January 18, 2011
Cheers — January 18, 2011
APPLIED PHYSICS LABORATORY
Kurt Lindstrom has been named business area executive for Civilian Space. The appointment puts him in charge of APL’s current civilian space science and technology programs as well as business development activities for future space missions. Lindstrom had served as acting business area executive since May 2010, after becoming the deputy business area executive in July 2009. He came to APL in May 2008 after a 25-year NASA career that included headquarters roles as a program analysis branch chief as well as a budget director and program executive, overseeing missions such as the Europa Orbiter, the Dawn asteroid orbiter and the New Horizons mission to Pluto. He also directed the NASA Management Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and served as a program manager at NASA Ames Research Center.
Jack Roberts, a program manager and principal investigator, has been named a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The honor recognizes Roberts’ significant engineering achievements and contributions to the engineering profession. His expertise includes structural analysis, composite materials, biomaterials, biomechanics and tribology, the science and engineering of interacting surfaces in relative motion. Since joining APL in 1990 he has led programs covering buckling and bending of composite panels and the development of computational and experimental models of the human body, including a lifelike torso model for studying the mechanics of ballistic and blast-related injuries.
Richard T. Roca, director emeritus, has been inducted as a full member of the Pan American Academy of Engineering, which honors exceptional engineers who have contributed to the scientific and engineering progress of their individual countries, and the greater Americas as a whole. Roca was one of 19 engineers inducted in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Oct. 21. During the ceremony, all new members signed a charter signifying their commitment to “strengthen engineering and technological activities in each country of the Americas and promote in them economic, social and human welfare within sustainable development.” The organization currently has 116 members, representing 24 different countries.
BLOOMBERG SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH
Chad Boult, the Eugene and Mildred Lipitz Professor of Public Health and director of the Roger C. Lipitz Center for Integrated Health Care, has been named senior adviser for geriatrics and long-term care by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for its new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. Created by the Affordable Care Act of 2010, the center will examine new ways of delivering health care and paying health care providers that can improve the quality of care and Americans’ health, while saving money for Medicare and Medicaid. Boult will remain on the Bloomberg School faculty, but a national search is being conducted to find his replacement as the Eugene and Mildred Lipitz Professor and as director of the Lipitz Center.
Dan Morhaim, an associate in the Department of Health Policy and Management and a member of the Maryland House of Delegates since 1994, has been selected as one of the recipients of the American Medical Association’s 2011 Dr. Nathan Davis Awards for Outstanding Government Service, in the category Outstanding Member of a State Legislature. Honorees are selected by an independent panel of judges. The award will be presented at a banquet to be held Feb. 9 in Washington, D.C.
Moyses Szklo, a professor in the Department of Epidemiology, was awarded the Physician’s Merit Medal from Brazilian President Jose Lula da Silva. Szklo was presented with the medal by the health minister, Jose Gomes Temporao, at a ceremony held in Brasilia in November. Induction into the Physician’s Merit Order honors physicians who provide outstanding service in public health or medicine. Szklo, a native of Brazil, has been since 1975 a part of the Johns Hopkins faculty, where he has studied the natural history and the etiology of cardiovascular diseases. He is also editor in chief of the American Journal of Epidemiology.
KRIEGER SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
Albert Beveridge, a lecturer in the History Department, has been nominated by President Barack Obama to serve as a member of the National Council on the Humanities for a term expiring Jan. 26, 2016. Beveridge is a founding member and senior counsel of the law firm Beveridge & Diamond and has served as general counsel of the American Historical Association for 15 years. He was a founding member of the National Trust for the Humanities, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is also Distinguished Historian in Residence at the American University. A graduate of Princeton, he received his master’s degree from Johns Hopkins and his law degree from Harvard.
PEABODY INSTITUTE
Evan Combs and Yi Wang, master of music candidates in computer music, will each have a composition performed at the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States conference, to be held Jan. 20 to 22 in Miami. Combs’ piece is “A Short Stop” for vibraphone and electronics, and Wang’s is titled “Talking Ocean.”
