Johns Hopkins inducts new members into Society of Scholars

A multidisciplinary group of scholars, artists, and scientists who spent a portion of their careers at Johns Hopkins were formally inducted Monday night into the university's Society of Scholars, an organization that recognizes former Hopkins affiliates who have made outstanding contributions to their fields. The induction ceremony took place at the George Peabody Library.

Inductees into the Society of Scholars—established in 1967 by university President Milton S. Eisenhower—are former graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, house staff, or junior or visiting faculty who have served at least one year at Johns Hopkins but are no longer affiliated and have since made great strides in the fields of physical, biological, social, or engineering sciences or the humanities. They are nominated by Johns Hopkins faculty members. Since its inception, 688 individuals have been elected to membership in the society, including 16 members elected in 2019.

This year's cohort represents a diverse range expertise in disciplines such as molecular biology, nursing, music history, piano performance, ophthalmology, art history, and physics and astronomy. This year marks the first time affiliates from the Peabody Institute have been inducted into the Society of Scholars.

"The Society of Scholars celebrates the tremendous contributions to science and the humanities made by members of the Johns Hopkins community throughout their careers," said university Provost Sunil Kumar, who hosted the event along with university President Ronald J. Daniels. "The members of the Johns Hopkins community are proud to have counted them among their classmates and their colleagues, and are honored to have been a part of their journeys."

Louise McCullough and Daniel Weiss, who were part of the 2018 cohort of Society of Scholars, were also recognized during Monday's ceremony. Inductees were presented with the Society of Scholars medallion and an official certificate of membership.

The new members for 2019 are:

Asma Afsaruddin

Asma Afsaruddin is a professor of Islamic studies and former chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures in the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. After receiving her PhD from the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University in 1993, she taught at Harvard and Notre Dame universities until 2009. She is an award-winning author and editor of nine books, including Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought (Oxford University Press, 2013), which won the World Book Award in Islamic Studies from the Iranian government in 2015 and was a runner-up for the British-Kuwaiti Friendship Society Book Award in 2014 and The First Muslims: History and Memory (OneWorld Publications, 2008), which received the Dost Award in Turkey and was translated into Bahasa Malay and Turkish. Her book Jihad: What Everyone Needs to Know is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Afsaruddin is the chair of the board of directors of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy in Washington D.C., a member of the advisory board of the Prince al-Waleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, and a past member of the board of directors of the American Academy of Religion. She was previously the Kraemer Middle East Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the College of William and Mary and a visiting scholar at the London School of Oriental and African Studies.

In demand as a speaker at academic forums in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, she has also given presentations at the U.S. Department of State, the International Nuremberg Principles Academy, the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces, and other national and international organizations. Her research has been funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which named her a Carnegie Scholar in 2005.

Alberto Bardelli

Alberto Bardelli, a cancer geneticist and expert in the field of precision medicine, directs the Molecular Oncology program at the Candiolo Cancer Center IRCC and is a full professor in the Department of Oncology at the University of Torino. He is also president of the European Association for Cancer Research.

He joined Johns Hopkins in 1999 as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Bert Vogelstein, where Bardelli began studying the genomics of cancer. The research that Vogelstein was conducting had just started to reveal the genetic profiles of colorectal cancer and tracing the molecular patterns of tumor progression. Bardelli was involved from the beginning in this ambitious project. One of his most significant publications from that period identified for the first time mutations in kinase genes (the kinome) that are associated with colorectal cancer. During his postdoctoral training at Johns Hopkins, Bardelli published multiple papers in high-profile journals such as Nature and Science.

In 2004, he returned to Italy. His research group has contributed to numerous advancements in the study of colorectal cancer and treatments. His work also led to the development of diagnostic tests, based on the pioneering use of liquid biopsies. His lab's discoveries represent the first example of personalized therapies for colorectal cancer patients, and were reported in the journals Nature, Nature Medicine, Cell, Cancer Cell, JAMA, and Lancet Oncology. Overall, Bardelli has authored more than 200 scientific articles, more than 100 of which were written as an independent investigator.

