Cheers is a monthly listing of honors and awards received by faculty, staff, and students plus recent appointments and promotions. Contributions must be submitted in writing and be accompanied by a phone number.
Academic Centers and Affiliates
Debra Matthews, assistant director for science programs at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, has been appointed to the Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission, which oversees the investment of state funds in human stem cell research on the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease.
Susi Wyss, an editor at Jhpiego and a 2004 graduate of the Krieger School's graduate writing program, has received the Peace Corps' annual Maria Thomas Fiction Award for her book, The Civilized World (Henry Holt, 2011). Inspired by Wyss' 20-year career in international health that began as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Central African Republic, The Civilized World is set across Africa and follows five women—two Africans and three Americans—as their lives intersect.
Applied Physics Laboratory
Amen Ra Mashariki, a senior bioinformatics researcher, has been appointed to the 2012-13 Class of White House Fellows. A graduate of Lincoln University, Mashariki earned his master's degree from Howard University and his doctorate from Morgan State University. He has authored five patent disclosures and received the prestigious Chicago Museum of Science Top Technology Innovators award. The fellows program was created by President Lyndon B. Johnson to give promising American leaders "firsthand, high-level experience with the workings of the Federal government, and to increase their sense of participation in national affairs."
Bayview Medical Center
Richard O'Brien, an associate professor and chair of the Department of Neurology, has been named associate dean for research. He will serve on the executive leadership team in the office of David Hellmann, the vice dean, as an adviser on promoting innovative and safe research. O'Brien also will work to maximize research opportunities and accomplishments on the campus, which in the past decade has seen its research funding rise from $27 million to more than $100 million.
Cynthia Rand, a professor of medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, has been appointed associate dean for faculty. She will be part of the vice dean's executive leadership team, providing expertise on faculty issues. In addition, Rand will advise and support department directors in the areas of faculty recruitment, retention, and promotion. The number of faculty at Bayview has risen to more than 400 over the last 10 years.
Bloomberg School of Public Health
The National Association of Medical Examiners has established an award in honor of Susan P. Baker, a professor of health policy and management and the founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy. The Susan P. Baker Public Health Impact Award recognizes a paper or poster that demonstrates the greatest potential for public health impact, and will be given for the first time on Oct. 9 at the annual meeting of the country's medical examiners, to be held in Baltimore. The award is sponsored by the Maryland Medical Legal Foundation.
Stephen P. Teret, a professor of health policy and management and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Law and the Public's Health, received the prestigious Chairman's Circle of Commendation Award from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission at a press conference held Sept. 13 at CPSC's headquarters in Bethesda, Md. One of the initiatives Teret championed led to more-effective warning labels on toys with choking hazards. He has written numerous articles and books on injury prevention and consumer product safety, and is recognized as one of the first people to write about and advocate for the use of litigation as a tool for protecting the public's health.
Homewood Campus
The Blue Jay's Perch, the community garden located at Johns Hopkins at Eastern, has been named Best New Community Garden by the Baltimore City Master Gardeners of the University of Maryland Extension. The garden was conceived in 2011 by Real Food Hopkins, a student-run group, and created with support from the offices of Facilities Management, Sustainability, and Government and Community Affairs; the Center for Social Concern; and Campus Kitchen at Johns Hopkins.
Johns Hopkins Medicine International
Heitham Hassoun, formerly chief of Surgery and director of Vascular Intervention Therapy at Tawam Hospital, a JHI affiliate in the United Arab Emirates, has joined JHI as medical director of Global Services. Hassoun, an associate professor of surgery in the School of Medicine, also will work on establishing knowledge transfer programs, with an initial focus on Kuwait.
Multidisciplinary
Cynthia Sears, a professor of medicine and oncology in the School of Medicine, and Peter Searson, a professor of materials science and engineering in the School of Engineering with a joint appointment in Medicine, and also director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology, have received grants totaling more than $500,000 as inaugural recipients of funds from the National Cancer Institute's Provocative Questions project. Sears will receive $236,480 in the project's first year of funding to examine how and why certain cancers may be caused by infections. With $316,513 in first-year funding, Searson will develop a new method to study how cancer spreads, using a lab-on-a-chip device with an artificial blood vessel and other cellular components to replicate cancer metastasis.
Peabody Institute
Faculty artist Michael Formanek, jazz bass, has released his second CD on ECM, Small Places, on which he performs with alto saxophonist Tim Berne, pianist Craig Taborn, and percussionist Gerald Cleaver. The group will perform at The Jazz Standard in New York on Oct. 2 and 3, at the Windup Space in Baltimore on Oct. 6, and in other U.S. cities before a European tour later this month.
Eric Zuber, a Preparatory and Conservatory alumnus who is currently a DMA candidate studying with Boris Slutsky, is one of five finalists in the American Pianists Association's 2013 ProLiance Energy Classical Fellowship Awards. Selected from America's foremost young pianists ages 18 to 30, the finalists will perform this season in a variety of settings, including concerto appearances with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. An international panel of judges will name the APA's 2013 Christel DeHaan Classical Fellow in April.
Neomonology, the first solo recording by faculty artist Jeffrey Weisner, double bass, features three world premieres of solo pieces for bass by Michael Hersch, who chairs the Composition Department; David Smooke, who chairs the Music Theory Department; and former Music Theory faculty member Armando Bayolo. Partially funded by a faculty development grant, the CD was recorded at Peabody by Ed Tetrault.
