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Northwestern University

Faculty Honors and Awards

2018-2019 Academic Year

 

Summer Quarter

Teri Odom, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry and chair of the Department of Chemistry, has won the 2020 Award in Surface Chemistry from the American Chemical Society. The annual award recognizes distinguished services in the advancement of surface chemistry. Odom will be honored at an awards ceremony at the ACS Spring National Meeting in Philadelphia in March 2020.

Michael Wasielewski, the Clare Hamilton Hall Professor of Chemistry, has won the 2020 Josef Michl  Award in Photochemistry from the American Chemical Society. The annual award recognizes excellence in fundamental research in organic or inorganic photochemistry and/or photophysics. Wasielewski will be honored at an awards ceremony at the ACS Spring National Meeting in Philadelphia in March 2020.

Catherine Woolley, the William Deering Professor of Neurobiology, will receive a Transformative Investigator award at the 2019 Gill Symposium at Indiana University on Sept. 25, 2019. The annual award recognizes scientists who have made exceptional contributions to cellular or molecular neuroscience.

Tobin J. Marks, the Vladimir N. Ipatieff Professor of Chemistry, has been elected a Foreign Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences in recognition of his scientific contributions. Marks is a world leader in the fields of organometallic chemistry, chemical catalysis, materials science, organic electronics, photovoltaics and nanotechnology. He has developed processes for numerous types of recyclable, environmentally friendly plastics, efficient organic displays and transistor circuitry, and organic solar energy cells.

Anna Parkinson, an associate professor in the Department of German, has won a New Directions Fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. New Directions fellowships are awarded to scholars  in the humanities and humanistic social sciences to acquire systematic training that expands their knowledge beyond their own areas of interest.

Cristina Traina, professor of religious studies and chair of the Department of Religious Studies, has won a $50,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to study the legacy of James H. Cone’s Black Theology & Black Power.

Two Weinberg College faculty members, Associate Professor of Economics Mar Reguant and Associate Professor of Chemistry Danna Freedman, have been honored with 2019 PCASE awards by the United States government. This award — the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers — recognizes outstanding scientists and engineers who are beginning their independent research careers and who show exceptional promise for leadership in science and technology. Both Reguant and Freedman were nominated for the awards by the National Science Foundation.

Nina Wieda, a lecturer in the College's Chicago Field Studies program, has been named to the 2020 class of Emerging Leaders by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Wieda will participate in briefings with Council experts to explore global security, global cities, economic inequality, food insecurity and other topical global issues defining U.S. engagement abroad.

 

Spring Quarter

Julia Kalow, an assistant professor of chemistry, has won a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, the organization's most prestigious award for junior faculty. Kalow will receive $700,000 over five years from the NSF’s Division of Chemistry to study how light can be used to control the formation and breakage of reversible chemical bonds in polymer networks.

Fred Rasio, the Joseph Cummings Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, has been named the winner of the 2019 Brouwer Award by the Division on Dynamical Astronomy of the American Astronomical Society. This career award recognizes a major contributor to the field of dynamical astronomy who demonstrates excellence in scientific research and has had a proven impact and influence in the field.

Aldon Morris, the Leon Forrest Professor of Sociology and African American Studies, has been named the president-elect of the American Sociological Association, effective Aug. 1, 2019. In August 2020, he will become president of the organization and will deliver the presidential address at the ASA's annual meeting in 2021.

Chad A. Mirkin, the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry and director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology (IIN), has been named the 2021 recipient of the G. M. Kosolapoff Award. This award is the highest honor presented by the Auburn Local Section of the American Chemical Society, and is presented to chemists and biochemists in recognition of outstanding scientific contributions. Among the list of 30 awardees are 12 Nobel Laureates and 28 National Academy Members, all of whom have made transformative impacts on the world through their research.

José Medina, the Walter Dill Scott Professor of Philosophy, has been named the 2019 winner of the Dorothy Ann and Clarence L. Ver Steeg Distinguished Research Fellowship Award. The $40,000 award supports the research of a tenured Northwestern faculty member whose research and scholarship are so outstanding as to enhance the reputation of Northwestern, nationally and internationally.

Joseph Takahashi, Professor Emeritus of Neurobiology and Physiology and the Walter and Mary Elizabeth Glass Professor Emeritus in the Life Sciences, has been awarded the 2019 Gruber Neuroscience Prize from the Gruber Foundation. The $500.000 award is in honor of Takahashi's pioneering work on the molecular and genetic basis of circadian rhythms in mammals

Chad A. Mirkin, the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry and director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology (IIN), has been awarded the distinguished Harrison Howe Award from the Rochester Section of the American Chemical Society. The award was established to recognize scientists who have made outstanding contributions to chemistry or closely related fields and who show great potential for further achievement.

Bryna Kra, the Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor of Mathematics, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. The election is in recognition of Kra's "distinguished and continuing achievements in original research."