Bonnie Bassler

Bonnie Bassler is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and the Squibb Professor and chair of the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. The research in her laboratory focuses on the molecular mechanisms that bacteria use for intercellular communication, a process is called quorum sensing. Bassler's research is paving the way for the development of novel therapies for combating bacteria by disrupting quorum-sensing-mediated communication.

Bassler teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses. She is a passionate advocate for diversity in the sciences, and she is actively involved in and committed to educating lay people in science.

She has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, Royal Society, American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has received many awards and honors, including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the American Society for Microbiology's Eli Lilly Investigator Award, the Wiley Prize in Biomedical Science, the National Academies' Richard Lounsbery Award, the UNESCO-L'Oreal Woman in Science for North America, the Shaw Prize in Life Sciences and Medicine, the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize, the Dickson Prize in Medicine, and the Ernst Schering Prize.

She has also served as president of the American Society for Microbiology, chair of the American Academy of Microbiology board of governors, and member of the National Science Board, a position she was nominated to by President Barack Obama. The board oversees the NSF and prioritizes the nation's research and educational activities in science, math, and engineering.

Peter Buerhaus

Peter Buerhaus is a nurse and a health care economist who is known for his studies on the nursing and physician workforces in the U.S. He is a professor of nursing and director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Health Workforce Studies at the College of Nursing, Montana State University. Before joining MSU, Buerhaus was the Valere Potter Distinguished Professor of Nursing and senior associate dean for research at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing, professor of health policy at Vanderbilt University, assistant professor of health policy and management at Harvard School of Public Health, and assistant to both the chief executive of the University of Michigan's seven teaching hospitals and to the vice provost for medical affairs. He has published more than 135 peer-reviewed articles with five publications designated as classics by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Buerhaus was inducted into the American Academy of Nursing in 1994 and elected to the National Academies' Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) in 2003. Buerhaus has received honorary doctorates from the University of Maryland and from Loyola University Chicago. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Bozeman Deaconess Health Care System.

In 2010, Buerhaus was appointed chair of the National Health Care Workforce Commission, which was created under the Affordable Care Act to advise Congress and the Obama Administration on health workforce policy.

Ting-Chao Chou

Ting-Chao Chou is the founder and president of PD Science LLC. In 1976, he introduced the Pharmacodynamics/Biodynamics General Theory and the Median-Effect Equation of the Mass-Action Law, as the Unified Theory for BD/PD. The new paradigm allowed the generation of dose-effect curves by automated computer simulation, forming the basis for Econo-Green biomedical research and development. He co-developed the Combination Index Theorem, PD, CalcuSyn, and CompuSyn software. His 1984 theoretical paper with JHU's Paul Talalay introducing the CI theory/method has been cited nearly 6,000 times in more than 1,190 biomedical journals worldwide.

Born in Taiwan, Chou received his PhD in pharmacology from Yale University and completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He joined Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and became a member and professor of pharmacology at Cornell University Graduate School of Medical Sciences in 1988. He is an honorary professor of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and visiting professor of five universities. He retired from MSKCC in 2013.

Chou's 470 published papers have garnered more than 30,000 citations and an h-index of 70. He is inventor or co-inventor on 40 U.S. patents. Currently, he advocates for MAL–based quantitative Econo-Green biomedical R&D reform, and PD/BD-based reform of basic guidelines and regulations for new drug evaluation.

Chester A. Crocker

Chester A. Crocker is the James R. Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies at Georgetown University, where his teaching and research focus on conflict management and regional security issues. He served as chairman of the board of the United States Institute of Peace from 1992 to 2004 and served as a member of its board through 2011. From 1981 to 1989, he was U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, serving as the principal diplomatic architect and mediator in the prolonged negotiations among Angola, Cuba, and South Africa that led to Namibia's transition to independence and to the withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola.

Crocker served as a staff officer at the National Security Council, where he worked on Middle East, Indian Ocean, and African issues. He was director of African Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, served on the board of Universal Corporation Inc., and on the board of the Good Governance Group Ltd. He is a founding member of the Global Leadership Foundation and a distinguished fellow at Canada's Centre for International Governance Innovation.