Joseph Frank, a freshman cellist who is a student of Alison Wells’, won the Keller Concerto Competition and will perform Saint-Saens’ Cello Concerto No. 1, Op. 33, with the Lafayette Symphony in Indiana on Jan. 22.
An article by musicology faculty member John Gingerich, “Ignaz Schuppanzigh and Beethoven’s Late Quartets,” appears in the current issue of Musical Quarterly. The piece includes a date for Op. 131, which has until now been a mystery.
SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
Bashir Zikria, an assistant professor in Orthopaedic Surgery, served as team doctor for the Afghanistan team participating in the Asian Games held in November in Guangzhou, China.
SCHOOL OF NURSING
Martha Hill, dean, has been selected to receive the 2011 Leadership in Research Award from the Southern Nursing Research Society. Excellence in Nursing Research is the theme of the 25th Annual SNRS conference, to be held Feb. 16–19 in Jacksonville, Fla., where Hill will be presented with the award.
Marie T. Nolan, chair of the Department of Acute and Chronic Care, has been promoted to the rank of professor.
Elizabeth “Ibby” Tanner, an associate professor in Community Public Health Nursing, has been inducted as a National Gerontological Nursing Association fellow. At the School of Nursing, Tanner has led development of the gerontology curriculum and created a geriatric interest group for Nursing, Public Health and Medicine students. She also holds a joint appointment in the School of Medicine’s Division of Geriatrics and Gerontology and is core faculty in the Center on Aging and Health.
WHITING SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
Seth Guikema, assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering, has received the Chauncey Starr Distinguished Young Risk Analyst Award from the Society for Risk Analysis. The honor is given annually to a member of the SRA age 40 or younger who has demonstrated outstanding achievement in science or public policy and exceptional promise for continued contributions to risk analysis.
Steve H. Hanke, a professor of applied economics in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering, has received a doctorate of economics, honoris causa, from the Free University of Tbilisi for his pioneering work on currency boards and economic reforms in emerging-market countries. On the occasion of this award, presented Dec. 10, 2010, Hanke’s new book, A Blueprint for a Safe, Sound Georgian Lari, which he co-authored with his longtime collaborator and former Johns Hopkins postdoctoral fellow Kurt Schuler, was released.
Susan Hohenberger, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science, is the recipient of a Faculty Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation. The CAREER award, given to faculty members at the beginning of their academic careers, is one of NSF’s most competitive awards and emphasizes high-quality research and novel education initiatives. Hohenberger’s award for “Practical Cryptography for the Cloud” will support the development of cryptographic schemes for the cloud environment, including methods to protect the privacy and integrity of data for the growing number of consumers who utilize cloud services.
Peter Lin, a doctoral candidate in Applied Mathematics and Statistics, was named second runner-up for the Morgan Stanley First Annual Prize for Excellence in Financial Markets, which “recognizes the critical importance of finance theory in improving our understanding of how financial markets work.” Lin was one of five finalists in the competition, which attracted 97 entries from around the world. He was awarded the prize for his paper, “Stochastic Splines Model: A Paradigm Shift in Interest-Rate Modeling.”
En Ma, professor of materials science and engineering, and Denis Wirtz, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, have been named 2010 fellows of the American Physical Society. Ma’s citation states that he was selected for his “pathbreaking research and outstanding publications on metastable, amorphous and nanocrystalline metals and alloys, and international outreach in the metallic materials field.” Wirtz’s citation notes his “seminal contributions to the understanding of basic cellular functions through the development and application of novel biophysical methods grounded in statistical mechanics and polymer physics.”
Allison Okamura and Louis Whitcomb, both professors in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, have been named to the class of 2011 IEEE fellows. The grade of fellow, the association’s highest grade of membership, is conferred upon individuals who have an outstanding record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. Okamura was cited “for contributions to the design and control of haptic systems and medical robotics” and Whitcomb “for contributions to the theory and application of robotics for intervention in extreme environments.”