Two ocean sciences graduate students, Melinda Conners and Corinne Gibble, have been selected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to receive Nancy Foster Scholarships. The scholarships were established in memory of Dr. Foster, a leader in marine resource conservation who was inspirational in her role as one of the top senior executives in the marine field. The seven finalists were selected by a panel of NOAA scientists from more than 170 applications. Each scholarship recipient will receive an annual stipend of $30,000, up to $12,000 annually as an education allowance, and is eligible for up to $10,000 to support a four- to six-week research collaboration at a NOAA facility. Doctoral students are eligible to continue the scholarship program for four years and master's level students for two years.
Judith A. Scott, associate professor of education at UCSC, spoke at the International Reading Association 23rd World Congress on Reading, held July 12-15 in Auckland, New Zealand. Her presentation, "Developing Word Consciousness: Adaptable Vocabulary Strategies that Students (especially English Learners) and Teachers Like and Use," dealt with her recent research, funded by National Center for Educational Research, which enhances vocabulary learning in elementary classrooms. The World Congress on Reading, which revolved around the theme of "Leading and Learning in Literacy," drew more than 800 registrants from more than 30 countries.
Harry Berger Jr., professor emeritus of literature, has been invited to participate in a Plato seminar this coming fall at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. He will be co-teaching with the dean of the college, Susanne Wofford, and with Laura Slatkin, a professor of classics who previously spent several years in the UCSC classics group. Berger has additionally been asked to present several public lectures at NYU and other New York venues on topics as diverse as Plato, Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, seventeenth-century portraiture, and Dutch still life painting.
Two graduate students affiliated with the Center for Stock Assessment Research (CSTAR) have been awarded graduate fellowships in population dynamics from the NOAA Fisheries/Sea Grant Fellowship Program. Six of these fellowships, each of which provides $38,500 per year in research funding, were awarded nationally. Valerie Brown, a graduate student in applied mathematics and statistics, will investigate the robustness of the stock assessment process for salmon fisheries. Kate Richerson, a graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology, had to turn down the NOAA/Sea Grant fellowship because she had already accepted a National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship. She will be studying the impact of the krill fishery in the Southern Ocean on populations of seabirds that feed on krill. Brown and Richerson are both working with Marc Mangel, professor of applied mathematics and statistics and co-director of CSTAR.
Darrell Long, the Kumar Malavalli Professor of Computer Science, has been selected by the publications board of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to be the next editor-in-chief of the journal ACM Transactions on Storage. Transactions on Storage is the premier journal covering research on the full spectrum of issues involved in creating high-performance data storage systems and is part of the prestigious ACM Transactions series of journals. Long directs the Storage Systems Research Center in the Baskin School of Engineering at UCSC.
Barbara Rogoff, UC Foundation professor of psychology, will deliver the commencement address May 15 and receive an honorary doctorate at Erikson Institute, in Chicago, one of the nation's leading graduate schools in child development. "Through decades of research, Dr. Rogoff has provided new insights into the conditions under which children learn best and implications for how we can improve their education," said Erikson president Samuel J. Meisels. "Her work sheds light on how culture and community shape development and learning -- a theme central to Erikson's mission."
Max Wainright, a graduate student in physics, has been selected to attend the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in June as a member of the U.S. delegation. The annual meetings in Lindau, Germany, provide a forum for the transfer of knowledge between generations of scientists. Young researchers nominated by a worldwide network of academic partners interact with Nobel Laureates in panel discussions, seminars, and social events. Wainright is studying high-energy physics and cosmology with Stefano Profumo, assistant professor of physics.
Sebastian Grab, a postdoctoral fellow in theoretical physics, has won a Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. This prestigious fellowship allows the recipient to carry out a long-term research project (6 to 24 months) in cooperation with an academic host at a research institution abroad.
Sandra Faber, University Professor and chair of astronomy and astrophysics, will be presented with an honorary degree from the University of Pennsylvania at commencement ceremonies in May.
Sherry Lippiatt, a doctoral student in ocean sciences, received a prestigious John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship. The fellowship program places students and recent graduates in marine policy offices in Washington, D.C. Lippiatt is working for the Marine Debris Program at the National Ocean Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "I'll be working on developing a monitoring program to better understand where debris originates and what type is found on our coasts," she said. "I will also be investigating the impact of microplastics on marine life via ingestion and contaminant transfer. I'm really looking forward to getting involved and learning more about the issue and solutions."
