May 6, 2004

Faculty honors

Michael Abecassis, M.D., associate professor of surgery and of microbiology and immunology at the Feinberg School of Medicine and chief of the division of organ transplantation at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, has been named the James Roscoe Miller Distinguished Professor in Medicine.

A pioneer in living donor transplantation, Abecassis is an internationally recognized expert in liver transplantation. He serves on multiple national committees including the National Institutes for Health Adult-to-Adult Living Donor Liver Transplantation Cohort Study steering committee.

Abecassis conducts research on cytomegalovirus, a virus which is a major infectious complication following transplantation. His work is supported by nearly $6 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health.

He has received the Davis and Geck Award from the Annual Assembly of General Surgeons, Toronto, a fellowship from the Medical Research Council of Canada and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons/Ortho Pharmaceutical Foundation Award.

Gary Alan Fine, professor of sociology and of American Studies, has been named the John Evans Professor of Sociology.

Fine is recognized for his wide-ranging research in social psychology, sociology of culture, sociology of science, qualitative sociology, social theory and collective behavior.

“Difficult Reputations: Collective Memories of the Evil, Inept and Controversial” was published in 2001. His research on the interpretation of rumor and contemporary legend resulted in “Whispers on the Color Line: Rumor and Race in America” (2001). He is completing an ethnographic study on economic and social organization of art worlds, focusing on contemporary folk art.

Fine’s eight other books include four editions of the text “Talking Sociology.” The widely quoted “With the Boys: Little League Baseball and Preadolescent Culture” received the American Folklore Society’s Opie Award for the Best Scholarly Book in the Field of Children’s Folklore and Culture.

Amy Paller, M.D., chair of the department of dermatology and professor of pediatrics at the Feinberg School of Medicine, has been named the Walter J. Hamlin Professor in Dermatology. She is also head of the dermatology division at Children’s Memorial Hospital.

Paller is internationally recognized for her research on the growth and differentiation of keratinocytes and their impact on psoriasis, wound healing and spread of cutaneous carcinomas. Her research on genetic and immune disorders has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Health and Human Services and the March of Dimes, among others.

A member of several editorial boards of journals in her field, she is assistant section editor of the Archives of Dermatology and associate editor of the third edition of “Pediatric Dermatology.” She is president-elect of the Society for Pediatric Dermatology and served as president of the Chicago Dermatologic Society in 2001-02.