Awards, Honors, and Professorships

Pioneer Award for Younan Xia
Ellis Goldberg and Clark Lombardi Named Carnegie Scholars
Other Awards, Honors, and Professorships

Pioneer Award for Younan Xia

	Younan Xia.Photo by Mary Levin.

Younan Xia does research at some of the smallest scales imaginable, but the importance of his work has earned a giant reward for the UW chemistry professor. Xia is among 13 scientists nationwide to receive the Director’s Pioneer Award from the National Institutes of Health, an honor that includes $2.5 million in direct research funding over five years.

Xia will use the award to develop new tools to study complex biological systems at very tiny scales using the power of nanomaterials. His work will focus on building probes as small as 10-billionths of a meter in size that can study how communication signals of cells are detected, amplified, and transmitted.

“Cell communication is a very complex system,” says Xia. “It involves many components, and they have to interact with each other meticulously to regulate virtually all aspects of cell behavior, including metabolism and movement.”

Xia’s goal is to quantify the interactions a cell has with various stimuli so that he can say, for example, how a cell will respond when a specific type and level of signal input is applied. That could, in turn, lead to development of drugs or new techniques to control tumor growth or to ease pain.

To develop the probes, Xia will work with gold nanocages, minuscule boxes with all corners removed. A gold nanocage, smaller than a typical virus, can absorb light and convert it into heat. The effect can be used to study the mechanism of the process responsible for feeling pain from heat or an injury. Nanocages can also be developed into carriers for drugs or neurotransmitters that can have their delivery or release controlled by light. When placed inside or next to a cell, the probes can also switch signaling pathways on and off.

The Director’s Pioneer Award is a key part of the National Institutes of Health Roadmap for Medical Research. The award supports scientists who take nnovative approaches to major challenges in biomedical research.

In addition to its support of Xia’s research, the award also carries funding
for the University—perhaps as much as $1.38 million—to cover indirect costs
of the research.

This is an abbreviated version of an article originally published in University Week, September 28,2006. For complete story, click here.

Goldberg and Lombardi Named Carnegie Scholars

Two UW faculty—Ellis Goldberg, professor in the Jackson School of International Studies (JSIS), and Clark Lombardi, assistant professor of law and JSIS adjunct professor—are among the Carnegie Corporation’s twenty Carnegie Scholars selected for 2006. Like all of this year’s Carnegie Scholars, Goldberg and Lombardi study issues relating to Islam and the modern world.

“Islam is a mosaic of many sects,” says Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation. “In focusing our Scholars Program on Islam, our overall aim is to expand the range of knowledge and under-standing about Islam as a religion and about the cultures and communities of Muslim societies both in the United
States and abroad.”

Ellis Goldberg is an expert on Egypt and the relationship between Arab Muslim societies and political movements. His Carnegie-funded research will focus on sovereignty, community, and citizenship in contemporary Arab political thought. Lombardi will analyze the ways in which influential judges have interpreted Islamic law informed by civil, common, or legal reasoning.

“We want to encourage the study of Islam across the country,” says Neil Grabois, vice president and director for strategic planning and program coordination for Carnegie Corporation. “We look for intellectual risk-takers who will play a leading role in accomplishing this goal.”

Other Awards and Honors

UW Anthropology Department faculty, along with colleagues in Anthropology and Biology at Washington State University, have been awarded a five-year, $3,000,000 National Science Foundation IGERT award that will establish a Ph.D. program emphasizing theory and modeling techniques to analyze biological and cultural evolution. The UW portion of the program is directed by anthropology professor Eric A. Smith; Tim Kohler, an archaeologist at WSU, is the program PI.

Marshall Brown, professor of comparative literature, received a fellowship to pursue research at the Bellagio Study Center of the Rockefeller Foundation.

The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture received the 2006 Award of Excellence in the category of Information Design from Communication Arts, for the newest addition to its website, “The Archaeology of West Point.”

Leah Ceccarelli, associate professor of communication, was elected to the Board of Directors for the Rhetoric Society of America. She is also on the editorial board of the journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs.