Alexis Jackson, a graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology, received a $500 first prize from Ecology Project International (EPI) to fund her research on grouper populations and fisheries management in the Gulf of California. The EPI alumni awards program provides incentives for former participants to continue conservation work. Jackson, who went to Costa Rica with EPI in 2002, is now a doctoral candidate working with Giacomo Bernardi, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.
Heinz Erzberger, adjunct professor of electrical engineering in the Baskin School of Engineering and an employee of the University Affiliated Research Center (UARC) at NASA Ames, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Election to the NAE is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. Erzberger was honored "for automation of air traffic management systems that increases capacity and reduces delays and fuel consumption."
Douglas N. C. Lin, professor of astronomy and astrophysics, has been named an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society of the United Kingdom. Lin was awarded this honor in recognition of his distinguished contributions to research in theoretical astrophysics, as well as his work fostering international scientific interaction and collaboration. Lin currently holds joint appointments at UCSC and as founding director of the Kavli Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University in Beijing, China.
Mary Silver, professor emerita of ocean science, has been named a Fellow of the Oceanography Society "for pioneering research on the ecology of marine organisms, excellence in teaching, mentoring and service to the oceanographic community." Silver will be honored at the society's meeting in Portland in February 2010.
Renee Tajima-Pena, professor of community studies, has been awarded a $50,000 production grant from Latino Public Broadcasting for her documentary film project, "Mas Bebes?" The work-in-progress documents the forced sterilization of hundreds of Mexican women at Los Angeles County's general hospital during the late 1960s and 70s. The project has also received support from the California Council for the Humanities and a research grant from the UCSC Committee on Research.
Thomas Pettigrew, research professor of social psychology, recently
presented the opening address at an international conference on immigration
in Madrid. Sponsored by the Juan March Foundation of Spain,
social scientists who specialize on immigration studies from throughout the
world attended. Pettigrew spoke on his long-term research on German
attitudes toward the nation's new immigrants.
Oxana Pantchenko, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Electrical Engineering in the Jack Baskin School of Engineering, has been awarded a prestigious U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner's Fellowship. She was one of 50 Fellows selected out of over 1,000 applicants nationwide. Pantchenko will be trained at the FDA's new state-of-the-art White Oak campus in Silver Spring, Maryland. In addition, she will be taking graduate level classes which provide training in the scientific aspects of FDA regulatory science, FDA law and policy, federal budget process, networking and leadership skills, communications with public and press, biostatistics, epidemiology, clinical trial design, risk assessment and risk management. At the same time, she will receive guidance from Preceptor Seth Seidman and engage in a carefully designed and articulated FDA regulatory science project. Upon finishing her two-year fellowship, she will return to UCSC to finish her Ph.D. studies on biomedical devices.
Vera Chang, who is enrolled in the Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture, has been named West Coast Fellow by Palo Alto-based Bon Appetit Management Company, a leader in the sustainable food service industry. As one of three newly named fellows, Chang will work directly with farmers around the country to assess overall sustainability, including labor practices in agricultural operations that supply the company's 400 kitchens in 29 states. She has been hired for a one-year period with the possibility of renewal for a second term. Chang, who is certified in permaculture design, was an intern with The California Food & Justice Coalition and was founder and president of Food Truth, a student organization that focuses on food issues at Carleton College, her alma mater.
Nicole Hidalgo, a doctoral student in education, has received two prestigious dissertation awards to support her work with disadvantaged youth in urban high schools. Hidalgo won a $20,000 UC/Accord dissertation fellowship, as well as $10,000 from the State Farm Companies Foundation--one of only three such awards offered nationally, according to education professor Judith Scott, director of doctoral programs for the Education Department. The UC/Accord fellowship is open to all UC graduate students for research that will "inform Californians' about efforts to replace prevailing patterns of schooling inequality and disparities in access to higher education with equitable conditions and outcomes for children from all sectors of the state," said Scott.
