October 23, 2003

Faculty honors

Linda A. Hicke, associate professor of biochemistry, molecular biology and cell biology, has been elected to the governing council of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB).

Hicke studies the down regulation of signal transducing receptors on cells. The down regulating process follows the activation of a signal transuduction pathway that allows the cell to respond to a stimulus. Once the cells act upon a signal they return to their normal unstimulated state by down regulating their response to the signal in a variety of ways. Hicke and her colleagues use genetics, biochemistry and cell biology in yeast to investigate these processes.

In 2000 the ASCB honored Hicke with a Women in Cell Biology Career Recognition Junior Award. She has received a Burroughs Wellcome Fund New Investigator Award, a Searle Scholars Award and a Presidential Early Career Award.

Marian S. Macsai, M.D., vice chair and professor of ophthalmology at the Feinberg School of Medicine, has received the Paton Society Award from the Eye Bank Association of America.

The annual award is conferred on an ophthalmologist for “exemplifying the precepts of R. Townley Paton, M.D., the father of modern eye banking and founder of the first eye bank in the United States.”

Macsai is chief of the division of ophthalmology at Evanston Northwestern Healthcare. Before coming to Northwestern in 1999 she was director of the Cornea and External Disease Service at West Virginia University.

Macsai has received the Illinois Society for the Preven-tion of Blindness Award of Excellence, an Honor Award from the American Academy of Ophthalmology, and a Distinguished Service Certificate of Appreciation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Macsai serves on the board of directors of the Eye Bank Association of America and the Castroviejo Cornea Society.

David Schoenbrun, associate professor of history, has been elected a member of Gamma of Oregon Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon.

He is one of two alumni elected to membership in the college’s newly constituted chapter of the honorary society. Phi Beta Kappa allows election of qualified alumni when an institution installs a chapter.

Schoenbrun specializes in African history before the 16th century and in non-traditional sources for writing history. He has received awards from the Social Science Research Council, the Fulbright Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies.

His book, “A Green Place, A Good Place: Agrarian Change, Gender and Social Identity in the Great Lakes Region in the 15th Century,” was named a 1999 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title.