He is the author of High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighborhood (1993) and Taming Intractable Conflicts: Mediation in the Hardest Cases (2004); and co-author (with Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall) of International Negotiation and Mediation in Violent Conflicts (2018). He is a co-editor of several books and publications, including most recently The Fabric of Peace in Africa: Looking Beyond the State (2017) and Minding the Gap: African Conflict Management in a Time of Change (2016).

Ana V. Diez Roux

Ana V. Diez Roux is dean and Distinguished University Professor of Epidemiology at the Drexel Dornsife School of Public Health. Originally trained as a pediatrician in Buenos Aires, she completed public health training at the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health (now the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health). Before Drexel, she served on the faculties of Columbia University and the University of Michigan, where she was chair of the Department of Epidemiology and director of the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health.

Diez Roux is internationally known for her research on the social determinants of health and the study of how neighborhoods affect health. Her work on neighborhood health effects has been highly influential in the policy debate on population health and its determinants. Her research areas also include urban health, environmental and psychosocial health effects, cardiovascular disease epidemiology, and the use of multilevel methods and complex systems approaches in population health.

She has led large NIH- and foundation-funded research and training programs in the United States and in collaboration with partners in Latin America. She currently directs the Drexel Urban Health Collaborative and is principal investigator of the Wellcome Trust–funded SALURBAL project. Diez Roux has served on numerous editorial boards, review panels, and committees including most recently the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee of the Environmental Protection Agency, which she chaired. She's received numerous awards, including the American Public Health Association's Wade Hampton Frost Award and the American College of Epidemiology Award for Outstanding Contributions to Epidemiology. She is an elected member of the American Epidemiological Society, the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research, and the National Academy of Medicine. She currently serves as president of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science. She has been an active mentor for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty.

Sean Gallagher

Music historian and pianist Sean Gallagher teaches at the New England Conservatory of Music. An internationally recognized authority on music in late medieval and Renaissance Europe, he has published articles on an array of subjects and is the author or editor of five books, ranging in topic from plainchant to Mozart. He is well-known for his public lectures and lecture/ recitals that span much of the history of Western music, and he has performed with orchestras and in solo and chamber recitals in numerous American and European cities. He received his bachelor's degree from the Peabody Institute at age 19. Following completion of his master's studies at Peabody with Leon Fleisher and a further year of study in Europe, Gallagher returned to the U.S. for his PhD in music history at Harvard University, pursuing a long-standing interest in earlier repertories.

As scholarly adviser for various recording and performance projects, he has worked with leading early music ensembles, and his research has been supported by grants from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Whiting Foundation.

Before joining the faculty of the New England Conservatory in 2013, he taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Harvard (where he was awarded the Phi Beta Kappa Prize for excellence in teaching). In 2007 he was Robert Lehman Visiting Professor at Villa I Tatti, Harvard's Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, and has also held visiting professorships at Boston University and Brandeis University.

Alon Goldstein

Alon Goldstein's artistic vision and innovative programming have made him a favorite with audiences and critics alike throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and Israel. He made his orchestral debut at the age of 18 with the Israel Philharmonic under the baton of Zubin Mehta. Since then he has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Philadelphia Orchestra; the Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, Baltimore, Toronto, and Houston symphonies; and orchestras on tour in Latin America, Europe, and China.

Among many recent highlights are performing Beethoven's Emperor Concerto at the New Year's concert with the Beijing symphony at the Forbidden City concert hall; the premiere of Lost Souls with the Kansas City Symphony and Michael Stern, written for him by Avner Dorman; his successful debut with the London Philharmonic under Vladimir Jurowski; the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France with Leon Fleisher conducting; and his Carnegie Hall debut with the New York String Orchestra under Jaime Laredo. He performed at the Hollywood Bowl and Millennium Park in Chicago, as well as the United Nations, both in New York and Geneva.

A passionate advocate for music education, he teaches at University of Missouri–Kansas City and in educational residencies across the U.S. and abroad. He serves as artistic director for the Distinguished Artists Series in Santa Cruz, California, and was recently named the artistic director for the Mt. Angel Abbey Bach Festival in Oregon. He also recently created the Emerald Coast Music Alliance, whose annual festival in Florida is devoted to sharing the beauty of classical music with underserved communities, free of charge.