Graduates of the UCSC Apprenticeship in Organic Horticulture have deep roots with two of the Top 10 Urban Farms recognized by Natural Home magazine: Jones Valley Urban Farm in Birmingham, Alabama, was started by graduates Page Allison and Edwin Marty, who is executive director; and the Homeless Garden Project in Santa Cruz enjoys the talents of garden director Paul Glowaski and horticulture director Karalee Greenwald. Read the article online.
Psychology professor Aida Hurtado and graduate student Karina Cervantez have received the Women of Color Psychologies Award 2009 from the Association of Women in Psychology Association for a coauthored paper entitled, "A View from Within and From Without: The Development of Latina Feminist Psychology." The paper appeared in The Handbook of U.S. Latino Psychology, co-edited by UCSC psychology professor Margarita Azmitia. The award, which recognizes papers and books that contribute significantly to the understanding of the psychology of women of color, was announced August 7 during the American Psychology Association's annual meeting, which took place in Toronto.
Daniel Costa, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, has been appointed to serve on the Ocean Research and Resources Advisory Panel. The panel provides independent advice and guidance to the National Ocean Research Leadership Council, which consists of the heads of federal agencies involved in conducting or funding ocean research and education or developing ocean-related policy.
David Haussler, professor of biomolecular engineering and director of the Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering, has been named a Fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) in the inaugural Fellows Class of 2009. The ISCB Fellows program was created to honor members who have distinguished themselves through outstanding contributions to the field of computational biology and bioinformatics.
Martha Zúñiga, professor of molecular, cell, and developmental biology, has been selected to participate in the 2009 SACNAS Summer Leadership Institute. In addition, a book about Latina scientists to which Zúñiga contributed a chapter was awarded second place in the "Best Biography" category of the Latino Book Awards.
David Brundage, professor of community studies, is one of the academic experts from around California contributing to the May 2009 report issued by the UC Berkeley Labor Center on the Employee Free Choice Act. Entitled Academics on Employee Free Choice: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Labor Law Reform and with introduction by Bill Clinton's former Secretary of Labor, Robert B. Reich, the report is being distributed to U.S. Senate staffers and others in support of the Employee Free Choice bill now before Congress. Brundage's essay focuses on the historic connection between civil rights and union organizing.
Jonathan Zehr, professor of ocean sciences, has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. Fellows of the academy are elected based on their records of scientific achievement and original contributions that have advanced microbiology.
Marc Mangel, professor of applied mathematics and statistics in the Jack Baskin School of Engineering, was appointed to an international team of scientists that will devise solutions for sustainable management of small prey fish. The Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force will develop management plans to tackle the unprecedented depletion of forage fish from the oceans.
A day-long scientific session in honor of James Gill, professor of Earth and planetary science, will be held at the Goldschmidt Conference, an international meeting for geochemists, in June. The aim of the session, "From Fiji to western Pacific arcs and beyond," is to highlight current research that stems from topical areas identified with Gill's career. The participants will include UCSC alumni and former postdoctoral researchers who have worked with Gill.
"Whatever It Takes," a new documentary film executive produced by Renee Tajima-Pena, associate professor of community studies, won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary and the Audience Award during the recent 25th Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival.
David Draper, professor of applied mathematics and statistics in the Jack Baskin School of Engineering, has been elected a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS). Draper and the other newly elected IMS Fellows will be honored in a ceremony at the IMS annual meeting in August.
Stefano Profumo, assistant professor of physics, has been awarded an Outstanding Junior Investigator award from the Department of Energy (DOE). The $79,000 award will support Profumo's research on dark matter and will supplement an existing DOE grant for dark matter research at UCSC.
Ruby Rich, professor and chair of community studies, is serving as a documentary juror during the San Francisco International Film Festival, which runs through May 7. She will also participate in a May 3 panel discussion of a documentary in which she appears: "For The Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism" by Gerald Peary (2009).
Renee Tajima-Peña, associate professor of community studies, won a 45th Hugo Television Award prize for her feature documentary Calavera Highway. An international competition sponsored by the Chicago International Film Festival and Cinema/Chicago, the awards honor quality and diversity in TV programming and commercials. Calavera Highway was broadcast nationally on the PBS "P.O.V." series last fall.