Professor of Chemistry Brian Hoffman has been named the 2020 winner of the Robert Burns Woodward Career Award in Porphyrin Chemistry by the Society of Porphyrins and Phthalocyanines.

The College's Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities has named nine Weinberg College faculty members among its 2019-2020 class of Faculty Fellows. As fellows, the faculty members will teach a reduced courseload so that they can develop research projects within an interdisciplinary community. The Weinberg College faculty members who have won fellowships include: 

The National Science Foundation has awarded Julia Kalow, an assistant professor of chemistry, a CAREER award in support of her project, "Photocontrolled Dynamic Covalent Crosslinkers for Light-Responsive Polymer Networks." 

Kevin Boyle, the William Smith Mason Professor of American History, and Associate Professor of Psychology Mesmin Destin are among five Northwestern faculty to win 2019 University Teaching Awards. The awards recognize outstanding performance and dedication to undergraduate education at Northwestern University, and the honorees are "setting the standard by which our very best teachers should be judged," Provost Jonathan Holloway said. 

Patricia Scarampi, an associate professor of instruction in French, is the 2019 winner of the CLI Award for Excellence in Foreign Language Teaching at Northwestern. The award recognizes faculty who have established a tradition of excellence in teaching and who have also shown laudable engagement in departmental, college or university affairs.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Sera Young has been awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship by the Carnegie Corporation. Carnegie Fellows receive grants of up to $200,000 to produce a significant project on their area of research. Young plans to study what the measurement of water insecurity "can teach us about peace, prosperity, health and policy."

Professor and Chair of Anthropology Matthew Johnson and Professor of Sociology Lincoln Quillian are among the 2019 Guggenheim Fellows newly named by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Johnson and Quillian are among a diverse group of 168 scholars and artists chosen from among a pool of almost 3,000 applicants from the United States and Canada. The prestigious fellowships are awarded on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise. Johnson will use his fellowship to work on a book project, “An Archaeology of the English in the Atlantic World in the 2nd Millennium CE.” Quillian will apply his fellowship toward his research on hiring discrimination as it pertains to racial and ethnic minorities in North America and Europe.

The International Human Frontier Science Program has awarded Erik Andersen, an assistant professor of molecular biosciences, $350,000 a year for the next three years to lead an international team studying the repeatability of genetic mechanisms underlying behavioral evolution.

Omar Farha, an associate professor of chemistry,  will receive the Japan Society of Coordination Chemistry International Award for Creative Work. This award is presented to an early-career researcher who has contributed to the development of coordination chemistry through outstanding and pioneering work. Farhar will deliver his award lecture during the 69th Conference of Japan Society of Coordination Chemistry at Nagoya University in Japan in September 2019.

Jennifer Cole, a professor of linguistics,  has been elevated to the rank of Fellow of the International Speech Communication Association. Cole has been recognized for her “theoretical and experimental descriptions of the sources of phonological and prosodic variability in spontaneous speech." Fewer than 0.4 percent of the members of the ISCA receive this honor.

 

Winter Quarter

Will Dichtel, the Robert L. Letsinger Professor of Chemistry, has been selected to the Defense Science Study Group for 2020-2021. Dichtel is one of 19 members of the recently announced cohort. Founded in 1986, the DSSG is a program of education and study that introduces outstanding science and engineering professors to US security challenges and encourages them to apply their talents to these issues. Group members focus on defense policy, related research and development, and the systems, missions, and operations of the armed forces and the intelligence community.

Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, a professor of political science and religious studies, has been awarded a 2019 Luce/ACLS Fellowship in Religion, Journalism and International Affairs. The fellowship will support Shakman’s research on the border between “religion/not religion” and how that border impacts U.S. foreign and domestic policy. The fellowship includes a stipend of $55,000, as well as $5,000 to support media engagement activities and $3,000 for research costs.

The National Science Foundation has awarded Yevgenia Kozorovitskiy, an assistant professor of neurobiology, a $450,000 CAREER award in support of her project, "Mapping the proteomic landscape of neural systems." 

In recognition of their achievements and potential to contribute substantially to their scientific fields, Bao Le Hung, an assistant professor of mathematics, and Raffaella Margutti, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy, have been awarded 2019 Sloan Research Fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The two-year $70,000 fellowship is one of the most competitive and prestigious awards available to early career researchers.

A translation of the Polish poet Adam Zagajewski's work “Assymmetry” by Clare Cavanagh, the Frances Hooper Professor in the Arts and Humanities and a professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and and Comparative Literary Studies, has been named a finalist for the 2018 Poetry Awards by the National Book Critics Circle.

Associate Professor of Art History Huey Copeland, the 2018-2021 Arthur Andersen Teaching and Research Professor, has won the 2019 David C. Driskell Prize from the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The honor is the first national award to celebrate an early- or mid-career scholar or artist whose work makes an original and important contribution to the field of African-American art or art history.

