Cheers: February 2016

Cheers is a monthly listing of appointments, promotions, and honors and awards received by faculty and staff. Submissions can be emailed to hubatwork@jhu.edu.

Applied Physics Laboratory

Preston Dunlap has been appointed mission area executive for National Security Analysis, leading APL's efforts to provide cross-cutting analyses, research, and integrated technology development that increase the effectiveness of national security operations and missions and enable informed decision making by senior leaders. Before arriving at APL in 2014 Dunlap was a career member of the Senior Executive Service in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Stephen Lewia has been named mission area executive for Strategic Deterrence, one of three mission areas within APL's Force Projection Sector. Lewia, an expert in technical program management and Navy strategic missile systems, joined the Lab in 2012 and served as deputy mission area executive and special assistant to the mission area executive before assuming his new role.

Helene Winters has been named program manager for the NASA New Horizons mission, which made history in July with the first flight past Pluto. Pending NASA approval, New Horizons will observe 2014 MU69, a small Kuiper Belt object a billion miles beyond Pluto, in January 2019. Winters succeeds Glen Fountain, who led New Horizons for the past 12 years and plans to retire.

Bloomberg School of Public Health

Mindi Levin, founder and director of the Student Outreach Resource Center, known as SOURCE, was selected by the Maryland-DC Campus Compact as this year's winner of the Institutional Leadership Award. SOURCE is the community engagement and service-learning center for the schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health. The award honors one outstanding individual from the region for significant contributions to the institutionalization of community engagement, by inspiring a vision for service on the campus that includes the involvement of faculty, students, and campus-community partnerships.

Johns Hopkins Medicine

James Page, vice president for diversity and inclusion and chief diversity officer for Johns Hopkins Medicine, is included in a list of 15 hospital and health system chief diversity officers to know, published in January by Becker's Hospital Review.

**Kathy Smith, vice president of marketing and communications for Johns Hopkins Hospital and senior director of strategic marketing and outreach for Johns Hopkins Medicine, has been appointed to the new position of vice president of marketing and communications for JHM's Academic Division. She will oversee the enhanced integration of marketing and communications for JHH and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. In this new role, she will work to identify greater efficiencies and collaborative approaches across both hospitals and the School of Medicine.

Krieger School of Arts and Sciences

Katrina Bell McDonald, a professor of sociology, has been appointed to the board of My Sister's Circle, a mentoring program that serves middle and high school girls from disadvantaged areas of Baltimore. Her teaching and research focus on the sociology of race, gender, class, and the family.

Peabody Institute

In Washington City Paper's "The Jazzies: D.C.'s Best Jazz in 2015," jazz percussion faculty artist Nasar Abadey was named Artist of the Year and tied as Best Drummer, and Supernova, the group he founded and directs, was named Best Small Ensemble. Also, Abadey was recently featured on the CapitalBop website in an article focused on his life and career.

Abra Bush has been appointed senior associate dean of institute studies, effective March 1. Her responsibilities include bringing together the academic and applied areas of the institute and strengthening the relationship between the Conservatory and the Preparatory. She most recently served as director of the Music Division at the Boston Conservatory. Read more about Bush.

Faculty artist Michael Formanek's third CD for ECM Records, The Distance, will be released Feb. 12. The CD features the Michael Formanek Ensemble Kolossus performing Formanek's original compositions.

Faculty artist Marina Piccinini, flute, appeared with world-renowned conductor Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in January to give the world premiere of Pulitzer Prize winner Aaron Jay Kernis' Flute Concerto. An approximately 25-minute piece with four movements, the concerto is the latest work written specifically for the internationally acclaimed flutist. Piccinini will give the New York State premiere of the piece with the Rochester Philharmonic in February.

School of Medicine

Dan Berkowitz has been promoted to vice chair for research in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine. He remains director of the Division of Cardiac Anesthesia and director of the Integrated Vascular Biology Laboratory. A 21-year Johns Hopkins veteran, Berkowitz also holds an appointment in Biomedical Engineering.

Matthew DeCamp, an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine and the Berman Institute of Bioethics, has been elected a fellow of the American College of Physicians. Fellows are chosen by their colleagues for "accomplishments and achievements over and above the practice of medicine, particularly "excellence and contributions made to both medicine and to the broader community in which the internist lives and practices."

Roger Reeves, a professor in the Department of Physiology and in the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, is the first elected president of the Trisomy 21 Research Society, a nonprofit organization founded to promote basic and translational research on Down syndrome and to apply new scientific knowledge to develop improved treatments and cures.

Christine White, longtime assistant dean for medicine, will retire in June. In a letter to the Johns Hopkins community, Dean Paul Rothman reviewed the many areas White has served with distinction throughout her 24 years at the School of Medicine and 15 years at the School of Public Health. He described her as "one of my most trusted advisers," who "has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to handle sensitive matters with diplomacy and challenging issues with grace and integrity." Last year she came up with the idea for, and was the force behind, Dancing with the Hopkins Stars, which brought a standing-room-only audience to Turner Auditorium and more than $52,000 to Johns Hopkins Medicine's United Way campaign. This year White co-chaired Johns Hopkins' 34th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration.

Boris Zinshteyn, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute research fellow, has received a four-year fellowship from the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation to pursue his investigations in the laboratory of Rachel Green, a professor in Molecular Biology and Genetics and an HHMI investigator. Zinshteyn uses a combination of high-throughput genetic and biochemical techniques to identify the fundamental mechanisms underlying a process called nonsense-mediated decay. The Damon Runyon Foundation supports early career postdocs doing basic and translational cancer research in the labs of leading senior investigators.

University Administration

Christy Wyskiel, senior adviser to President Ronald J. Daniels for enterprise development, is one of 16 leaders from key federal, academic, and industry organizations who were appointed to the Maryland Life Sciences Advisory Board by Gov. Larry Hogan. The board supports the Maryland Department of Commerce in its efforts to grow the biotechnology and health technology industry sectors in the state.