Michael Soule, professor emeritus of environmental studies, recently received an E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Pioneer Award from Montana State University. Soule founded the Society for Conservation Biology and The Wildlands Project and is a leading proponent of the field of conservation biology. He was one of six distinguished scientists who received an inaugural award. The awards were presented during an event that included the presentation of the university's Presidential Medal for Global and Visionary Leadership to Edwin O. Wilson, widely known as the "father of biodiversity."
Howard Haber, professor of physics, has received a Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Haber will be visiting the Bethe Center for Theoretical Physics at Bonn University as a Humboldt laureate in 2009 and 2010. There he will continue his work on physics investigations at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), focusing on new data expected from the LHC, with the hope of finding evidence for and interpretations of new physics beyond the Standard Model.
Claire Max, professor of astronomy and astrophysics, has been elected a fellow of SPIE, the international optics and photonics society. Max is among 59 new fellows honored by the society this year for significant scientific and technical contributions in the multidisciplinary fields of optics, photonics, and imaging. Max, who directs the Center for Adaptive Optics based at UCSC, was recognized for her achievements in astronomical adaptive optics.
Sociology professor and jury expert Hiroshi Fukurai recently presented a paper at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) about the prospect of reintroducing jury trials in Mexico. Despite a long history of jury trials, the practical use of jury trials has virtually disappeared in Mexico, where nearly all criminal cases are now adjudicated by judges. Fukurai's talk was videotaped by Mexico's Supreme Court for wider viewing on its cable television network. His paper will be published in the Mexican Law Review.
Judit Moschkovich, associate professor of education, delivered an invited plenary address during the Fourth Annual Symposium on Teaching and Learning Mathematics in Multilingual Classrooms that took place in Johannesburg, South Africa. She has also been invited by the International Program Committee of the International Council for Mathematics Instruction to participate in an international study on mathematics education and language diversity.
Elisabeth Cameron, associate professor of History of Art & Visual Culture, has been awarded an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) collaborative research award. Cameron will collaborate with Z. S. Strother--Riggio professor of African art at Columbia University--for a project titled "Art that Dies: Iconoclasm, Transformation, and Renewal in African Art." Their work will culminate in a major publication and an exhibition at the Museum for African Art in New York City.
California Assemblymember Jim Beall (24th District) has named Sandra Faber, University Professor and chair of astronomy and astrophysics, to be recognized as a Woman of the Year in a ceremony at the state capitol. The Woman of the Year event, started in 1987, celebrates the contributions to society made by remarkable women throughout California. One woman is invited from each Senate and Assembly district to come to the capitol and be honored for their accomplishments. Faber and the other honorees were recognized in a formal ceremony on the floors of the Senate and Assembly on March 16.
David Brundage, professor of community studies, has been awarded a 2009 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend to study the United Irishmen. The organization was a late 18th-century Irish republican group inspired by the American and French revolutions, and the fight to abolish New World slavery. Brundage's summer research effort marks the first phase of work on a book-length history of Irish abolitionism, placed in a broad transnational framework.
Julie Guthman, associate professor of community studies, has been named the 2009 recipient of the Donald Q. Innis Award. Sponsored by the Rural Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers, the award will be presented during the AAG's awards luncheon on March 27.
UCSC Farm Manager Jim Leap has received the annual Pedro Ilic Award from the UC Small Farm Center as Outstanding Educator. The award honors Leap's commitment to small-scale and family farming. For 19 years, Leap has managed the UCSC Farm, taught in the six-month apprenticeship program, overseen the Farm's research trials, cooperated with outside researchers, contributed to training publications, and shared information with visitors, students, and farmers.
Ruth Kim, a doctoral student in education, has won a $10,000 dissertation award from the Stanford Center on Adolescence, which supports young scholars who are pursuing research related to youth purpose. Kim is only the third doctoral candidate to win this award; four awards in the last two years went to assistant professors.
Assistant professor of film and digital media Caetlin Benson-Allott has won the 2009 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Dissertation Award for a doctoral thesis entitled "Imperio-Video: Motion Pictures, Spectatorship, and the Politics of New Media." Film and Digital Media department chair Shelley Stamp noted that "this is an extraordinary honor that recognizes the best dissertation written in North America on any facet of film, TV and media studies." Benson-Allott joined the UCSC faculty in July of 2008.
