September 21, 2006

Endowed Professorships

Craig Bina has been reappointed the Wayne V. Jones II Professor of Geological Sciences.

Bina’s research focuses on the structure, composition and behavior of the interior of the Earth and other planets. Specifically, he studies thermodynamics, elastic properties, phase transitions and dynamic processes in planetary mantles. As a member of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems, he also studies the propagation of strain energy in networks.

Bina is a Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America and a past recipient of the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation.

He has also been awarded the Editor’s Citation for Excellence in Refereeing from the American Geophysical Union, the Lewis G. Weeks Lectureship from the department of geology and geophysics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Harry Hess Lectureship from Princeton University.

Bruce G. Carruthers, professor of sociology, has been named the Gerald F. and Marjorie G. Fitzgerald Professor of Economic History.

A member of the Northwestern faculty since 1990, Carruthers chaired the department of sociology from 2004 until 2006 and previously was director of graduate studies for the department.

His research interests, which include historical, economic, and political sociology and the sociology of law, have been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation and the American Bar Foundation.

Carruthers has been honored for his work. He was a Russell Sage Foundation Visiting Scholar in 2000-01, and he received fellowships to the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Australia National University (2004) and to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard (2006-07).

He received a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2006. In 2005 he was elected to membership in the Sociological Research Association.

Richard W. Carthew, professor of molecular biology and cell biology, has been reappointed the Owen L. Coon Professor Molecular Biology.

Carthew investigates the role of RNA in regulating gene expression, known as RNAi. RNAi mediates widespread defense against transposable elements and viruses and regulates the expression of cellular protein-coding genes.

He and fellow researchers study the mechanism and function of this process in the model system Drosophila melanogaster. They combine genetics and biochemistry in Drosophila to understand its mechanistic principles.

RNAi has had a profound effect in the fields of development and cell biology, functional genomics, human disease and drug therapy. This is particularly true with the small non-coding RNAs called “microRNAs,” which constitute three percent of the genes in the human genome. MicroRNAs repress the expression of protein-coding genes by attenuating protein synthesis.

S. Hollis Clayson, professor art history, has been named the first Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities.

Clayson, who joined the art history department at Northwestern in 1985, is a historian of modern art, specializing in 19th century European art, especially that of France, and transatlantic exchanges between France and the U.S. Her current work centers on American artists in Paris (1870-1914) and their preoccupation with night in the “City of Light.”

Her first book, “Painted Love: Prostitution in French Art of the Impressionist Era,” was published in 1991 (reprinted by the Getty Trust in 2003). Clayson is also the author of “Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life Under Siege” (1870-71), published in 2002 (paperback 2005). She is co-editor of “Understanding Paintings: Themes in Art Explored and Explained,” a thematic study of painting in the Western tradition. Published in 2000, the book has since been translated into six languages.

As recognition of her outstanding scholarship, she has received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Kaplan Center for the Humanities, the Getty Research Institute and the Clark Art Institute.

Souleymane Bachir Diagne, professor of philosophy and religion, has been named the Martin J. and Patricia Koldyke Outstanding Teaching Professor.

Prior to joining the Northwestern faculty in 2002, Diagne was vice dean of the College of Humanities and professor of philosophy at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal.

His work is focused on the history of logic and mathematics, epistemology, the tradition of philosophy in the Islamic world, identity formation and African philosophies.

Among Diagne’s many publications are two books on George Boole, “Boole, l’oiseau de nuit en plein jour” [translated as “Boole, a nightbird in the daylight”] (1989), and a French translation of Boole’s “Laws of Thought” (1992).

In the field of Islamic philosophy, he has written a book on Indian poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal, “Islam et societé ouvert: La fidélité et le mouvement dans la philosophie d’Iqbal” [translated as “Islam and the open society: fidelity and movement in Muhammad Iqbal’s thought”] (2001).

Dyan Elliott has been named the John Evans Professor of History.