David Domke, associate professor of communication, is the 2006 recipient of the Krieghbaum Under 40 Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Kent Guy, professor of history, has been appointed Howard and Frances Keller Endowed Professor in History.

James Felak, associate professor of history, has been appointed Jon Bridgman Endowed Professor in History.

Charles D. (CD) Hoyle, research associate in the Department of Physics, received fourth prize in the annual Gravity Foundation awards for his essay, “The ‘Dark Side’ of Gravitational Experiments.”

Alejandro Garcia, professor of physics, was elected an American Physical Society Fellow (Division of Nuclear Physics), cited “for innovative measurements related to nuclear beta decay, fundamental interactions, neutrino detector calibrations and nuclear astrophysics.”

Raymond Jonas, professor of history, has been appointed Giovanni and Amne Costigan Professor in History.

David Knechtges, professor of Asian languages and literature, has been installed as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Knechtges’s career has been dedicated to interpreting and translating classical Chinese poetry.

Randy Kyes, research associate professor of psychology and head of the Division of International Programs at the Washington National Primate Research Center, has been elected to serve as president-elect of the American Society of Primatologists.

Michael McCann, professor of political science and Gordon Hirabayashi Professor for the Advancement of Citizenship, was awarded the Wadsworth Publishing Award in Political Science for his book Rights at Work. The award is given to a book or article for “lasting influence more than a decade after its initial publication.”

Jim Morrow, professor of mathematics, received the 2006 Distinguished Teaching Award from the Pacific Northwest section of the Mathematical Association of America.

David Olson, professor emeritus of political science, has been knighted to the Norwegian Royal Order of the Merit for “outstanding service in the interest of Norway.”

Becky Pettit, assistant professor of sociology, received the James F. Short, Jr. Paper Award from the American Sociological Association’s Crime, Law, and Deviance section for her paper (with Bruce Western) “Black-White Wage Inequality, Employment Rates, and Incarceration.”

Gerry Philipsen, professor of communication, has received the Paul Boase Prize for 2005, given annually by the Ohio University School of Communication to recognize a career of distinguished scholarship in the study of communication.

Adrian Raftery, professor of statistics and director of the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences, has been awarded the 2006 Jerome Sacks Award for Cross-Disciplinary Research by the National Institute of Statistical Sciences “for outstanding contributions at the interface of the statistical sciences and the social, environmental and health sciences, as well as methodological research on Bayesian model selection and averaging.”

John Rehr, professor of physics, was the 2006 co-recipient of the International XAFS (X-ray Absorption Fine-Structure Spectroscopy) Society’s Edward Stern Outstanding Achievement Award.

William P. Reinhardt, professor of chemistry, has been named 2006-2007 Phi Beta Kappa “Couper Scholar.”

Sonnet Retman, assistant professor of American ethnic studies, received a 2006-2007 Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Faculty from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, administered by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.

Lynn Riddiford, professor of biology and Virginia and Prentice Bloedel University Professor, is being honored by the Entomological Foundation at the 2006 meeting of the Entomological Society of America for her many outstanding contributions to entomology.

Sievert Rohwer, professor of biology and curator of birds at the Burke Museum, received an award from the William Brewster Memorial Fund of the American Ornithologists’ Union for the most meritorious body of work on birds in the Western Hemisphere published during the past ten years.

Benjamin Schmidt, associate professor of history, received a Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship for 2006-2007 from the American Council of Learned Societies.

B. Charlotte Schreiber, affiliate professor of earth and space sciences and emeritus professor of Queen’s College, was presented with the Sorby Medal for Distinction in Sedimentology, the highest award presented by the International Association of Sedimentologists.

Sarah Stein, associate professor of history, received a Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies.

Peter D. Ward, professor of biology and earth and space sciences, has been named the 2006 recipient of the Stafford Little Lectureship, Princeton University. The award, whose previous recipients include several U.S. presidents, Supreme Court justices, and scientists including Albert Einstein, comes with a $25,000 honorarium.

[Autumn 2006 - Table of Contents]