Julia A. Haller

Julia A. Haller is ophthalmologist-in-chief and chair at Wills Eye Hospital, and professor and chair of ophthalmology at Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University. A graduate of the Bryn Mawr School, Princeton University, and Harvard Medical School, she completed her residency and retina fellowship at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins. She became Wilmer's first female chief resident before joining the Hopkins faculty.

Haller is an award-winning scholar and practitioner who has published over 350 scientific articles and book chapters, with particular research interests in retinal pharmacology, macular surgery, diabetes, retinal detachments, and health care disparities. She is currently PI on $3 million of CDC grant- funded research. She has served on numerous boards and led professional societies throughout her career, and is currently the president of the Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation, chair of the Society of Heed Fellows, and vice chair of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. She also serves on the boards of the Johns Hopkins Medical and Surgical Association, the Americana Ophthalmological Society Council, Heed Ophthalmic Foundation, and the Philadelphia Orchestra Association.

She and her husband, John D. Gottsch, a professor of ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins, have five children: John, Natalie, Will, Alex, and Clare.

Patrick J. Heagerty

Patrick J. Heagerty is professor and chair of the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Washington, and holds the Gilbert S. Omenn Endowed Chair in Biostatistics. He received a PhD from Johns Hopkins University, and a BS from Cornell University. He has extensive experience as an educator, independent and collaborative scientist, and administrator.

Heagerty has developed fundamental methods for longitudinal studies with a focus on prognostic model evaluation and structural longitudinal models, and he has detailed methods for the design, analysis, and interpretation of cluster-randomized trials conducted within health care delivery systems. He has co-authored two leading texts: Analysis of Longitudinal Data (Oxford, 2002) and Biostatistics: A Methodology for the Health Sciences (Wiley, 2004).

He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and has twice been honored by professional societies for specific research contributions. He directs the Center for Biomedical Statistics, a core partially funded by the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award with responsibility for coordination of biostatistical collaboration in Seattle and the greater Northwest region. The CBS houses the data coordinating centers for several U01 and R01 funded projects including GARNET, BOLD, UH3-funded pragmatic trials including LIRE, and PCORI–funded trials. The CBS has previously conducted high-impact multisite randomized trials including INVEST, the Carpal Tunnel Surgical Trial, and LESS. Heagerty is also a licensed teacher in New York of mathematics, biology, and chemistry and has taught from middle school to graduate school, winning and Outstanding Teacher Award in 2009.

Jennifer Lippincott–Schwartz

Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz is a senior group leader at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus. She has pioneered the use of green fluorescent protein technology for quantitative analysis and modeling of intracellular protein traffic and organelle dynamics in live cells and embryos. Her innovative techniques to label, image, quantify, and model specific live cell protein populations and track their fate have provided vital tools used throughout the research community. Her own findings using these techniques have reshaped thinking about the biogenesis, function, targeting, and maintenance of various subcellular organelles and macromolecular complexes and their crosstalk with regulators of the cell cycle, metabolism, aging, and cell fate determination.

She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the European Molecular Biology Organization. She is also a fellow of the Biophysical Society, the Royal Microscopical Society, and the American Society of Cell Biology. Her awards include the Pearse Prize of the Royal Microscopy Society, the Newcomb Cleveland Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Van Deenen Medal, the Keith Porter Award of the American Society of Cell Biology, the Feodor Lynen Medal, and the Feulgen Prize of the Society of Histochemistry. She co-authored the textbook Cell Biology and was president of the American Society of Cell Biology. Lippincott-Schwartz received her PhD in biochemistry from Johns Hopkins University in 1986.

Helen Mayberg

Helen Mayberg is professor of neurology, neurosurgery, psychiatry, and neuroscience and is the Mount Sinai Professor in Neurotherapeutics at the Icahn School of Medicine. Known for studies of brain circuits in depression and for her pioneering deep brain stimulation research, Mayberg moved to New York in 2018 as the founding director of the Center for Advanced Circuit Therapeutics after 13 years at Emory University School of Medicine.