Anthropology professor Judith Habicht-Mauche has been selected to receive the 2009 Excellence in Archaeological Analysis Award from the Society for American Archaeology. The award, which will be presented at the society's national meeting in Atlanta at the end of April, recognizes the research contributions of archaeologists who have made a significant impact on the discipline. Recipients are honored for their ability to "create an interpretive bridge between good ideas, empirical evidence, research, and analysis." Habicht-Mauche will receive the award for Excellence in Ceramic Analysis.
Three undergraduates have been honored with awards for research they presented at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS) in Orlando, Florida, in November 2008. ABRCMS is an annual conference organized by the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) and supported by a grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. Now in its eighth year, ABRCMS is the largest professional conference for biomedical students. The UCSC students received awards of $250 for their outstanding research. They are chemistry major April Bautista-Gregerson, a senior working in the lab of Bakthan Singaram, professor of chemistry and biochemistry; chemistry major Michelle Herrick, a senior working in the lab of Joseph Konopelski, professor of chemistry and biochemistry; and biology major Marisela Marinez, a senior working in the lab of Lindsay Hinck, professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology.
Jonathan Zehr, professor of ocean sciences, has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology for his pioneering research on marine molecular ecology and nitrogen cycle processes. The academy, an honorific leadership group within the American Society for Microbiology, recognizes excellence, originality, and creativity in the microbiological sciences. As a newly elected fellow, Zehr will help to set future directions for the field and will provide expert opinion on issues in microbiology. He will be formally recognized at the society's annual meeting in Philadelphia in May.
Sandra Faber, University Professor of astronomy and astrophysics, has been selected as this year's John Bahcall Lecturer at the Space Telescope Science Institute. Faber will deliver three lectures there during the week of February 23, including a public lecture on galaxy formation at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
Jennifer A. Gonzalez, associate professor and chair of the History of Art and Visual Culture Department, has been named one of four finalists for the College Art Association's 2009 Charles Rufus Morey Book Award for Subject to Display: Reframing Race in Contemporary Installation Art (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008). The award honors an especially distinguished book in the history of art, published in any language between September 1, 2007, and August 31, 2008. The winner will be announced in December.
Brian Catlos, associate professor of history, has received a 2009-10 National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship of $50,000 to work on a book titled Muslims of Latin Christendom, 1050--1615. The first monographic study of its kind, the book is a comprehensive study of the Muslims who lived under Christian rule during the Middle Ages. It is set to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2011.
William Friedland, research professor of community studies and sociology,
delivered the keynote address during a conference on "Disputed Territories: New Spaces of Agriculture and Social Reproduction Systems," which took place December 11-12 at the University of Leipzig. Friedland's paper was entitled "Critical Juncture in Globalized Agrifood: On the Brink of a Fundamental Transformation?" Friedland also presented a paper on the history of agrifood research to a graduate seminar at the university, summarizing 30 years of work by researchers affiliated with the International Sociological Association.
Ellen Moir, executive director of the New Teacher Center, has received the prestigious Contribution to the Field award from the National Staff Development Council, a national nonprofit of 12,000 educators. The award acknowledges Moir's impact on the field of professional development. It was presented at the NSDC Annual Conference in Washington D.C in December.
The New Teacher Center received the Partners in Educational Excellence Award from the Association of California School Administrators (ACSA). The award is presented annually in recognition of exemplary school-community partnership programs that promote effective educational performance, enhanced student achievement and strong community involvement in educational quality.
A paper by a team of researchers in the Baskin School of Engineering was selected to receive the IEEE Fred W. Ellersick Award for Best Unclassified Paper at the 2008 Milcom conference in San Diego. The authors of the paper are graduate student Zheng Wang; postdoctoral fellow Shirish Karande; Hamid Sadjadpour, associate professor of electrical engineering; and J. J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, Baskin professor of computer engineering. They will be honored for their paper "On the capacity improvement of multicast traffic with network coding." The researchers will receive the award in a ceremony during the Chairman's Gala at the conference on November 18.
