October 20, 2005

Faculty honors

Douglas L. Medin, professor of psychology, has been named the Louis W. Menk Professor in Psychology. He is director of the University’s Program in Cognitive Studies of the Environment and Program in Culture, Language and Cognition.

Medin has made outstanding contributions to several research areas, ranging from work on perceptual processes, learning and memory in nonhuman primates, to the study of learning, memory and categorization processes in humans. His recent work has focused on the role of culture and experience in categorization, reasoning and environmental decision-making.

An American Psychological Association Fellow, Medin is one of only three Northwestern faculty members to receive the association’s prestigious Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award.

Richard I. Morimoto, John Evans Professor of Biology, professor of biochemistry, molecular biology and cell biology and director of the Rice Institute for Biomedical Research, has been named the Bill A. and Gayle Cook Professor in Biological Sciences.

Morimoto and his colleagues have focused their research on the molecular body of protein quality control and cellular stress responses. The current goal is to understand how eukaryotes sense and respond to physiologic and environmental stress by the activation of stress signaling pathways that integrate stress responses with cell growth and cell death.

They are investigating how molecular chaperones recognize and capture folded intermediates and processes by which proteins are refolded, degraded or undergo aggregation. They hope to understand how misfolded proteins and protein aggregates cause diseases such as Huntington’s, Parkinson’s, ALS, Scrapie/Prion, cystic fibrosis and Alzheimer’s.

David Van Zanten, professor of art history, has been named the Mary Jane Crowe Professor in Art and Art History.

Van Zanten’s research and teaching focus on modern architecture and urbanism in Paris and Chicago during the years 1800-1914. His interest is in how architecture is designed and how the design functions in the broader structure of the community.

“Designing Paris: The Architecture of Duban, Labrouste, Duc and Vaudoyer” (1987) received the Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award from the Society of Architectural Historians. In 1995, the year he was named Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture, Van Zanten published “Building Paris: Architectural Institutions and the Transformation of the French Capital, 1830-1870.”

Robert P. H. Chang, professor of materials science and engineering, has been honored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as the Director’s Distinguished Teaching Scholar (DTS) for achieving groundbreaking results in research, strong teaching and mentoring skills and major educational contributions.

The award, worth up to $300,000 over four years, is NSF’s recognition of accomplishments by scientists and engineers whose roles as educators and mentors are considered as important as their groundbreaking results in research.

Chang is one of seven scholars whose grants allow scholars to conduct further research and education activities, or start new ones that benefit their individual fields and the students they support.

Chang was honored for his important contributions in plasma science and technology, diamond research, high-temperature superconductivity and carbon nanotubes, while expanding undergraduate research as director of a materials research center at Northwestern.

Teri W. Odom, assistant professor of chemistry, is one of 12 scholars internationally to receive a DuPont Young Professor Award for the academic years 2005-2007.

The grant program is designed to provide start-up assistance to promising young, untenured research faculty in the sciences.

Odom was selected for her work in the synthesis, characterization and assembly of nanoscale metal chalcogenide materials, and the nanopatterning and manipulation of these nanoscale building blocks into structures that can exhibit new optical properties.

L. Lynne Kiesling, senior lecturer in economics, has been appointed to the GridWise Architecture Council, a national organization working with the Department of Energy GridWise Project, which envisions a future electric system built on information technology to fundamentally transform the planning and operation of the power grid.

Kiesling performs policy-oriented market design research using experimental economics methodology to focus on issues of regulatory, institutional and technological change. Her interests include electricity and natural gas industry restructuring, telecommunications regulation and restructuring, and the role of property rights, information and transaction costs in shaping these changes.

Kiesling is director of the Center for Applied Energy Research, International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics.

Steven Drizin, clinical professor of law, has been awarded the Livingston Hall Juvenile Justice Award by the American Bar Association.

Drizin, assistant director of the Bluhm Legal Clinic and legal director of the clinic’s renowned Center on Wrongful Convictions, was cited for “outstanding dedication and commitment to improving the juvenile justice system.”

The award was established by the ABA to recognize talented and dedicated advocates actively working to improve advocacy on behalf of juveniles in the justice system.

At the law school clinic, Drizin supervises law students in delinquency and criminal appeals and in wrongful conviction cases.