Over her career in the United States and Canada, her teams have worked to combine cutting-edge imaging strategies, quantitative behavioral metrics, and rigorous clinical trials to define brain-based biomarkers that will optimize treatment selection for individual patients with depression. Extending this theme, her new center at Mount Sinai will provide an integrated platform to catalyze collaborative translational research, bringing together clinicians from neurology, neurosurgery, psychiatry, and psychology and experts from neuroscience, imaging, engineering, and computational modeling within a unique, shared ecosystem and a common mission to advance precision surgical treatments for patients with complex neuropsychiatric disorders.

Mayberg trained in neurology at Columbia's Neurological Institute in New York, followed by a research fellowship in nuclear medicine at Johns Hopkins. After serving as an assistant and associate professor at Johns Hopkins and at the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, she held the chair in neuropsychiatry at the University of Toronto from 1999 until 2004 and the chair in psychiatric imaging and therapeutics at Emory University. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Inventors, among other honors, and participates in a wide variety of scientific and advisory activities across multiple fields in neuroscience.

Mark S. Schlissel

Mark S. Schlissel is the 14th president of the University of Michigan and the first physician-scientist to lead the institution. A graduate of Princeton University, Schlissel earned both MD and PhD degrees at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He completed residency training in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital and conducted postdoctoral research as a Bristol-Myers Cancer Research Fellow under David Baltimore at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Whitehead Institute. He is a board-certified internist.

Schlissel was a professor of biochemistry and dean of biological sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, when he was appointed Brown University's provost. He began his career as a faculty member in 1991 at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he earned a number of awards and fellowships for his research and teaching. He moved to the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley in 1999 as associate professor, advancing to full professor in 2002 and serving as the department's vice chair from 2002 to 2007.

His research has focused on the developmental biology of B lymphocytes, the cell type in the immune system that secretes antibodies. His work has contributed to a detailed understanding of genetic factors involved in the production of antibodies and how mistakes in that process can lead to leukemia and lymphoma. He is the author or co-author of more than 100 scientific papers and has trained 21 successful doctoral candidates in his lab. Schlissel has received numerous honors including election to the American Association of Physicians, as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

James M. Tielsch

James M. Tielsch is professor and chair of the Department of Global Health at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. He uses epidemiologic techniques to address the burden of illness caused by ocular disorders and challenges in maternal and child health in low resource settings around the world. In collaboration with colleagues in the Dana Center for Preventive Ophthalmology at the Wilmer Eye Institute, he led the first population-based studies of ocular disease among urban populations in the U.S. and subsequently conducted similar studies in a number of countries in Asia and Africa. He is also known for his work in identifying and testing new, low-cost interventions to improve the health and well-being of women and children in low and middle income countries including nutritional supplementation, infectious disease control, and environmental health approaches.

Tielsch has received numerous honors for his work and service including the F. Park Lewis MD Lifetime Achievement Award from Prevent Blindness America, the Honor Award from the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the Award for Outstanding Contributions to Epidemiology from the American College of Epidemiology, and the Knowledge for the World Award from the Johns Hopkins University Alumni Association. He received his MHS and PhD degrees in epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University and served on the faculties of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health from 1982 to 2013.

C. Megan Urry

Meg Urry, a professor of physics and astronomy at Yale University, studies supermassive black holes and their co-evolution with galaxies over the past 13 billion years. She has published over 300 refereed research papers, including one of the most highly cited review articles in astronomy. She received her PhD in physics from Johns Hopkins University in 1984, following a BS in physics and mathematics from Tufts University. Since 2001 she has served as the inaugural director of the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, and in recent years was president of the American Astronomical Society and chair of the Yale Physics Department.

Urry is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and American Women in Science. She received an honorary doctorate from Tufts University and was awarded the American Astronomical Society's Annie Jump Cannon and George van Biesbroeck prizes. Prior to Yale, Urry was a senior astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which runs the Hubble Space Telescope for NASA. She is also known for her efforts to increase the number of women and minorities in science, for which she was given the 2015 Edward A. Bouchet Leadership Award from Yale University and the 2010 Women in Space Science Award from the Adler Planetarium. She is the founding physics instructor for the Global Teaching Project, which provides advanced courses to promising high school students in underserved areas, beginning with a pilot program in rural Mississippi. She also writes about science for CNN.com.