Thomas Pettigrew, a research professor of social psychology, recently received an honorary doctorate in the natural sciences from Philipps University in Marburg, Germany. Pettigrew's lifelong work in intergroup relations around the globe was also recognized with the recent publication of a new book edited by his colleagues in social psychology in three nations, entitled Improving Intergroup Relations: Building on the Legacy of Thomas F. Pettigrew (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008).
Heather Bullock, associate professor of psychology, has been awarded a 2008 Distinguished Publication Award from the Association for Women in Psychology. The award recognizes "significant and substantial" contributions of research and theory that advance the understanding of the psychology of women and promote achievement of the goals of the association. Bullock was honored for her 2007 book, coauthored with Bernice Lott, entitled Psychology and Economic Injustice: Personal, Professional, and Political Intersections.
Two UCSC postdoctoral researchers and one graduate student are among this year's recipients of CALFED Science Fellowships from the CALFED Bay-Delta Program, a collaboration among state and federal agencies to improve California's water supply and the ecological health of the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Postdoctoral fellow Rachel Barnett-Johnson will work with Paul Koch, professor of Earth and planetary sciences, to study the population of wild chinook salmon from the Central Valley; postdoctoral fellow Cécile Elise Mioni will work with research scientist Adina Paytan on environmental factors controlling harmful algal blooms in San Francisco Bay; and graduate student Joseph Street will work with Paytan on reconstructing a 19,000-year hydrologic record for the Sierra Nevada and Sacramento-San Joaquin watersheds based on sediment cores from Swamp Lake in Yosemite National Park.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded a prestigious Science to Achieve Results Fellowship to ocean sciences graduate student Deborah Ann Fauquier. The fellowship will support Fauquier's research on the effects of "red tide" algal blooms on fish-eating birds in Sarasota Bay, Florida.
Dean of Humanities Georges Van Den Abbeele gave the keynote address for the 32nd Internationalization and Unicode Consortium convention held in San Jose, September 8-10--the premier technical conference for software and Web internationalization. Van Den Abbeele's presentation was titled: "New Developments in Digital Humanities."
Baskin professor of computer engineering J. J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves served as general chair of Mobicom 2008, the premier conference on mobile computing and networking, which took place September 14 to 19 in San Francisco.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has awarded a 2008 Nancy Foster Scholarship to Kimberly Tenggardjaja, a graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology.
John Marcum of politics just returned from Angola, where he gave the introductory lecture at a conference on civil society. Marcum, the author of a two-volume history of the Angolan revolution, provided historic background and analysis for conference attendees. The meeting was held in advance of national elections, scheduled for early September.
Fifth-year Ph.D. student Gurnain Pasricha of economics was selected to attend the third meeting of prize winners of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Nearly 300 graduate students from around the world were chosen to attend the meeting in Lindau, Germany.
Amittai Moshe Steindler has received the 2008 Rick Hooper Memorial Scholarship. Steindler will intern with Jerusalem Peacemakers, a coalition of Jewish and Muslim religious leaders who strive to promote peaceful relations between Arabs and Jews through interfaith dialogue rather than political negotiations.
Maira Sutton has received the 2008 Matthews International Capital Management Fellowship. Sutton will intern with Sisters in Islam (SIS), a nonprofit organization in Malaysia committed to promoting the rights of Islamic women. Her goal is to help SIS develop electronic advocacy tools to raise the status of women and to contribute to reforming the Malaysian government's social policies toward women.
Pascha Bueno Hansen, a doctoral student in politics, has received the 2008 Lionel Cantú Award. The award was established to honor the memory of Cantú, an assistant professor of sociology who died unexpectedly in 2002; it is presented each year to a graduate student active in the fields of immigration studies, transnational/cross-border studies, Latino/Latina sociology, gender and sexuality, or gay men and masculinity.
Education Ph.D. student Mele Wheaton has been named a Switzer fellow for 2008-09, one of only 25 graduate students chosen from a record number of applicants. The Robert & Patricia Switzer Foundation identifies and nurtures environmental leaders who have the ability and determination to make a significant impact, and it supports initiatives that will have direct and measurable results to improve environmental quality.
Environmental studies assistant professor Erika Zavaleta and environmental studies graduate student Joanna Nelson are among the coauthors of a paper that won the Ecological Society of America's 2008 Sustainability Science Award. The award will be presented in August during the society's annual meeting in Milwaukee.