School of Medicine
Ali Bydon, an associate professor and clinical director of the Neurosurgical Spine Program at Johns Hopkins Bayview, and Susan Gearhardt, an assistant professor of colorectal surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, are two of just 10 physicians nationwide to receive service excellence awards from the Healthnetwork Foundation, which connects its members with top physicians around the world. Johns Hopkins will receive a $10,000 research grant for each of the award recipients.
Robert Findling has been appointed chief of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Findling, both a pediatrician and a child and adolescent psychiatrist, had been director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve. He will join the faculty Dec. 1.
Gerard "Jerry" Lutty, the G. Edward and G. Britton Durell Professor of Ophthalmology and director of the Ocular Vasculogenesis and Angiogenesis Laboratory, has received the Endre Balazs Prize for Excellence in Eye Research from the San Francisco-based International Society for Eye Research. Lutty delivered the keynote address at the society's biennial meeting, held in July in Berlin.
John Ogunkeye has been named executive director of the school's 1,700-member Clinical Practice Association and also will serve as vice president and chief administrative officer of the Office of Johns Hopkins Physicians. A 28-year veteran of academic medical center management, Ogunkeye comes to Johns Hopkins from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, where he was chief operating officer, as well as executive director and vice president of Jefferson University Physicians, a multispecialty group practice.
Martin Pomper, the William R. Brody Professor of Radiology, has received a Prostate Cancer Foundation Challenge Award of $1 million to accelerate his interdisciplinary research on new treatments for prostate cancer. His co-investigators on the funded project, "Promoter-Driven Molecular Radiotherapy for Prostate Cancer," include George Sgouros, a professor of radiology and radiological science and director of Radiopharmaceutical Dosimetry.
Charles M. Rudin, a professor of oncology, will be honored for his leadership in lung cancer research at Uniting Against Lung Cancer's Strolling Supper with Blues and News gala hosted by NBC's Brian Williams on Nov. 14 in New York. Rudin is co-director of the Upper Aerodigestive Cancer Program and associate director for clinical research at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.
Chester Schmidt, a professor of psychiatry, chief medical officer of Johns Hopkins HealthCare, and medical director of the Sexual Behaviors Consultation Unit at JHH, has received the 2012 Lifetime of Service Award from the Maryland Psychiatric Society.
The Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality has awarded a combined $100,000 in grants to five Johns Hopkins physicians to pursue projects that seek to eliminate preventable harm, improve patient outcomes, and enhance the value of care. The awardees are Maria Hanna, an associate professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at JHH; Kristine Johnson, an assistant professor of medicine at Bayview; Pedro Alejandro Mendez-Tellez, an assistant professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at JHH; Nishi Rawat, an intensivist with Johns Hopkins Community Physicians at Howard County General Hospital; and Jeffrey Trost, an assistant professor of medicine at Bayview.
Three staff members of the Welch Medical Library have received two of the eight administrative supplemental awards bestowed nationwide by the National Library of Medicine to provide additional research assistance to scientists conducting studies under existing federal research grants. Victoria Goode, an informationist, will work with George Sgouros, a professor and director of Radiological Science, while Jennifer Darragh, a data librarian, and Claire Twose, an informationist, will assist Sarah Szanton, an assistant professor in the School of Nursing.
School of Nursing
Jacquelyn Campbell, the Anna D. Wolf Professor in the Department of Community-Public Health and an expert on relationship violence and health outcomes, has been named to the national advisory council of the One Love Foundation, the nonprofit created in 2010 to honor the memory of Yeardley Reynolds Love.
Sharon L. Kozachik, an assistant professor in Acute and Chronic Care, is part of an interdisciplinary university team that the National Institutes of Health has named one of 12 national Centers of Excellence in Pain Education.
Joan Kub, an associate professor in Community-Public Health Nursing, was inducted in June to a two-year term as president-elect of the Association of Community Health Nurse Educators.
Whiting School of Engineering
Jaafar El-Awady, an assistant professor in Mechanical Engineering, and Amy Foster, an assistant professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, are each a recipient of a 2012 DARPA Young Faculty Award. El-Awady was recognized in the area of predictive materials science for his work in micromechanics modeling of surface roughness evolution. Foster's award was in the area of photonics and lasers, for her work in 3-D integration of CMOS-compatible nonlinear photonic circuits. The award program provides junior faculty members with funding, mentoring, and Department of Defense contacts in order to develop the next generation of academic scientists, engineers, and mathematicians who will focus their careers on DoD and national security issues.
The Advertising and Integrated Marketing Communications class taught by Leslie Kendrick, a senior lecturer and internship coordinator of the Center for Leadership Education's Undergraduate Program in Entrepreneurship and Management, was awarded first place in the Scholastic Achievement Award competition, which featured entries from 10 colleges across the country. The undergraduate team's marketing campaign for zaahah.com, a social search engine, was developed this past spring using a budget of only $3,000. The course is matched each spring semester by EdVenture Partners with a client that seeks to reach college students.
Ed Scheinerman, vice dean for education and a professor in Applied Mathematics and Statistics, has been invited to be a member of the inaugural class of fellows of the American Mathematical Society. The invitation is in recognition of Scheinerman's "outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication, and utilization of mathematics." He will be inducted at a ceremony in January.
