Focus publishes a column on a periodic basis that recognizes significant accomplishments of members of the Rutgers community. Faculty and staff who wish to be recognized for achievements or those who would like to note the achievements of others may submit a notice through the Submit News form.

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John Abela, professor of psychology, received the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression Independent Researcher Award for 2008.

Eric Allender, professor of computer science, is a founding member of the board of editors of the new journal, ACM Transactions on Computation Theory.

Ross K. Baker, professor of political science, was appointed Scholar-in-Residence, Office of the Majority Leader, U.S. Senate, 2008.

Arati Baliga, who earned her Ph.D. in the Department of Computer Science, won the Best Student Paper award at the prestigious 2008 Annual Computer Security Applications Conference for joint work with her advisor, Liviu Iftode, and another Rutgers computer science professor, Vinod Ganapathy.

Mia Elisabeth Bay, associate professor of history, and Ruth Elizabeth Chang, associate professor of philosophy, have been named Fellows at the National Humanities Center for the 2009–2010 academic year. They will join 31 other scholars from institutions across the United States and four foreign countries working on a wide array of projects.

Joshua Blank, assistant professor at the School of Law–Newark, has been elected a full member of Academia Tributária das Américas, or the Tax Academy of the Americas, which consists of legal scholars from north, south, and central America. He is one of nine U.S. legal scholars who are full members. In addition, Blank has been appointed vice-chair of the Teaching Taxation Committee of the Tax Section of the American Bar Association. He was also selected by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to present his article, “Overcoming Overdisclosure: Toward Tax Shelter Detection,” which is forthcoming in the UCLA Law Review, at the 2009 IRS Research Conference in Washington, D.C., in July.

Myra Bluebond-Langner, Camden Faculty of Arts and Sciences (CFAS) professor of anthropology, won the Rutgers Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Research.

T. Corey Brennan, professor of classics, was appointed Andrew W. Mellon Professor-in-Charge at the American Academy in Rome, July 2009–June 2012.

Sang-Wook Cheong, Donald H. Jacobs Chair in Applied Physics, Department of Physics and Astronomy, received the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) Overseas Compatriots Award, given to ethnic Koreans living overseas who have made distinguished contributions in promoting the image of the people and culture of Korea. KBS will produce a documentary on his life and achievements.

The American Physical Society has named Jolie Cizewski, professor of physics in the School of Arts and Sciences, an outstanding referee. The program expresses appreciation for the work anonymous peer reviewers do for the society’s journals and the physics community.

Eric Davis, professor of political science, received a U.S. Institute of Peace grant for his project, “The Formation of Political Identities in Ethnically Divided Societies: Implications for a Democratic Transition in Iraq.”

Robin L. Davis, professor of cell biology and neuroscience, will succeed Peter Klein as executive vice dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. Her appointment as dean is effective July 1. Davis’s findings that two neurotrophin proteins in the cochlea, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and neurotrophin-3 (NT-3), regulate the firing properties and synaptic proteins of spiral ganglion neurons, the primary auditory neurons that relay sound messages to the brain, were published in the Journal of Neuroscience, December 2007, and featured in stories in U.S. News & World Report and NJN News.

Carlos Decena, professor of women and gender studies, received a Woodrow Wilson Foundation Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Scholars, 2008–2009.

Stuart L. Deutsch, who is stepping down as dean of the School of Law–Newark on June 30, has been named a University Professor, effective July 1. Following a one-year leave, he will return to the law faculty and teach environmental law.

Mark Doty, professor of English starting in the fall 2009, was awarded the 2008 National Book Award for Poetry for his book of poems, Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems. 

Sourabh Dube, who just received his Ph.D. in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, has been awarded the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory's 2009 Chamberlain Fellowship. This Fellowship honors Owen Chamberlain, who (along with others) discovered the antiproton in 1955 at the Berkeley Bevatron.

Ahmed Elgammal and Vladimir Pavlovic, professors of computer science, have joined the board of editors of the journal, Image and Vision Computing.

Allan Espiritu, CFAS associate professor of fine arts, received the Presidential Fellowship for Teaching Excellence.

Leonard Feldman, vice president of Physical Science and Engineering Partnerships and director of the Institute for Advanced Materials, Devices and Nanotechnology, has been awarded the 2009 Graduate School–New Brunswick Alumni Award for Distinguished Accomplishments, for outstanding leadership in, and scientific contributions to, the field of materials science.

David Finegold, dean of the School of Management and Labor Relations, was inducted into the New Jersey High-Tech Hall of Fame.

An article by Bonnie Firestein, professor of cell biology and neuroscience, appeared in the Home News Tribune on February 9, outlining research aimed at restoring brain connections after stroke.

Tatiana Flores, professor of art history, was co-curator of the exhibition, “Space, Unlimited,” a mixed-media installation by Venezuelan, Puerto Rican, and Cuban-American artists at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, D.C., from February 21 to April 12.

Rochel Gelman, professor of psychology, was a distinguished visitor at the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind, University of California, Santa Barbara.

The article, “Rewriting Frankenstein Contracts: Workout Prohibitions in Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities” by Anna Gelpern, associate professor at the School of Law–Newark, was selected for presentation at the Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum.

