Society of Scholars inducts 13 new members

The former Johns Hopkins affiliates selected for membership have gone on to distinguish themselves in their fields

10 people pose for a photo

Image caption: From left: Andrew S. Klein, Estelle Iacona, Anne Drapkin Lyerly, Steve Goodman, Sunil Kumar, D. Watkins, Mary-Jane Deeb, Jeanne Alhusen, Richard C. Zellars, and Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez

A multidisciplinary group of 13 scholars, artists, and scientists who spent a portion of their careers at Johns Hopkins were inducted into the university's Society of Scholars during a ceremony held in November at the George Peabody Library. Nine of the inductees attended in person and were presented with the Society of Scholars medallion and an official certificate of membership.

The society was established in 1967 by university President Milton S. Eisenhower to recognize former Hopkins affiliates who have made outstanding contributions to their fields. Representing fields as diverse as astrophysics, internal medicine, foreign relations, and nonfiction writing, this year's cohort will join a coalition of 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 their fields. Members of the Society of Scholars are nominated by Johns Hopkins faculty members.

"With the induction of this remarkable class of researchers, scientists, strategists, and writers, Johns Hopkins celebrates the vast array of experiences, expertise, and investigation that sets this university community apart," says JHU Provost Sunil Kumar.

The Society of Scholars Class of 2022 are:

Jeanne L. Alhusen

Jeanne Alhusen is a professor of nursing at the University of Virginia Medical Center and associate dean for research at the University of Virginia. She is nationally and internationally recognized for her research on mental health and intimate partner violence during the perinatal period, with a particular focus on persons with disabilities. She is currently examining psychosocial risks during pregnancy and their influence on birth outcomes.

Her research has helped inform federal guidelines, including the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendations on screening for intimate partner violence and preventing perinatal depression, among others. She is an active leader in the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses and is a member of the American Academy of Nursing. She received the American Association of Colleges of Nursing's Faculty Teaching Award, the inaugural University of Virginia Research Excellence Award, and Villanova University's M. Louise Fitzpatrick College of Nursing Medallion for Excellence in Research.

She received her PhD from the Johns Hopkins, where she completed a postdoctoral fellowship jointly supported by the schools of Nursing and Medicine. She and her husband, Philipp Alhusen, have four children: Charlie, Katie, Annie, and Max.

Mary-Jane Deeb

Mary-Jane Deeb received PhD in international relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where she worked with Professor I. William Zartman. Until her retirement in 2019, Deeb served as chief of the African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress, directing a large multilingual staff responsible for the collections of 78 countries in Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucuses.

While working at the Library of Congress, Deeb organized more than 500 cultural programs and curated four national exhibitions; led a mission to Baghdad during the Iraq war to assist the National Library; and was part of an official four-person delegation invited to Iran, headed by the Librarian of Congress in 2004. In addition to lectures delivered around the world, she has also taught at Georgetown University and at George Washington University. She served as president of the American Tunisian Association and is a member of the board of directors of the African Studies Association. She has authored three scholarly books (one of which is forthcoming in 2023), and more than 200 academic articles, book chapters, as well as four mystery novels.

Before joining the Library of Congress, Deeb worked for the United Nations Economic Commission for Western Asia, UNICEF, AMIDEAST, the U.S. Agency for International Development in Beirut during the civil war, and was a UN observer for the 1997 elections in Algeria. She has received numerous awards from the Library of Congress and other cultural and academic organizations, and is a frequent media commentator.

Timothy F. Geithner

Timothy F. Geithner received his master's degree in international economics and East Asian studies from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Heis currently president of Warburg Pincus, a global private equity firm. He served as president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York before he was named the 75th Secretary of the Treasury during President Barack Obama's first term.

Geithner is chair of the Program on Financial Stability at the Yale University School of Management, where he is also a visiting lecturer. He is co-chair of the board of directors of the International Rescue Committee and serves on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a member of the Group of Thirty.

Geithner is the author of Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises. He also co-authored Firefighting and coedited First Responders with Ben S. Bernanke and Henry M. Paulson Jr.

