Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

Achievements

IN THIS ISSUE: COMMERCE AND BUSINESS | DADS ASSN. | ENGINEERING | FAA | LAS | ISGS | VET MED

 

commerce and business administration

Seven faculty members in the College of Commerce and Business Administration received faculty fellowships in recognition of their research and professional accomplishments and their contributions to teaching curriculum development and pedagogical innovations.

The holders of the three-year Faculty Fellowships: Bryan Cloyd, accountancy, Arthur Andersen Fellowship in Accountancy; Kathryn Kadous, accountancy, Caterpillar Fellowship; Steven Michael, business administration, Schoen Fellowship in Entrepreneurship; Neil Pearson, finance, Investors in Business Education (IBE) Fellowship; Marjorie Shelley, accountancy, Deloitte & Touche Teaching Fellowship in Accountancy; Brian Wansink, business administration, Julian Simon Memorial Faculty Fellowship; and Zhijie Xiao, economics, IBE Fellowship.

The program was established in November to complement the college’s endowed chairs and professorships.

dads association

The Dads Association recently presented its annual Certificate of Merit Awards.

Barbara Cicone, an admissions and records officer for the department of computer science, was named outstanding staff member. Cicone was honored for her commitment to students in her role in supervising the department’s academic office.

Journalism professor Walter Harrington was honored as outstanding faculty member for his work in teaching and nurturing students.

Kory Langhofer, a senior in political science from Urbana, was named outstanding student, and the campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity was honored as outstanding student organization.

engineering

William S. Hammack, professor of chemical engineering, has won the 2002 National Association of Science Writers (NASW) “Science in Society Award” in the radio category for his program “Engineering and Life,” broadcast on WILL-AM (580).

David A. Lange,
professor of civil and environmental engineering, has received the American Concrete Institute’s Wason Medal for Most Meritorious Paper. Lange was honored for “Creep, Shrinkage, and Cracking of Restrained Concrete at Early Age,” which he co-wrote.

The award was founded in 1917 by Leonard C. Wason, past president of ACI International. Formal announcement of the election will be made at the ACI convention in Vancouver, in March.

Jean Ponce, professor of computer science, was elected a fellow of the Institute of Electric and Electronic Engineers for his contributions to geometric shape representation in computer vision.

Mohit Randeria, George A. Miller Endowment Professor in Physics, received two prestigious international prizes in physics. The International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, awarded him the 2002 P.W. Anderson Prize in Condensed Matter Physics. It recognizes outstanding and original contributions in physics and mathematics in a specific field of interest.

In addition, he received the 2002 S.S. Bhatnagar Prize for Physical Sciences, awarded by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of the Government of India, for outstanding scientific contributions made primarily in India during the past five years.

NAMD, a molecular dynamics code for high-performance simulation of large biomolecular systems developed on campus, was among the winners of this year’s Gordon Bell Awards – the olympics of supercomputing – at the SC2002 conference held in November in Baltimore.

NAMD – developed in collaboration by computer scientists Laxmikant Kale, Robert M. Skeel and lead programmer James C. Phillips – represents a marriage of crosscutting research with software development, aimed at harnessing the nation’s fastest supercomputers to decipher the tiny components of living cells. It is distributed free of charge to thousands of scientists in industry and academia around the world, quickening the pace of drug discovery and other vital research to unravel biological processes.

NAMD was developed by the Theoretical Biophysics Group, directed by physicist Klaus Schulten, at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, with support from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

The Gordon Bell Awards were established in 1988 to stimulate future advances in parallel computing applications by recognizing major accomplishments.

fine and applied arts

Anne D. Hedeman, professor of art history, has been named the editor for three years of Gesta, the journal of the International Center of Medieval Art.

Sherban Lupu, professor of music, was awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the Academy of Music G.Dima, one of the oldest and most prestigious universities, located in Cluj, Romania’s second largest city.

liberal arts and sciences

Phillip A. Newmark, a researcher in the department of cell and structural biology, is one of five recipients nationwide of a 2002 Damon Runyon Scholar Award.

The three-year $300,000 award from the New York-based Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation supports the development of outstanding scientists as they establish their own independent research laboratories. The grant period began Jan. 1.

The award is designed to boost Newmark’s efforts to identify the genes involved in the tissue regenerative abilities of planarian flatworms in their recovery from wounds.

Julian I. Palmore, professor of mathematics who also has a faculty appointment in Illinois’ Program in Arms Control, Disarmament and International Security, has been named associate editor of the journal Military Operations Research, of the Military Operations Research Society, Alexandria, Va. He was previously guest editor for a special issue of that journal.

He also was guest editor of a special edition of Defense and Security Analysis on missile defense systems (September 2002) and was invited to be guest editor for another special edition which would focus on United States-China relations (December 2003).

Palmore was invited to join and is now a member of the editorial boards of Defense and Security Analysis as well as the journal Central European Journal of Mathematics.

