Muyinatu "Bisi" Bell, the John C. Malone Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Whiting School of Engineering, has been named a recipient of the National Science Foundation's 2024 Alan T. Waterman Award, regarded as the nation's highest honor for early-career scientists and engineers. Awardees each receive $1 million over five years for research in their chosen field of science. Bell was recognized for her pioneering interdisciplinary research spanning photoacoustic and ultrasound imaging, including advancements in coherence-based beamforming, photoacoustic-guided surgery, and deep learning techniques to enhance medical image quality, reduce surgical complications, and foster more-equitable health care practices. Bell is Johns Hopkins' first Waterman Award winner in the 48-year history of the prize. She holds additional appointments in the departments of Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science and is the director of the Photoacoustic and Ultrasonic Systems Engineering, or PULSE, Lab.
Darin Atwater, Distinguished Visiting Faculty at the Peabody Institute, received one of Baltimore's highest honors, the key to the city, at an event on May 1. Peabody's website aptly describes the broad swath of Atwater's talents as encompassing "the roles of composer, conductor, pianist, record producer, artist, arranger, film composer, vocalist, entrepreneur, educator, and arts advocate." In 2000, he founded Soulful Symphony, an 85-member orchestra that plays everything from jazz to gospel to hip-hop, and more. He was recently appointed artistic director of the Monterey Jazz Festival. He attributes the Baltimore City award to his involvement not only on the stage but in the community, where he and his team have gone into hundreds of schools and led master classes.
Shenandoah "Dody" Robinson, a professor of neurosurgery in the School of Medicine, has been named president-elect of the American Society of Pediatric Neurosurgeons. Robinson, a nationally recognized expert in the treatment of pediatric epilepsy and spasticity, is the first woman to hold this position. She is also president of the American Academy of Neurological Surgery and is the first woman to hold that position.
Jennifer S. Baker has been selected as one of four NCAA Division III winners of the Athletic Director of the Year Award for 2023–24, given by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. Winners were recognized at the 59th annual NACDA & Affiliates Convention in Las Vegas in June. Baker, the university's associate vice provost for student affairs and director of Athletics and Recreation, is in her seventh year at Johns Hopkins, including her fifth as athletics director. In the four and a half years since she became athletics director, Johns Hopkins teams have won five national championships and 49 conference titles. Hopkins also claimed the program's first Learfield Directors' Cup title in 2022–23, an honor that recognizes the top athletics programs in the nation. Among her many key initiatives has been the launch of a leadership development program for Johns Hopkins student-athletes, Blue Jays LEAD, which debuted in 2017–18.
Two Johns Hopkins professors—Diane Edmund Griffin, University Distinguished Service Professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Du Yun, a professor of composition at the Peabody Conservatory—have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This year's class of 250 members includes actor and philanthropist George Clooney, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and author Jhumpa Lahiri. Griffin teaches in the Bloomberg School's Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology and has a joint appointment at the School of Medicine. Her research focuses on how viruses cause disease and how immunity leads to both recovery and protection from reinfection. Du Yun is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, performance artist, activist, and curator for new music. Her second opera, Angel's Bone, won a Pulitzer Prize for music in 2017; in 2018 she was named a Guggenheim Fellow; and in 2019 she was nominated for a Grammy Award in Best Contemporary Classical Composition. She has been a featured composer at prestigious venues, including the New York Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
The Association for Asian Studies awarded its 2024 Joseph Levenson Prize, in the category of China–post-1900, to Ho-fung Hung for his book City on the Edge: Hong Kong Under Chinese Rule (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Ho-fung received the prize at a ceremony in March in Seattle. He is a professor of political economy in the Department of Sociology in the Krieger School and the School of Advanced International Studies. The prize recognizes the book that makes "the greatest contribution to increasing understanding of the history, culture, society, politics, or economy of China." In accordance with the scholarly interests of Levenson, the prize's namesake, the association gives special consideration to books that "promote the relevance of scholarship on China to the wider world of intellectual discourse."
Thomas Cudjoe, an assistant professor in the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology in the School of Medicine, has been named a Harold Amos Scholar by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Through this four-year $420,000 award, Cudjoe and his mentorship team will adapt and implement CAPABLE (Community Aging in Place—Advancing Better Living for Elders) for a new target population in the context of home-based primary care. CAPABLE is an existing evidence-based program developed at Johns Hopkins to help low-income seniors age safely in their own homes.
Lilliana Mason, an associate professor of political science at the Krieger School's Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute, has been named to the 2024 class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows. The 28 scholars selected this year will each receive grants of up to $200,000 to research political polarization. Mason, author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity and co-author of Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy, is a well-respected expert on political polarization. She plans to use the fellowship to write another book reexamining the topic. This year's "political polarization" cohort marks the first time that Carnegie Fellows were selected to fit an exclusive theme. In 2023, the program committed to funding polarization research for at least three years.
Two Krieger School faculty members have been awarded 2024 Guggenheim Fellowships: Jenann Ismael, a professor in the Department of Philosophy, and Marc Kamionkowski, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Ismael's research focuses on the philosophy of physics and metaphysics, especially areas involving the structure of space and time, quantum mechanics, and the foundations of physical laws. Kamionkowski is a theoretical physicist who specializes in cosmology and particle physics. Much of his work has been on the hypothesis that some new elementary particle may constitute the cosmological dark matter, with his main focus being particle dark matter, inflation, and the cosmic microwave background and cosmic acceleration.
Five Johns Hopkins faculty members have been elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering 2024 College of Fellows. Election to AIMBE is among the highest professional distinctions given to medical and biomedical engineers and recognizes the top 2% of engineers in these fields. Four of the Hopkins fellows have primary appointments in Biomedical Engineering, a department shared by the School of Medicine and the Whiting School. They are Professors Kathleen Cullen and Deok-Ho Kim, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor Andrew Feinberg, and Teaching Professor Eileen Haase. Rebecca Schulman is an associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the Whiting School.
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