Kris Chesky, a leader in performing arts medicine and performance science, has joined Johns Hopkins as a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Performing Arts Health and chair of a new Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. He will hold primary appointments in the Peabody Institute and the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in the School of Medicine. Chesky's work has resulted in the development of specialized equipment to mitigate the occupational risks of making music. His methods were also the foundation of his research and applications dealing with sepsis and COVID-19. Chesky founded and served as co-director of the Texas Center for Performing Arts Health. He comes to JHU from the University of North Texas, where he was a professor in the College of Music.
Mikala Egeblad joins Johns Hopkins as a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Tumor Microenvironment, with appointments in the Department of Cell Biology and the Department of Oncology in the School of Medicine. She is co-director of the Cancer Invasion Metastasis Program in the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center and associate director of the Giovanis Institute for Translational Cell Biology. She is also a member of the Convergence Institute, which builds, trains, and catalyzes convergence teams to use their diverse scientific disciplines and technologies to foster innovation. Egeblad is a technical pioneer in modeling, imaging, and real-time analysis of cancer processes. She co-developed intravital microscopy, whereby an imaging window is implanted into animal tissue, allowing for real-time observation of living cells in their natural environment within living organisms.
Daniel H. Weiss, A&S '82 (MA), '92 (PhD), has returned to Johns Hopkins as Homewood Professor of the Humanities in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, following eight years as president and then president and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Last year, Weiss announced that he would step down from his role at the Met in June 2023. As a Homewood Professor, Weiss will conduct research and teach. A specialist in the art of the Middle Ages, Weiss has also published widely on a variety of topics, including higher education, museums, and American culture. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021. Also that year, he was one of the inaugural recipients of George Washington University's Monumental Alumni Award, the highest form of alumni recognition the university gives to honor living alumni who have made an impact on the world through their work and service. He was elected to the Society of Scholars at Hopkins in 2018 and is the author of seven books.
Maria Harris Tildon has been appointed vice president for government, community, and economic partnerships for Johns Hopkins University and Medicine. It's the latest portfolio expansion for Harris, who joined Johns Hopkins in April 2022 as vice president for state and local affairs and was named interim head of the Office of Economic Development and Community Partnerships a year later. With this change, the vice president's responsibilities have expanded to lead the newly combined Office of Government, Community, and Economic Partnerships. Tildon will assume oversight of state and local government affairs and community partnerships and engagement, including economic inclusion initiatives such as HopkinsLocal, BLocal, and 10kSB.
Thomas Gernay, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Systems Engineering in the Whiting School, has been recognized with a National Science Foundation Early CAREER Award, the International Association of Fire Safety Science's Magnusson Award, and the American Institute of Steel Construction's Terry Peshia Early Career Faculty Award— all in 2023. A fellow of the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute, he received a 2019 HEMI Seed Grant for his experimental study of metals under extreme temperatures.
Sabra Klein, a professor in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology in the Bloomberg School of Public Health, received the 2023 Vivian Pinn Award for Excellence in Women's Health Research, recognizing Klein's 23 years of research in the area of sex differences in viral infections. Vivian Pinn, the award's namesake, was the first Black woman to chair an academic pathology department in the U.S. and the first full-time director of the Office of Research on Women's Health at the NIH.
"Codifying Credit: Everyday Contracting and the Spread of the Civil Code in Nineteenth-Century Mexico" by Casey Marina Lurtz, an assistant professor of history and co-chair of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies in the Krieger School, was awarded the Anne Fleming Article Prize 2022 by the American Society for Legal History. The prize is awarded every other year to the author or authors of the best article published in the previous two years in either Law and History Review or Enterprise and Society on the relation of law and business/economy in any region or historical period. The $250 prize awarded in 2022 covered work published in 2020 and 2021.
The 2021 Wien Opera production of Poppea—the opera by Peabody faculty composer Michael Hersch and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann, co-starring faculty artist Ah Young Hong—was nominated for an Austrian Music Theater Award in the category Best Contemporary Musical Theater. Also, Hersch's three-part, 11-hour Sew Me Into a Shroud of Leaves received its U.S. debut at National Sawdust in May, and his new Medea opera had its world premiere in Cologne, Germany.
Emanuele Berti, a professor of physics and astronomy in the Krieger School, received the 2023 Richard A. Isaacson Award in Gravitational-Wave Science from the American Physical Society.
Kevin Puts, a faculty composer at Peabody Conservatory, was honored with a 2023 Grammy Award in Best Contemporary Classical Composition for Contact, performed by the string trio Time for Three and the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of conductor Xian Zhang. His recent album, The City—Marimba Concerto— Moonlight (Naxos), features Marin Alsop leading the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra through three of the composer's early works.
Teresa Brockie, an associate professor in the School of Nursing, was admitted to the Betty Irene Moore Fellowship for Nurse Leaders and Innovators, a national program that seeks to develop the next generation of nurse leaders and innovators. The 2023 cohort has 16 fellows—early career to midcareer nursing scholars and innovators from across the country—the largest number in the history of the program. Fellows receive $450,000 in funding over three years to pursue a project or study, plus $50,000 for their home institution. Brockie's research focuses on promoting health equity through community-based prevention and intervention services for trauma and suicide in vulnerable populations.
Ed Schlesinger has been appointed for a third term as Benjamin T. Rome Dean of the Whiting School of Engineering, through June 30, 2028. Cited in the letter to the Hopkins community announcing the reappointment were his efforts to "build meaningful, substantial, and lasting connections between the Whiting School and other divisions, particularly in recent years with the Applied Physics Laboratory."