John Brown Childs, professor of sociology, reports that Grammy-nominated composer Anthony Brown, director of the Asian American Orchestra in San Francisco, has composed a music/dance piece in collaboration with the Oakland Dimensions Dance Theater entitled "Transcommunality" that was inspired by Childs's book Transcommunality: From the Politics of Conversion to the Ethics of Respect.
History of Art and Visual Culture associate professor Martin Berger has been awarded a senior faculty fellowship at the Stanford Humanities Center for 2008-09 to pursue work on his book, Civil Rights Photography: The White Struggle Over Black Agency. Berger was one of only eight external faculty fellows selected from 222 applications. His book offers a radical rethinking of Civil Rights photography, illustrating how the most iconic, and frequently reproduced, photographs of the Civil Rights era preserved many of the racial inequalities against which African Americans struggled.
Joel Primack, professor of physics, continues to receive invitations to speak on the subject of the popular cosmology book he coauthored with his wife, Nancy Abrams. The book, The View from the Center of the Universe, has just been published in French, with a Norwegian edition due out later this year. Primack and Abrams gave a public lecture at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society in April and have been invited to give the Dwight H. Terry Lectures at Yale University next year (four lectures over two weeks) and a keynote lecture at the Universe as Blessing Conference at De Pauw University this summer. Primack also gave the Buhl Lecture at Carnegie Mellon University in April, speaking on the history of dark matter. He and Abrams are the subject of a cover story in the latest issue of the magazine What Is Enlightenment?
Judit Moschkovich, associate professor of education, delivered the closing keynote talk during the research pre-session at the annual National Council of Mathematics Teachers conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her talk was entitled, "Beyond Words: Language and Learning Mathematics."
Carolina Reyes, a graduate student in environmental toxicology, received an Outstanding Student Presentation award at the annual symposium of the UC Toxic Substances Research & Teaching Program. Her research in the lab of Chad Saltikov, assistant professor of environmental toxicology, focuses on arsenic contamination in drinking water, a serious problem in places such as Bangladesh.
A paper by Scott Brandt, professor of computer science, graduate students Tim Kaldeway and Anna Povzner, and their collaborators earned the Springer Journal of Real-Time Systems Award for Best Student Paper at the 2008 IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium in St. Louis.
Joanna Nelson, a graduate student in environmental studies, has been awarded a 2008 graduate scholarship from the Northern California Association of Phi Beta Kappa. Nelson, a Frans Lanting fellow in the STEPS Institute, is conducting dissertation research on the combined effects of sea-level rise and anthropogenic nitrogen additions in central California coastal estuaries.
B. Ruby Rich, professor of community studies, conducted an onstage interview with documentary film maker Errol Morris on April 29 during the 51st San Francisco International Film Festival. Morris received the festival's Persistence of Vision Award and presented his new film about Abu Ghraib, Standard Operating Procedure, following the discussion with Rich.
Alan Richards, professor of environmental studies, was scheduled to deliver the honorary keynote speech at the Maghreb Center Annual Symposium at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. The theme of the gathering was "Oil, the Environment, and Regional Development in the Maghreb."
Judith White, a lecturer in economics, has received the Fritz J. Roethlisberger Award for Best Article of 2007 in the Journal of Management Education. She shares the award with her coauthor Susan Taft of Kent State University for the article entitled "Ethics Education: Using Inductive Reasoning to Develop Individual, Group, Organizational, and Global Perspectives."
Karen Holl, professor of environmental studies, has received an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow Award for 2008. Begun in 1998, the program identifies top environmental scientists with strong leadership potential who want to become more effective communicators with nonscientific audiences. More
Neoklis Polyzotis, assistant professor of computer science, and graduate student Karl Schnaitter received the Best Newcomer Award for a paper they presented at the Association for Computing Machinery's Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (ACM PODS) 2008 Conference in Vancouver.
Tony Hoffman, a lecturer in psychology, has won the 2008 Social Psychology Network Action Teaching Award for developing the Forced Migration Project, an innovative way to teach students and the public about refugee living conditions and the psychosocial effects of wartime displacement, especially on children. More
