function.

Theodore DeWeese, professor in the Department of Oncology-Radiological Sciences, is one of only five U.S. scientists to be appointed to the Scientific Council of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation. He was nominated by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and elected to the council by the RERF board of directors. As a committee member, he will oversee studies on the clinical, molecular, epidemiologic and pathologic aspects of atomic bomb survivors and other effects of radiation exposure.

Carol Greider, director of Molecular Biology and Genetics, has been elected to fellowship in the American Academy of Microbiology.

Jeffrey B. Palmer, professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation, has been appointed chair of the department. His latest research focuses on the effects of gravity and chewing at swallow onset and interactions between respiration and feeding on solid food.

Harry Quigley, the A. Edward Maumenee Professor of Ophthalmology, presented the 87th Doyne Memorial Lecture at the Oxford Ophthalmological Congress. The lecture is named for Robert Doyne, one of the prominent ophthalmologists in England during the late 19th century.

Richard Reilly, assistant professor in Oncology, has been awarded a three-year, $500,000 grant by the Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy. One of five recipients from the foundation's Young Investigators Awards Program, Reilly will use the funds to develop vaccine strategies to treat breast cancer. He will focus on the development of a novel vaccine using the body's own immune system to fight breast cancer cells that have spread to other parts of the body.

Artin A. Shoukas, professor of biomedical engineering and physiology, has been appointed to his second term as associate team leader for the Cardiovascular Alterations Team of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute. He will help manage scientists investigating how space flight affects the heart and circulatory system. A test devised by this team is already cleared by the FDA for use in identifying persons at risk of sudden death from heart rhythm disturbances.

Victor Velculescu, assistant professor in Oncology, has been chosen as a 2004 Pew Biomedical Scholar by the Pew Charitable Trusts. He is one of 15 recipients. The $240,000 award gives him additional support for genetics cancer research over the next four years. Velculescu's research has helped categorize the molecular difference between healthy and cancerous cells. His development of the computerized method know as SAGE (for serial analysis of gene expression) allows scientists for the first time to look at all the active genes inside a cell simultaneously and to rapidly analyze their pattern, including those genes involved in the disease process.

Patrick C. Walsh, David Hall McConnell Professor and Director of the Brady Urological Institute, has been named an honorary member of the Royal College of Surgeons in England.

Levi Watkins, professor of surgery; Richard P. Kidwell, managing attorney of claims and litigation and director of risk management for the Johns Hopkins Health System Corp.; and Andrew Harris, associate professor of anesthesiology/critical care medicine and Maryland State senator for District 7, have been appointed to a new task force established by Gov. Robert Ehrlich Jr. to address Maryland's growing medical malpractice problem. Kidwell also received a distinguished service award from the Maryland Hospital Association for his work in Annapolis during the 2004 General Assembly educating legislators about the need for tort reform.

Honored at the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine's residents' farewell dinner in June were Gregg Motonaga, resident of the year; Jeffrey Richman, teacher of the year; Julie Williamson, CA1 resident of the year; Kathryn DelPizzo, CA2 resident of the year; Laurel Moore, CA1 teacher of the year; and Edward Norris, CA2/CA3 teacher of the year.

 

Whiting School of Engineering

James Kinsey, a graduate student in Mechanical Engineering, was recently awarded a competitive one-year Link Foundation Doctoral Research Fellowship in Ocean Engineering and Instrumentation. The award consists of a grant of $25,000.

Gerald M. Masson, professor in the Department of Computer Science, was recently selected by the Maryland Association for Higher Education for the 2004 Outstanding Educator Award in the administrator category. The award recognizes Masson's role in originating the concept, then designing and developing and now directing the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute together with the Master of Science in Security Informatics program.

Avi Rubin has been promoted to full professor in the Department of Computer Science.

 

Three KSAS Faculty Honored with Named Professorships

Three faculty members in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences have been awarded named professorships in recognition of their distinguished scholarship and devotion to the university's academic life.

Astronomer and Nobel Prize winner Riccardo Giacconi was named a University Professor. Economist Robert A. Moffitt and biophysicist George D. Rose were named to Krieger-Eisenhower Professorships.

University Professorships are honorary titles awarded by the president to recognize exceptional achievements made by select members of the senior faculty from across Johns Hopkins. Krieger-Eisenhower Professorships recognize outstanding members of the Arts and Sciences faculty and honor prominent Baltimorean Zanvyl Krieger's close friendship with Milton Eisenhower, the university's ninth president. The professorships were established in 1992, at the time of Krieger's $50 million commitment to the School of Arts and Sciences.

"Named professorships are a university's way of recognizing the ideal academic, who engages in meaningful research of the highest quality while enriching the intellectual lives of students and colleagues, both inside the university and out," said Daniel Weiss, the James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

Giacconi, a member of the Department of Physics and Astronomy and president of Associated Universities in Washington, D.C., is known as the father of X-ray astronomy. His pioneering work is credited with opening a new window on the universe, an accomplishment that earned him the 2002 Nobel Prize in physics. Between 1981 and 1992, Giacconi served as founding director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, and between 1993 and 1999, he was director of the European Southern Observatory. He received his doctorate from the University of Milan in 1954.

Moffitt, a member of the Department of Economics, is best known for his research on the economic consequences of welfare and other anti-poverty programs on work effort, marriage and childbearing. He has published important work on the economics of labor, population and demography and has formulated and tested economic models of marriage, cohabitation, female headship and fertility. This spring, he was appointed editor in chief of American Economic Review, and he recently chaired a National Academy of Sciences panel of experts on welfare reform to review current research on the topic. Moffitt is a fellow of the Econometric Society and a national associate of the National Academy of Sciences. He graduated from Rice University in 1970 and received his doctorate from Brown in 1975.

Rose, a member of the Thomas C. Jenkins Department of Biophysics, has transformed human understanding of how proteins fold and has led the way in determining the essential role that conformational entropy plays in determining the structure and function of all proteins. Rose is credited with the fundamental insight that proteins fold hierarchically. He graduated from Bard College in 1963 and received his doctorate from Oregon State University in 1976.

 
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