Yuri Gershtein, professor of physics and astronomy, has been elected the U.S. Physics Coordinator of the CMS Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider.

Annette Gordon-Reed, professor of history at Rutgers–Newark, won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in history for her landmark work, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. The book also received the National Book Award for nonfiction in the fall of 2008.

Gary Heiman, professor of genetics, was awarded the Distinguished Service Award by the American Psychopathological Association.

Jody Hey, professsor of genetics, was elected president of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution.

Angela Howard, professor of art history, is an American Council of Learned Societies, American Research in the Humanities in China 2008 Fellow, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

John P. Hughes, professor of physics and astronomy, is a fellow of the American Physical Society.

Allan Punzalan Isaac, professor of American studies, joined the editorial board of the Journal of Asian American Studies and became associate editor of Signs: Journal of Women and Society. He was also elected to the Executive Board of the Center of Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center for a three-year term.

Ben Sifuentes-Jauregui, professor of American studies, was elected to the Modern Language Association’s Committee on the Literatures of People of Color in the United States and Canada in September 2008 for a three-year term.

James T. Johnson, professor of religion, will be honored at a Distinguished Scholars Panel devoted to his work at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association. Johnson is widely recognized as the foremost historian of the just war tradition and as an interpreter of the contemporary implications of both the just war and jihad traditions. His influence has crossed disciplinary lines and, as demonstrated by the affiliations of the contributors to the panel, has been especially significant in areas of political science and international relations. The papers prepared for this Distinguished Scholars Panel are to be published as a thematic focus by the Journal of Military Ethics.

Valery Kiryukhin, professor of physics and astronomy, received a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel research award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany. Award winners are honored for their outstanding research record and invited to spend a period of up to one year cooperating on a long-term research project with specialist colleagues at a research institution in Germany.

Gregory Lastowka, professor of law at Camden, received the Rutgers Board of Trustees Research Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence.

T.J. Jackson Lears, professor of history, was appointed Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies in Berlin, fall 2009. Lears and Stephen Stich have been elected fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the nation’s pre-eminent learned society and research institution. Lears is Board of Governors Professor of History and editor-in-chief of the Raritan Review, a quarterly journal of essays, poetry, and fiction. Stich is Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science. He is also Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield in England.

Barbara Lee, professor of human resource management, won the Daniel Gorenstein Award. The award was established in 1993 by the family, friends, and colleagues of Daniel Gorenstein to commemorate his innovative mathematical research, skillful and enthusiastic exposition of his field, and service to Rutgers.

Alan Leslie, professor of psychology, has been elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was awarded the New Jersey Psychological Association's 2008 Distinguished Researcher Award.

Michael Littman, professor of computer science, is serving as one of two program co-chairs of the International Conference on Machine Learning 2009 and is a member of the editorial board of the new Journal, Foundations and Trends in Machine Learning.

Regina Y. Liu, professor of statistics, received a Fulbright Award, 2008-2009.

Thomas Loughman, who received his Ph.D. from the Department of  Art History, has been appointed deputy director of the Clark Institute in Williamstown, MA.

David Maiullo, physics support specialist in the School of Arts and Sciences, will receive the Distinguished Service Citation from the American Association of Physics Teachers. The group cites Maiullo’s efforts to make physics interesting and accessible by leading workshops for high school physics teachers and presenting physics demonstrations at schools and street fairs.

Tara Matise and Gary Heiman, professors of Genetics, and Steve Buyske, professor of statistics, were featured in the Daily Targum, and Rutgers Research Highlights,  for their PAGE (Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology) grant. Rutgers Magazine, Winter 2009, also cited Matise’s research into computational genetics.

Charlotte Markey, Camden College of Arts and Sciences associate professor of psychology; Sarah Ricks, clinical professor at the School of Law–Camden; and Robert Schindler, professor of marketing at the School of Business–Camden, have won the annual Chancellor's Awards for Teaching Excellence. In each case, the selection committee noted the exemplary commitment to exceptional teaching displayed by the recipients.

Hajimu Masuda, who earned his B.A. from the Department of History,  and is a graduate student at Cornell, has published a revised version of his 2005 honors thesis in Diplomatic History as "Rumors of War: Immigration Disputes and the Social Construction of American-Japanese Relations, 1905–1913." Masuda worked with Michael Adas and David Foglesong at Rutgers.

Alexandre Morozov, who has a joint appointment as professor of physics and astronomy and in the BioMaPs Institute for Quantitative Biology, and Jian Song, professor of mathematics, have won Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowships for 2009. These two-year fellowships are given to early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise in recognition of distinguished performance and a unique potential to make substantial contributions to their field. Morozov also received funding for his first grant proposal to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). His proposal was rated in the 99.5 percentile in the NIH study section (the highest in this section), where most of the proposals came from more senior scientists.

Seongshik Oh, assistant professor of physics and astronomy,  has been selected to receive a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award. Professor Oh won the award for his proposal, “Atomically-Engineered Complex Oxides and their Heterostructures for Novel Electronic Functionalities.” This is the NSF's most prestigious award in support of early career development activities, with special emphasis on integrating research and education. The award provides long-term funding stability (for five years).

