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Northwestern University

Faculty Honors and Awards

2014-2015 Academic Year

Summer Quarter

Dedre Gentner, the Alice Gabrielle Twight Professor of Psychology, has won the $100,000 Rumelhart Prize in Cognitive Science. The prize, considered to be the most important award in the cognitive science field, is awarded annually to an individual making a significant contemporary contribution to the theoretical foundations of human cognition. Gentner was recognized not only for her prolific experimental work with both children and adults, but also for her general theory of analogical reasoning, called Structure-Mapping Theory.

Assistant Professor of Neurobiology 
Yevgenia Kozorovitskiy has been recognized with two prominent awards recently. She has received the Beckman Young Investigator Award and has also been named a 2015 Rita Allen Foundation Scholar. The awards will support Kozorovitskiy’s research into the ways that chemical neuromodulators work together in the brain.

Five members of the Department of Chemistry have received 2016 National Awards from the American Chemical Society. They include: 

Ken Paller, a professor of psychology, has received a National Science Foundation award for potentially transformative research in neural and cognitive systems.

Kevin Boyle, the William Smith Mason Professor of American History, has been named a “Public Scholar” by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Boyle will use the $50,400 grant from the NEH to complete a book about anarchism in the early 20th century.

Alice Eagly, the James Padilla Chair of Arts and Sciences and a professor of psychology, has received an honorary doctorate from the Université de Lausanne.

Renee Engeln, professor of instruction in the Department of Psychology, has received the Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Northwestern University Undergraduate Psychology Association for 2014-2015.

Laurie Zoloth, professor of religious studies, has been named a life member of Clare Hall College at the University of Cambridge. Life membership is granted when a scholar is awarded and then completes a fellowship successfully and contributes to the intellectual life of the University of Cambridge. This is the first life membership at Cambridge awarded to a Weinberg College faculty member.

S. Hollis Clayson, professor of art history and the Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities, has been named the Varnedoe Visiting Professor at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.

Spring Quarter

Associate Professor of Political Science Dan Galvin is the recipient of Weinberg College’s 2015 E. LeRoy Hall Award. The award, which recognizes excellence in teaching undergraduates, is awarded to the most senior tenure-line faculty member chosen to receive the Weinberg College Distinguished Teaching Award.

Professor of Molecular Biosciences Vinzenz Unger, Assistant Professor of History Henri Lauziere and Assistant Professor of English Rebecca Johnson are the recipients of the 2015 Weinberg College Distinguished Teaching Awards.

Patricia Beddows, assistant professor of instruction, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, is the recipient of the 2015 Weinberg College Arts and Sciences Alumni Teaching Award.

Helen Schwartzman, a professor of anthropology, and Hannah Feldman, an associate professor of art history, have been chosen to receive the 2015 Weinberg College Awards for Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research.

Deborah Cohen, the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of the Humanities and a professor of history, has been named a 2015 Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence by Northwestern University.  The award recognizes professors with an outstanding dedication to undergraduate education.

Mercouri Kanatzidis, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor in Chemistry, has received the Royal Society of Chemistry’s De Gennes Prize. The prize recognizes outstanding and exceptional work in the field of materials chemistry.

Chad Mirkin, the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry, professor of chemical and biological engineering, biomedical engineering, materials science and engineering, and medicine, and director of Northwestern’s International Institute for Nanotechnology, is the recipient of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Centenary Prize. The prize recognizes outstanding overseas chemists who are exceptional communicators.

Omar Farha, research professor of chemistry, is the recipient of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Environment, Sustainability and Energy Division Early Career Award. The prize recognizes outstanding contributions to the chemical sciences in the area of environment, sustainability and energy.

Richard Van Duyne, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry, is the recipient of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Theophilus Redwood Award. The honor, named for a 19th-century Welsh chemist, is given to a leading analytical scientist who also is an outstanding communicator.

Assistant Professor of Molecular Biosciences Erik Andersen has received a research scholar grant from the American Cancer Society.  

The American Society of International Law has awarded Karen Alter, a professor of political science, with a certificate of merit for preeminent contribution to creative scholarship for her book, “The New Terrain of International Law: Courts, Politics, Rights.”

Daniel Immerwahr, an assistant professor of history, has received a Huntington Fellowship from the Huntington Library, San Marino California. This is a highly prestigious fellowship for one year of research leave at one of the nation's leading research libraries.

