January 8, 2004

Faculty honors

Anjen Chenn, M.D., assistant professor of pathology at the Feinberg School of Medicine, is one of five young scientists nationwide to receive a Sontag Foundation Distinguished Scientist Award.

The awards, given for the first time this year, provide each scientist $500,000 over three years for research related to brain cancer.

Chenn’s major research interest is understanding the factors that control cell proliferation and differentiation in the developing mammalian central nervous system. Understanding the control of neural cell division and the relationship between proliferation and differentiation has profound implications for developmental neuroscience and for disorders of the human nervous system. Chenn also is investigating neuronal production from neural stem cells which may offer a potential therapy for neurodegenerative disease.

Lucille Kerr, professor of Spanish and chair of the department of Spanish and Portuguese, has been appointed the Herman and Beulah Pearce Miller Research Professor in Literature.

Kerr’s research area is Latin American literature and culture with specialization in the 20th century and narrative fiction, as well as literary history, theory and criticism.

Her first book, “Suspended Fictions,” dealt with the novels of Manuel Puig, revealing the innovative recuperation of popular culture and its challenge to the notion of “high” art. In “Reclaiming the Author,” she showed how Latin American writers have given new life to the figure of the author.

Kerr’s current project looks at the cultural, commercial and literary forces that shaped the boom of Latin American literature in the l960s and ‘70s. This research draws on archival materials of writers, agents, editors, publishers and critics whose relationships molded Latin American literary culture in the second half of the 20th century.

Albert Yoon, assistant professor of law and of political science, has been named the Benjamin Mazur Research Professor.

Yoon’s primary interests are in the areas of tort reform, corporate and securities law, federal courts, and political parties and federalism.

Currently he is preparing a book on tort reform as a fellow at Princeton University’s Program in Law and Public Affairs.

In fall 2004 he will be a visiting faculty member at the New York University School of Law.

Before coming to Northwestern in 2001, Yoon was a Robert W. Johnson Scholar at the University of California-Berkeley.