Steven N. Goodman

Steve Goodman is associate dean for clinical and translational research and professor of epidemiology and population health and of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He founded and directs the Stanford Program on Research Rigor and Reproducibility and is co-founder and co-director of the Meta-research Innovation Center at Stanford, groups dedicated to studying and improving the reproducibility and efficiency of biomedical research. He directs the Stanford CTSA Workforce Development program, is associate director of Stanford's KL2 CTSA fellowship, and is director of graduate studies for the Department of Epidemiology. He serves as chair of the PCORI Methodology Committee, senior statistical editor at the Annals of Internal Medicine, and is scientific advisor to the national Blue Cross-Blue Shield technology assessment program.

His research areas are in scientific and statistical inference, with a focus on research reproducibility, ethical implications of research design and conduct, and the policy implications of scientific uncertainty. He has served on a wide array of National Academy of Sciences committees, from the health effects of Agent Orange, to vaccine safety, drug safety, clinical trial data sharing, and the use of medical evidence in the courts. He was awarded the 2016 Spinoza Chair in Medicine from the University of Amsterdam for his work in inference, the 2019 Lilienfeld award from the American College of Epidemiology, and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2020.

Goodman received an MHS in biostatistics and PhD in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. From 1989-2011, he served on the faculties of the Johns Hopkins schools of Medicine and Public Health.

Estelle Iacona

Estelle Iacona, full professor at CentraleSupélec, is president of Université Paris-Saclay. After receiving her PhD in applied physics from CentraleSupélec in 2000, she joined Johns Hopkins University as a postdoctoral fellow in 2001.

Former Director of the EM2C, a CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research) Laboratory, Iacona held the titles of vice president, dean of research, and provost at CentraleSupélec from 2012 to 2016. From 2016 to 2019 she was vice-president of academic affairs and research before becoming advisor to the president in charge of the Université Paris-Saclay project. She joined the Université Paris-Saclay presidency in 2020 as senior vice president. She currently serves on the board of directors for X-Fab Silicon Foundries as independent member.

Iacona is an engineer specializing in thermal science. Her main publications are in the domains of applied physics, heat and mass transfer, radiative properties of gases, porous media, as well as energy challenges for the future.

Andrew S. Klein

Andrew Scott Klein is professor emeritus at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where he held the Esther and Mark Schulman Endowed Chair in Surgery and Transplant Medicine. He was the founding director of the Cedars-Sinai Comprehensive Transplant Center, a multi-specialty service line that oversees kidney, liver, heart, lung, and pancreas transplantation and transplant immunobiology laboratories. Klein was the founding director of the Johns Hopkins CTC from 1996–2003.

A recipient of the Johns Hopkins Clinician Scientist Award, Klein's basic scientific research interests have been supported by institutional, intramural, and industry funding. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 manuscripts and book chapters and has lectured extensively in North America, Asia, and Europe. He is a skilled technical surgeon and his pioneering contributions to the care of patients with liver disease were recognized in 2014 when the American Liver Foundation bestowed upon him the Healthcare Visionary Award. He has chaired the Liver Transplantation and Living Donor Transplantation Committees for The United Network for Organ Sharing and was elected counselor to the governing board of the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease. He was selected to the Transplant Advisory Committee of the American Board of Surgery. He is president and chair of the board of regents for the U.S. section of the International College of Surgeons.

Klein received his MBA from the JHU Carey School of Business, where he was honored with the inaugural Student of the Year Award and the Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2009. Outside of Medicine, Klein is an avid SCUBA diver and underwater photographer.

Kenneth M. Ludmerer

Kenneth M. Ludmerer is an internist, medical educator, and historian of medicine. He is professor of medicine and the Mabel Dorn Reeder Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine in the School of Medicine and Professor of History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Washington University, St. Louis. Ludmerer received an AB from Harvard College and an MA and MD from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, followed by a residency in internal medicine at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis and graduate work in history at Harvard. In 1978-79 he was chief resident in internal medicine at Barnes Hospital, and the following year he joined the faculty of Washington University. His first book, Genetics and American Society (1972), a study of the American eugenics movement, was on the Saturday Review list of outstanding science books. His second book, Learning to Heal (1985), on the creation of America's system of medical education, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize.