Peter Carroll, an associate professor of history, has been named a Fellow at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. This is a highly prestigious fellowship for a year of research leave at the nation's top research center in the humanities.

Kevin Boyle, the William Smith Mason Professor of American History, has been named an inaugural Andrew Carnegie Fellow. The fellowship includes up to $200,000 per recipient to support a research sabbatical for work that focuses on studies in the social sciences and humanities.

Chris Abani, the Board of Trustees Professor of English, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Jennifer Richeson, the MacArthur Foundation Chair and a professor of psychology and African-American studies, has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

The following Weinberg College faculty members have been named 2015-16 Fellows by the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities:

Kate Juschenko, an assistant professor of mathematics, has received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Three Weinberg College faculty have won 2015 Simons Foundation fellowships: Adilson Motter, a professor of physics and astronomy; Mihnea Popa, a professor of mathematics; and Laura DeMarco, a professor of mathematics.

Carol Heimer, a professor of sociology, has been named a Fellow by the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

Leslie McCall, a professor of sociology, has been named a Fellow by the Advanced Research Collaborative at the City University of New York.  

Monica Prasad, a professor of sociology, has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and has been named a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation.

The following assistant professors have been approved for promotion to the rank of associate professor with tenure, effective Sept. 1, 2015:

Yoram Lithwick, physics and astronomy; Brian Odom, physics and astronomy; and Rebecca Seligman, anthropology, were approved for tenure and promotion to the rank of associate professor earlier this year.

Board of Trustees Professor of African American Studies and Professor of History Darlene Clark Hine has been named a 2015 National Women’s History Month honoree by The National Women’s History Project.

Danna Freedman, an assistant professor of chemistry, and Toru Shiozaki, an assistant professor of chemistry, have received 2015 Sloan Research Fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Professor Daniel Dombeck was selected as a recipient of the 2015 McKnight Scholar Award for his lab's research project, “Functional Dynamics, Organization and Plasticity of Place Cell Dentritic Spines.”

Winter Quarter

T. David Harris, an assistant professor of chemistry, was awarded Northwestern's ISEN Early Career Investigator Award for 2015.

The Secret History of Las Vegas, a novel by Chris Abani, professor of English, has been nominated for a 2015 Edgar Allen Poe award by the Mystery Writers of America.

Richard B. Silverman, the John Evans Professor of Chemistry and a professor of molecular biosciences, was elected a 2014 fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.

Thomas J. Meade, the Eileen Foell Professor in Cancer Research and a professor of chemistry, was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Karen Alter, a professor of political science, won the best book award for 2014 from the International Studies Association's International Law Section for her book The New Terrain of International Law: Courts, Politics, Rights.

Danna Freedman, an assistant professor of chemistry, has been named a postdoctoral fellow in environmental chemistry by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation.

Mihnea Popa, a professor of mathematics, has been named to the American Mathematical Society’s 2015 Class of Fellows.

Helen Tilley, associate professor of history, is the winner of the Ludwik Fleck Prize from the Society for the Social Studies of Science for her 2011 book, Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950.

Deborah Cohen, the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of the Humanities and a professor of history, won two major prizes for her 2013 book Family Secrets: Shame and Privacy in Modern Britain: the Morris D. Forkosch Prize from the American Historical Association, and the Stansky Book Prize from the North American Conference on British Studies.

Scott Sowerby, associate professor of history, has won the Whitfield Book Prize for his book Making Toleration: The Repealers and the Glorious Revolution. The award, bestowed by the Royal Historical Society in the United Kingdom, recognizes the best first book on British or Irish history.

Nathaniel Stern, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, received the 2014 Northwestern-Argonne Early Career Investigator Award for Energy Research.

Larry Hedges, professor of statistics and chair of the Department of Statistics, received the 2014 Sells Award for Distinguished Multivariate Research from the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology.

Chris Abani, the Board of Trustees Professor of English, was named a 2014 USA Ford Fellow by United States Artists.

Chad Mirkin, professor of chemistry, received an honorary degree from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.

Susan E. Phillips, associate professor of English and the Alumnae of Northwestern Teaching Professor, was named a fellow in the Academic Leadership Program.

Edward L. Gibson, chair of the Department of Political Science and a professor of political science, was named a fellow in the Academic Leadership Program.

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