Prior to joining the Northwestern faculty in 2006, Elliott was on the faculty at Indiana University from 1988 to 2005. In 2004 she was named the Ruth N. Halls Professor of History. She moved to Vanderbilt University in the fall of 2005 as the Distinguished Professor of History.

Elliott is regarded as one of the principal scholars in the field of medieval history. Her research concentration is on the importance of gender within a predominately religious culture.

She has published three books: “Proving Women: Female Mysticism and the Inquisitional Practices in Late Medieval Europe” (2004); “Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, and Demonology in the Middle Ages” (1999); and “Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock” (1995).

Currently Elliott is working on two book-length projects, “The Impression of Marriage: A Template for the Medieval World” and “A Hole in the Heavens: Orthodox Dualism and the Crisis of the Late Medieval World.”

Franz M. Geiger, associate professor of chemistry, has been named the Dow Chemical Company Research Professor.

At Northwestern Geiger has developed a new soil science laboratory for general chemistry courses and has written two environmental chemistry modules for soil and atmospheric chemistry.

His research focuses on the special roles that surfaces and interfaces play in tropospheric and soil chemistry and their implications for climate changes and environmental pollution. His research involves using laser spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. In one example, his research group uses lasers to determine how tightly pollutants stick to environmental interfaces.

Results of Geiger’s studies include the finding that the heavy-metal pollutant hexavalent chromium may linger in the ground longer than expected. This finding broadens the understanding of geochemical processes and may lead to revisions of environmental cleanup strategies. The study was highlighted in the April 2005 issue of “Chemical & Engineering News” and in “Science.”

Robert D. Goldman, Stephen Walter Ranson Professor and chair of the department of cell and molecular biology, has been elected president of the American Society for Cell Biology.

His president-elect term begins Jan. 1.

Goldman studies the structure and function of the cytoskeltal systems, which regulate the shape, behavior and internal organization of the components of cells. In particular, he and his colleagues study one of the major components of the cytoskeletal system known as intermediate filaments (IF).

Many human diseases including motor neuron disease, premature aging diseases, cancer, cardiomyopathies and muscular dystrophies, have been linked to changes in IF systems. Goldman and his fellow researchers are developing methods to determine the mechanisms underlying the alterations of IF in these and other diseases.

Goldman has published papers in many of the top journals including Science, Genes and Development, the Journal of Cell Biology and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors including an Ellison Foundation Senior Scholar Award and a MERIT Award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

Wendy Griswold has been appointed Arthur E. Andersen Research and Teaching Professor.

She holds courtesy appointments in the departments of sociology and English and in the Program in Comparative Literary Studies. She is a faculty affiliate of the Media, Technology and Society Graduate Program and serves on the steering committee of the Theatre and Drama Graduate Program, both in the School of Communication. She also directs the Culture and Society Workshop

Griswold’s research and teaching interests center on sociological approaches to literature, art and religion and comparative studies in Europe and Africa. She is currently working on literary and cultural regionalism in the United States and also in Norway and Italy.

Griswold has written seven books since 1986, among them, “Renaissance Revivals: City Comedy and Revenge Tragedy in the London Theatre, 1576-1980,” Cultures and Societies in a Changing World” and (with Frederick Englestadt) “Places Within, Places Beyond: The Question of Norwegian Regionalism in Literature.”

Mercouri Kanatzidis, professor of chemistry, has been named the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Chair in Chemistry.

Kanatzidis is a solid state chemist who works on novel thermoelectric  materials. His research interests include inorganic chemistry, solid state and molecular chemistry of chalcogenides, intercalation chemistry and bioinorganic chemistry.

He also studies exploratory synthesis, mesoporous semiconductors, phase-change materials and conducting polymers.

His research is supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Office of Naval Research.

Kanatzidis holds three patents and has applied for four others.

Among his prestigious recognitions, Kanatzidis has been named a Presidential Young Investigator by the National Science Foundation, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, a Beckman Young Investigator, a Camille and Hanry Dreyfus Teaching Scholar, a Guggenheim Fellow and was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Prize.