Ludmerer has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association of American Physicians, the American Clinical and Climatological Association, the American College of Physicians, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Royal College of Physicians of London. He is a past president of the American Association for the History of Medicine and the American Osler Society. His many recognitions include the William Welch Medal of the American Association for the History of Medicine, Abraham Flexner Award for Distinguished Service to Medical Education of the Association of American Medical Colleges, John C. Gienapp Award for Distinguished Service to Graduate Medical Education of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, and Distinguished Medical Alumnus Award of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, among many others. Science called him "the conscience of American academic medicine."

Anne Drapkin Lyerly

Anne Drapkin Lyerly is a professor of social medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. Originally trained in obstetrics and gynecology, she completed the postdoctoral Greenwall Fellowship in Bioethics and Health Policy at Johns Hopkins. Before joining UNC as Associate Director of the Center for Bioethics, she was a Greenwall Faculty Scholar and served on the faculty of Duke University.

A leading scholar and public intellectual addressing morally complex issues at the intersection of reproduction, gender, and women's health, she is internationally recognized for her work on pregnancy and biomedical research. She co-founded the Second Wave Initiative, and her work on stem cell research ethics shaped U.S. federal guidance on derivation of human embryonic stem cells. Her book, A Good Birth (Penguin Group) was highlighted in the inaugural article of New York Times Parenting. She was principal investigator of the NIH-funded PHASES Project and co-led the PREVENT Project—sister projects that each produced consensus ethics guidance for including pregnant persons in urgently needed biomedical research in infectious disease contexts. She now leads the NIH-funded PREPARE Project, developing ethics guidance for research with pregnant adolescents.

Lyerly served as chair of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Committee on Ethics and as an advisor to the World Health Organization, the March of Dimes, the United States Food and Drug Administration, and the U.S. Task Force Specific on Research Specific to Pregnant and Lactating Women, among others. She has also published more than 100 articles and book chapters. She and her husband have five children: Grant, Paula, Charles, William, and Grace.

Jonathan A. Patz

For more than 20 years, Jonathan Patz has been a celebrated leader in the field of environmental public health. After completing his MPH and medical residency in environmental and occupational medicine at Johns Hopkins, he convened the first-ever session on climate change for the American Public Health Association in 1994 and authored the organization's first policy resolution on climate change in 1995. In 1997, he organized the first climate change/ health briefing for an EPA administrator and co-chaired the health report for the first Congressionally mandated U.S. National Assessment on Climate Change, published in 2000. He served as a lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—the organization that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. In 2019, he was elected into the National Academy of Medicine for his pioneering work at the intersection of climate change and public health. Patz has taught and conducted research on this subject and has published over 200 science publications and several textbooks on the topic of environmental public health.

He is the John P. Holton Endowed Chair of Health and the Environment and a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. From 2011-2022 he served as inaugural Director of UW-Madison's Global Health Institute and has faculty appointments in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Department of Population Health Sciences. Patz also directs the university's Planetary Health Scholars Program. In addition to his election into the National Academy of Medicine, his career recognitions include: the Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellows Award; sharing the Zayed International Prize for the Environment; Fulbright Scholarship; American Public Health Association's Homer Calver Award for environmental health leadership; Case Western School of Medicine Alumni Special Recognition award; and the Chanchlani Global Health Research Award.

James J. Riley

James Riley is a professor emeritus in mechanical engineering at the University of Washington. After receiving his PhD from the Johns Hopkins University in 1971, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research before joining the startup company Flow Research (later Flow Industries). He joined the University of Washington in 1983, teaching a number of courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Before retirement, he held the inaugural PACCAR Endowed Chair of Engineering and has been the acting chair of his department.

Riley's research has addressed many problems related to transitioning and turbulent fluid flows, including research on combustion, dispersion of pollutants, biological flows, and atmospheric and oceanographic flows. He is a member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences (2012), and of the National Academy of Engineering (2014). He is a fellow of the American Physical Society (1988), and is past chair of its Division of Fluid Dynamics (twice). He is also a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (2003), of the Institute of Physics (2004), and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2017). In addition to numerous career awards, he received the Director's Award in 2010 from the U.S. Geological Service for his work on the Deep-Water Horizon Oil Spill. Riley has been an associate editor for the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, and for the Journal of Turbulence. He has also been a member of the editorial committees of the Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics and of the Applied Mechanics Reviews.

Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez

The music of Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez has been described by the press as "vigorously organized and highly visceral...neither eclectic nor post-modern nor owing allegiance to any passing fashion".

Born in Mexico City in 1964, he studied at the Johns Hopkins Peabody Conservatory, Yale University, Princeton University, and Tanglewood, and is now a professor of composition at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. Recent honors include awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim, Koussevitzky, Fromm, Rockefeller, Camargo, and Bogliasco Foundations, in addition to the 2007 Barlow Prize, a Finalist Prize at the 2004 Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestral Composer Competition, and the 2003 Lee Ettelson Composition Award. Sanchez-Gutierrez's work is performed and recorded frequently in the U.S., Latin America, Europe, and Asia. Sanchez-Gutierrez has been composer-in-residence at The Keyboard in the 21st-Century; the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition; CMMAS; Ensemble Utopik; SoundSCAPE Festival; VIPA; New Music Festival; Puentes Mexico/España; Cervantino International Festival Chihuahua International Festival; Michoacan International New Music Festival; S.L.A.M. Festival; and the Binghamton Philharmonic.

From 2010-2017 he co-directed and performed frequently with the Eastman BroadBand Ensemble in Mexico, Italy, and the U.S., releasing two compact disc recordings, Cantos and Diaries. Recently completed works include "El señor de los sueños," a multimedia work premiered at Teatro Degollado in Guadalajara, Mexico, as well as a series of commissioned works.

D. Watkins

D. Watkins is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The Beast Side, The Cook Up, Where Tomorrows Aren't Promised, and We Speak for Ourselves—which was Enoch Pratt Free Library's 2020 One Book Baltimore selection. His newest book, Black Boy Smile, was released in May. Watkins is editor-at-large for Salon and is a writer on the HBO mini-series We Own This City in addition to hosting the show's companion podcast. He was featured in the HBO documentary The Slow Hustle.

Watkins' work has been published in The New York Times, Esquire, New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and other publications. He is a college lecturer at the University of Baltimore, where he earned an MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts. He also holds a Master of Education from Johns Hopkins University. His awards include the Johns Hopkins Distinguished Alumnus Award, the City Lit Dambach Award for Service to the Literary Arts, the Maryland Library Association's William Wilson Maryland Author Award, and Ford's Men of Courage Award for Black Male Storytellers. He was a finalist for a 2016 Hurston Wright Legacy Award, and Black Boy Smile won the 2022 Paris Book Award for General Nonfiction. He lives in Baltimore with his wife and daughter.

Richard C. Zellars

Richard C. Zellars is the William A. Mitchell Professor and Chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology and associate director for clinical affairs at the Melvin and Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center at Indiana University. He recently served as the physician-in-chief of cancer services for Indiana University Health. A graduate of Bowdoin College and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, he completed his residency in radiation oncology at the University of Michigan and was named chief resident before joining the faculty at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, where he eventually served as vice chair. He returned to Johns Hopkins where he served as assistant director for clinical trial accrual for the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center and was promoted to associate professor.

His clinical research addresses the efficacy, facility, and safety of radiation therapy for breast cancer. He designed and completed two phase I trials evaluating partial breast irradiation and concurrent chemotherapy, a phase III trial evaluating cardiac perfusion changes in women receiving radiation, and another study assessing the use of PET/CT to better plan breast cancer radiation therapy. His clinical research prompted the NCI to develop the Breast Oncology-Local Disease Task Force, for which he served as co-chair for two terms.

Zellars is also the founder and past co-director of the Cancer in the Under-Privileged Indigent or Disadvantaged summer fellowship at Johns Hopkins. The goal of the CUPID fellowship is to promote the discipline of oncology in first year medical students who have a demonstrated interest in serving disadvantaged populations. Nationally, he continues to serve as scientific program committee member for American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Society of Radiation Oncology, and the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. Additionally, he is a member of the NCI Breast Cancer Steering Committee, and the NCI Board of Scientific Advisors.