Jef Boeke, a professor in the School of Medicine's Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. School of Medicine researchers Stephen Desiderio, Hal Dietz, Drew Pardoll, Jeremy Sugarman, and David Valle were elected to the Association of American Physicians.
Geraldine Seydoux, a professor of molecular biology and genetics at the School of Medicine; Timothy Heckman and Marc Kamionkowski, both professors in the Krieger School's Department of Physics and Astronomy; and Stephen Nichols, a Krieger School professor of French and humanities, were among the 198 new members elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Other members of the 2013 class include Nobel Prize winners Bruce A. Beutler and David J. Wineland, actors Robert De Niro and Sally Field, soprano Renée Fleming, and astronaut and former senator John Glenn.
American folk singer and activist Pete Seeger (who is also one of this year's AAAS inductees) received the 2013 George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music in America. The award was presented at the Peabody Conservatory's graduation ceremony in May, where the 94-year-old Seeger was also commencement speaker.
Jeffrey Sharkey, director of the Peabody Institute, announced in May that he would not seek another term in the position. Sharkey, a pianist, composer, and veteran music educator, has been at Peabody since September 2006. Nicholas P. Jones, dean of the Whiting School of Engineering since 2004, is also stepping down to become executive vice president and provost of Penn State.
Tia Price, a Master of Music candidate studying voice at Peabody, won the Presser Award. The $10,000 grant will enable Price to commission a song cycle from Natalie Draper, a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate in composition. The song cycle, called "This Is My Voice," will be based on texts by students in Peabody's Tuned-In program (which offers scholarships to Baltimore City youth), and Price will perform it in churches and other venues throughout Baltimore.
School of Education senior research scientist Robert Balfanz, a national expert whose work focuses on America's dropout crisis, was among 10 education leaders named White House "Champions of Change" for their commitment to furthering education among African-Americans. Dean David Andrews received the Education Industry Association's 2013 "Friend of the Education Industry" Award, which is given annually to an individual who demonstrates vision and entrepreneurship in advancing education reform. Norma Day-Vines, a professor in Counseling and Human Development, received the Exemplary Diversity Leadership Award from the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development.
Time magazine named Deborah Persaud, a School of Medicine associate professor of pediatrics and infectious disease, as one of its "100 Most Influential People in the World." Persaud was recognized along with University of Mississippi pediatrician Hannah Gay and University of Massachusetts immunologist Katherine Luzuriaga for functionally curing a newborn of HIV.
SoM Professor Bert Vogelstein, co-director of the Ludwig Center at Johns Hopkins and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, received the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for his work in cancer genomics and tumor suppressor genes. Vogelstein is among 11 inaugural winners who will receive $3 million each for their groundbreaking research in the life sciences. The Breakthrough Prize was established by technology entrepreneur Yuri Milner, Google founder Sergey Brin, 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and his wife, Priscilla Chan. A foundation created to administer the prize will be chaired by Art Levinson, chairman of the board of Apple and chairman and former CEO of Genentech.
SoM Professor Peter Pronovost, a world-renowned patient safety researcher, ranked fifth on this year's list of the "50 Most Influential Physician Executives in Healthcare," a recognition program co-sponsored by Modern Physician and Modern Healthcare.
The Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for American Indian Health is partnering with Barclays Bank to design an evidence-based program to inspire American-Indian youth to stay in school and create business and social entrepreneurship opportunities. Barclays will provide $1.2 million in program funding over three years, and employees will serve as mentors to program participants.
In April, the Paul. H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies hosted A New Economic Landscape: Promoting Women in Emerging Markets, the inaugural Global Women in Leadership Conference, organized by SAIS graduate students to address new economic challenges and opportunities facing women. The new issue of SAISPHERE is out. This year's issue is called "Cities Lead the Way for Global Change" and features articles and essays by members of the SAIS faculty, scholar, student, and alumni community. In May, U Thein Sein, president of Myanmar, spoke at SAIS' Kenney Auditorium on the topic of "Myanmar in Transition: U.S.-Myanmar Bilateral Relations," during his visit to the United States.
Carey Business School Dean Bernard T. Ferrari received the Thomas E. Weiss, M.D., Outstanding Alumnus Award from the Ochsner Alumni Association in April. Ferrari, who began his career as a surgeon, was the Ochsner Clinic's chief operating officer and assistant medical director in the 1980s.
Carey School student Bahar Zarrabi had a winning idea about how medical residency programs could benefit by incorporating business education into their curricula. Zarrabi is a senior administrative coordinator in the School of Medicine's Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. When she shared a paper she wrote for her Business Communication class, the department's leaders decided to add her idea to a proposal they were submitting for the medical school's Institute for Excellence in Education Residency Redesign Challenge Grant. In March, the team was awarded the grant—$45,000 for the first year with an option to apply in the second year for funding worth $50,000.
A team from the Center for Global Health took first place and $6,000 in the 2013 Emory Global Health Case Competition in March. The team, which was charged with developing a plan to address worldwide sanitation issues, included Krieger School undergraduate Kevin Wang; Whiting School undergrad Aaron Chang; Bloomberg School graduate students Collin Weinberger, Nidhi Khurana, and Stephanie Van Dyke; and Nursing/Public Health graduate student Matthew Lindsley.
The Applied Physics Laboratory held its first-ever Technical Achievement Awards ceremony in May, recognizing APL's top inventions, researchers, and publications. The Invention of the Year award went to a novel technique that creates a compressed DNA-type fingerprint of parts of computer code to reveal malware. The Government Purpose Innovation Award went to a system that can detect and locate the source of false signals generated by radar jamming devices. A new Innovation Award, which recognizes the most creative Ignition Grant project for 2012, went to an inexpensive prototype to prevent hearing damage from sudden blasts. Ignition Grants are a Lab-wide initiative to encourage staff to explore and pursue innovative ideas outside APL's traditional processes. Also in May, more than 100 Maryland middle school students got an inside look at lunar exploration during "Space Academy: Mission Moon," which focused on NASA's recent robotic missions to the moon.
