April 14, 2005

Honors

Two members of the faculty and one staff member have been awarded 2004-05 Fulbright Fellowships, according to the Council for International Exchange of Scholars which manages the program.

The Fulbright Scholar Program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, and final selections are made by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

The Northwestern recipients are Carl R. Johnson, scenic artist in the Theatre and Interpretation Center; Lance J. Rips, professor of psychology; and Mimi White, professor of radio/television/film.

David E. Van Zandt, dean of the School of Law, has been named president-elect of the American Law Deans Association (ALDA).

With a membership of about 110 deans of American Bar Association-accredited law schools from throughout the United States, ALDA advocates on behalf of law school deans on issues of accreditation, academics, admissions and other issues affecting legal education.

Van Zandt took over the law school’s deanship in 1995 determined to implement a model of legal education that reflects the realities of the changing worlds of law and business.

Scott Stern, associate professor of management and strategy, has been awarded the first Ewing Marion Kauffman Prize Medal for Distinguished Research in Entrepreneurship.

Stern received the Kauffman Prize Medal for his enterprising research into the idea marketplace, which will permit the development of new market approaches that enable entrepreneurs to better produce and sell their intellectual property.

Horace Yuen, professor of electrical and computer engineering and of physics and astronomy, has been elected a fellow of the American Physical Society. He was selected for  his “seminal contributions to the theory of quantum communications and quantum measurements.”

Yuen’s research interests encompass a broad spectrum of topics in quantum optics, including quantum communication theory, the foundations of quantum physics, new quantum devices, physical cryptography and new computers based on optical technologies.

Mark Daskin, Robert Fourer and Wallace Hopp, professors of industrial engineering and management sciences, have been named fellows of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS). The IEMS department is the first at any institution to receive three fellow awards in a single year and its total of four, including previously elected Donald Frey, is the highest.

The award is given to individuals who “have demonstrated outstanding and exceptional accomplishments and experience in operations research and the management sciences” and who have made significant contributions to the advancement of these fields.

Kelly Ormond, director of the Graduate Program in Genetic Counseling and assistant professor in the department of medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine, has been elected president of the National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC).

The 2,000-member NSGC is the leading voice, authority and advocate for the genetic counseling profession.

Ormond has directed the Graduate Program in Genetic Counseling since 1999. In that position she is able to advance the profession by training competent genetic counselors, encouraging them to expand the boundaries of the field and raising awareness of the field with medical and outside communities.

Loren Ghiglione, dean of the Medill School of Journalism, has been named a 2005 champion for the cause of diversity in the news media by the National Association of Minority Media Executives (NAMME).

Ghiglione received the Lawrence Young Breakthrough Award at the organization’s “Celebration of Diversity” awards ceremony today (April 14). According to NAMME, the award “is given to an individual who transforms the paradigm of diversity in the media.”

Ghiglione has worked on diversity issues throughout his career. He founded the Task Force on Minorities in the Newspaper Business and organized minority job fairs nationwide as chair of the Minorities Committee of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Darlene Clark Hine, a leading historian of the African American experience and a pioneer of African American women’s history, has been named the Board of Trustees Professor of African American Studies and History. She serves as interim chair of the African American Studies department.

Hine was the John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of History at Michigan State University before joining the Northwestern faculty in July. She is a past president of the Organization of American Historians and the Southern Historical Association.

Hine has been influential in shaping the field of African American women’s history and pioneered the study of the black professional class.

Fred T. Mackenzie, former chair of the department of geological sciences, has been named the Visiting William Deering Professor of Geological Sciences. He is in residence during the spring quarter and will teach the popular undergraduate course, Global Environmental Change.

Mackenzie holds faculty appointments in oceanography, geology and geophysics at the University of Hawaii. A member of Northwestern’s geological sciences faculty from 1968 to 1981, he served as chair from 1975-81 and has visited several times since then.

He has been a visiting fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Berlin and is a recipient of the Francis Pettijohn Medal for Excellence in Sedimentology from the Society for Sedimentary Geology.

Kathleen Thelen, professor of political science, has been named the Payson S. Wild Professor in Political Science.

Thelen’s comparative research focuses on the political economies of the advanced industrial nations. She studies the origins, development and effects of the institutional arrangements that define distinctive “varieties of capitalism” across the developed democracies. Currently she is addressing the impact of globalization on contemporary labor politics and industrial relations in those countries.

In 2003 Thelen received the Max Planck Research Award for Social Sciences and Humanities.

Augusta Read Thomas, professor of music, has been named the Henry N. and Ruth F. Wyatt Professor in Music Theory.

Thomas, who is also Mead Composer-in-Residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, is considered to be among the top composers of concert music today.

Her work has been performed by many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Moscow Conservatory Orchestra and the Boston Symphony.

Recent performances of Thomas’s music have included Grace Notes by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, New Work by the New York Philharmonic and Galaxy Dances by the National Symphony.

Karen Smilowitz-Corr, assistant professor of industrial engineering and management sciences, is one of six young scholars nationwide selected to receive the first Sloan Industry Studies Fellowships.

The fellows are highly qualified scholars in the early stages of their careers chosen on the basis of their exceptional promise to contribute to the advancement of knowledge and to U.S. industrial development and economic competitiveness. They are engaged in research on the complex influences that shape industrial enterprises.

Smilowitz-Corr, who holds a joint appointment with the Transportation Center, plans to expand her work on operational flexibility in freight transportation.

Three Northwestern faculty members have been awarded research fellowships by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

They are Mark C. Hersam, assistant professor of materials science and engineering; Teri W. Odom, assistant professor of chemistry; and Dmitry E. Tamarkin, assistant professor of mathematics.

The awards are intended to enhance the careers of the best young faculty members in specified fields of science. A total of 116 fellowships are awarded annually in the fields of chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience and physics. Thirty-two former Sloan Fellows have become Nobel Laureates.