Scott Silverman, professor of chemistry, will receive the Basil O’Connor Starter Scholar Research Awards from the March of Dimes Foundation. This award is designed to recognize young scientists embarking on their independent research careers, and was given to Silverman for his research on the structural basis of RNA-protein interactions underlying fragile X syndrome.

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is honoring several staff members and academic professionals for outstanding contributions to the college. The awards will be presented Feb. 20.

The LAS Academic Professional Award will be presented to Susanne Aref, manager of services and adjunct lecturer of statistics and of natural resources and environmental sciences; Jenny Barrett, senior research programmer, psychology; and Christine Catanzarite, associate director of the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities.

Marsha Healy, administrative secretary, psychology, received the LAS Nancy J. McCowen Distinguished Service Award. Named for a former administrative assistant in the college, the award recognizes someone who continually goes above and beyond an expected level of service.

The LAS Staff Award was presented to Carolyn Cornwell, secretary IV, School of Chemical Sciences, and Mae Donaldson, accountant II, psychology.

state geological survey

Subhash Bhagwat, senior mineral economist with the Illinois State Geological Survey, was awarded a Fulbright Senior Specialists grant in economics at Technische Universität Berlin Fakultät VI Bauingenieurwesen und Angewandte Geowissenschaften Institu. This new 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. The program supplements the traditional Fulbright Scholar Program begun in 1946.

Staff members of the Illinois State Geological Survey were honored at an awards ceremony in December. Emeritus clay mineralogist Herbert Glass received the survey’s Lifetime Distinguished Achievement Award. Other honorees: Bob Bryant, assistant supportive scientist, for outstanding contribution to survey safety; the drilling team of Jack Aud, Steve Wildman, Matt Thompson and Chris Wilson for special achievement by a team or section; Antigone Dixon-Warren, assistant professional scientist, and Steve Gustison, supportive scientist, for outstanding new staff members; and Sally Denhart, supportive scientist, and Rick Hansen, assistant professional scientist, for distinguished achievement.

veterinary medicine

Val Beasley, professor of veterinary biosciences, gave invited platform presentations on marine mammal toxicology and on the Envirovet Program at the World Veterinary Congress in September.

Peter Constable, professor of veterinary clinical medicine, served for the second year on the USDA Animal Health and Well Being grant review panel in Washington, D.C., in May. He also was elected to serve a three-year term on the Large Animal Internal Medicine committee. Constable also was a keynote speaker on the treatment of the diarrheic calf at the XXII World Buiatrics Congress in Hannover, Germany, in August.

Jonathan Foreman,
professor of veterinary clinical medicine, recently completed a three-year term on the national organizing committee for the Sixth International Conference on Equine Exercise Physiology, held in Lexington, Ky. He also helped organize Equine Sports Medicine 2002, also held in Lexington.
Foreman recently was awarded the status of FEI Event Veterinarian by the Federation Equestre Internationale, the international governing body of seven equestrian disciplines, based in Lausanne, Switzerland, and by USA Equestrian (formerly the American Horse Shows Association), the national governing federation for Olympic equestrian sports in the United States.

Rex Hess,
professor of veterinary biosciences, gave a number of invited lectures and seminars in July, August, and September, including at the Gordon Research Conference on Environmental Endocrine Disruptors held in South Hadley, Mass.; at the Minisymposium on Effects of Estrogen on Gonadal Function, 35th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Reproduction, in Baltimore; at the Society for Theriogenology Annual Conference, Colorado Springs, Colo.; for the Population Council at Rockefeller University and at Mount Sinai Medical School, New York; and at the Woman’s Health Research Institute, Wyeth Research, Philadelphia.

Gavin Meerdink, clinical professor of toxicology and of veterinary biosciences, received the E.P. Pope Service Award from the American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians on Oct. 20. It is the highest award given by the association. Meerdink was noted for his service as vice president, president-elect and president; program chair; membership committee chair; newsletter editor; member and chair of the publications board; chair of the Foundation; and member of the toxicology committee.

R. Dean Scoggins, equine Extension professor emeritus, received the 2002 Benefactor of the Breed Award from the Eastern Crabbet Arabian Horse Society in September. The award is presented to individuals who have made significant contributions to the preservation, promotion and welfare of the Arabian horse. Scoggins was recognized for his significant contributions as a veterinarian and trainer and for his promotion of the Arabian horse, particularly for his association with Al-Marah Arabians.

David Scott, professor of veterinary pathobiology, was awarded the 2002 Seymour H. Hutner Prize of the Society of Protozoologists for his discovery of a vacuolar proton pyrophosphatase in acidocalcisomes of early branching eukaryotes. The award recognizes outstanding contributions by young scientists.

John R. Scott, research technologist in the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, was elected to the board of directors of the American Assembly of Men in Nursing.

Art Siegel, professor of veterinary clinical medicine, is serving as the veterinary medicine database representative to the AVMA Committee on Veterinary Medicine Informatics. The group’s fall meeting sought to form a broad-based task force to lead the development of Informatics Standards for Veterinary Medicine into the future.

 

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