Vladimir Pavlovic, associate professor of computer science, has been named to the editorial board of the journal, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

Florence Quideau, student and part-time lecturer in the Department of Art History,  received a School of Arts and Sciences (SAS) Award for Distinguished Contribution to Undergraduate Education at the Annual SAS Awards ceremony.

Gary Rendsburg, Blanche and Irving Laurie Chair in Jewish History and chair of the Department of Jewish Studies, has been named an associate editor of the multivolume Encyclopaedia of the Hebrew Language and Linguistics (Brill, estimated date 2011).

Yana Rodgers, associate professor of women’s and gender studies, was chosen to represent the International Association for Feminist Economics at the United Nations International Conference on Financing for Development in Doha, Qatar, where she delivered a paper on gender-equitable public policy.

Thomas Rudel, professor of human ecology in the Department of Sociology, received the 2008 Outstanding Publication Award from the Environment and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association for his book, Tropical Forests: Regional Paths of Destruction and Regeneration in the Late Twentieth Century.

Julie Ruth, associate professor of marketing in the School of Business–Camden, won the annual Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching. Ruth was cited for her dedication to students and innovation in teaching.

Nancy Sinkoff, associate professor of Jewish studies and history, received a 2008 Hadassah-Brandeis Institute (HBI) Research Award to write the book, Seeing Red: The Political Life of Lucy S. Dawidowicz. The HBI awards annual research grants to support interdisciplinary research on gender and Jewish women.

 Jacob Soll, associate professor of history at Rutgers–Camden, received a Guggenheim Fellowship to write the book, The Enlightenment Library and the Quest for Universal Knowledge. Soll was among 180 artists, scientists, and scholars from the United States and Canada selected from some 3,000 applicants for the fellowship sponsored by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Eduardo Sontag, professor of mathematics in the School of Arts and Sciences, has been named a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, for contributions to control theory and mathematical biology.

Stephen Stich, Board of Governors Professor, is the first recipient of the Joseph B. Gittler Award from the American Philosophical Association for contributions to the philosophy of one or more social sciences, awarded in 2008. He was also the Leverhulme Visiting Professorship at the University of Sheffield from March 1 until May 31, 2009.

William Edward Strawderman, professor of statistics, received the 2008 W. J. Youden Award in Interlaboratory Testing from the American Statistical Association.

Sarolta Takács, professor of history and founding dean of the SAS Honors Program, was elected a finance committee vice-president of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States and is serving on the Turkey, Cyprus, and Greece selection committee for the Institute of International Education, Fulbright-Hays Program from 2008-2011.

Paola Tartakoff, assistant professor of history and Jewish studies,  received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, to commence May 1, 2009, for her research project on Jewish conversion to Christianity and the inquisitorial prosecution of Jews and converts in the Crown of Aragon during the century prior to the massacres and forced conversions of 1391.

George C. Thomas III of the School of Law–Newark has been named a Board of Governors Professor of Law.

Paul Tractenberg, Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor at the School of Law–Newark, has been awarded a scholarly residency at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Italy. During the summer residency, he will work on the Abbott v. Burke chapter for his Rutgers University Press book, New Jersey Goes A-Courting: 10 Legal Cases that Shook the Nation.

Robert L. Trivers, professor of anthropology and biological sciences, was named an Honorary Distinguished Fellow by the University of the West Indies. Trivers is one of only five scholars to receive the award, including two former prime ministers. Trivers is the only non-Jamaican to be so honored.

Phillip Matchett Wood, who will receive his Ph.D. in mathematics this spring, has been awarded a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship to work at U.C.L.A. with Fields Medalist Terence Tao. Wood’s Ph.D. supervisor at Rutgers has been Professor Van Vu.

Kathryn Uhrich, professor of chemistry and chemical biology, will succeed Michael Carr as dean of math and physical sciences of the School of Arts and Sciences. Her appointment as dean is effective July 1.

Mark S. Weiner, professor at the School of Law–Newark, received a Fulbright Fellowship to teach U.S. constitutional law and undertake research at the University of Akureyri, Iceland, during the fall 2009 semester.

Weida Wu, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, has been awarded an NSF CAREER award for his proposal, "Nanoscale magnetic phenomena and coercivity mechanism in layered magnets with extremely large anisotropy."

Nathan Yee, assistant professor in the Departments of Environmental Sciences and Planetary and Earth Sciences, has been selected by the European Association for Geochemistry to receive the 2009 Houtermans’ Medal. The medal is awarded annually to a junior researcher of no more than 35 years of age who makes exceptional contributions to the field of geochemistry. Yee will receive his award this summer at the Goldschmidt Conference in Davos, Switzerland.

Lily Young, professor at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and dean of international programs and research, received the 2009 Waksman Award from the Theobald Smith Society, the New Jersey branch of the American Society for Microbiology. The award recognizes outstanding lifelong accomplishments in the field of microbiology. Young gave the Waksman Honorary Lecture on “Microbes, Methane, and Mud” at the society’s meeting in May.