The American Physical Society's largest division, the Division of Condensed Matter Physics, has elected Professor of Physics and Astronomy James Sauls to a four-year term as secretary-treasurer. Sauls has also been appointed to the International Science Advisory Committee of the European MicroKelvin Platform, and has recently been named chief specialty editor for Frontiers in Physics, where he will oversee the journal Frontiers in Condensed Matter Physics.

The Academy of American Poets has named Board of Trustees Professor of English Natasha Trethewey a  chancellor, an honorary position that has been held by some of the most distinguished poets in the United States. In this role, Trethewey will consult with the organization on matters of artistic programming, serve as a judge for the organization’s largest prizes for poets and act as an ambassador of poetry in the world at large. 

Professor of Psychology Galen Bodenhausen will receive Northwestern University's 2019 Daniel Linzer Award for Faculty Excellence in Diversity and Equity. Bodenhausen was selected for his broad and sustained leadership in increasing diversity, equity and inclusion in the College's Department of Psychology.

Sir Fraser Stoddart, the Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry, has received the China International Science and Technology Cooperation Award. Established by China’s State Council in 1994, the honor is conferred on foreign individuals or organizations that have made important contributions to China’s science and technology development. Stoddart, the 2016 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, has served as a visiting scholar at Tianjin University, has received nine honorary professorships from Chinese universities, and has mentored more than 60 Chinese students, of which almost half currently hold professorships at American and Chinese universities.

Associate Professor of Religious Studies Barry Wimpfheimer's book The Talmud: A Biography has won the  2018 National Jewish Book Award in Education and Jewish Identity from the Jewish Book Council. In reviewing the book, the Council described it as "unique in its investigation of the Talmud as a contemporary Jewish icon ... an engaging read and a wonderful presentation of Judaism’s most discussed book." Wimpfheimer's book also appeared in Princeton University Press’ “Lives of Great Religious Books” series.

 

Fall Quarter

Samuel Stupp, the Board of Trustees Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Chemistry, Medicine, and Biomedical Engineering, has been named a 2018 fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.

In recognition of his “conspicuous achievements in chemistry,” Chad A. Mirkin, the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry and the director of Northwestern's  International Institute for Nanotechnology, has been selected to receive the 2018 Theodore Williams Richards Award and Medal  from the Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society.

Professor Jorge Coronado, director of the Program in Latin American & Caribbean Studies, will serve as a Green Visiting Professor at the University of British Columbia in 2019-2020. The short-term appointment will allow Coronado to share his expertise with members of the UBC community.

Joseph Hupp, the Morrison Professor of Chemistry, will receive the 2018 George S. Hammond Award from the Inter-American Photochemical Society. The award is bestowed biannually in recognition of lifelong achievement in, and contributions to, the photochemical sciences. Hupp’s contributions range from fundamental work on light-induced electron-transfer reactions to elucidation of mechanisms for molecule-powered solar cells to design and synthesis of new classes of light-harvesting and photocatalytic materials.

Fred Lewis, a professor emeritus of chemistry, has been elected a fellow of the Inter-American Photochemical Society. The honor recognizes outstanding lifetime scientific achievements in photochemistry or contributions to either the science of photochemistry as a discipline or the furtherance of the society through service.

Chad Mirkin, the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry and director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology, will receive the 2019 Netherlands Award for Supramolecular Chemistry. The award, presented by the Research Center for Functional Molecular Systems, recognizes “outstanding scientists in the supramolecular chemistry field.” Previous recipients of the award include Nobel Laureates Jean-Marie Lehn, considered to be the “founding father of supramolecular chemistry,” and Sir Fraser Stoddart, Northwestern’s Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern and architect of the mechanical bond in chemistry.

Nanoscientist George Schatz has been awarded the Ahmed Zewail Prize in Molecular Sciences by the journal Chemical Physics Letters. Schatz, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry, is being recognized for his outstanding contributions to the theory and understanding of gas-phase reaction dynamics, plasmonics, and nanostructured materials.

Jeffrey Masten, a professor of English and gender and sexuality studies, has won the 2018 Elizabeth Dietz Memorial Award for his book, Queer Philologies: Sex, Language, and Affect in Shakespeare’s Time (University of Pennsylvania Press). The award, from the journal SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, is given in alternate years to the best recent study in either English Renaissance literary studies or the best recent study in Tudor and Stuart Drama.

 Todd Gingrich, an assistant professor of chemistry, has been awarded the 2019 Irwin Oppenheim Award from the American Physical Society for his article "Proof of the Finite-time Thermodynamic Uncertainty Relation for Steady-state Currents." The award recognizes outstanding contributions by early-career scientists who publish in the journal Physical Review E (PRE).

Teri Odom, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry, has been elected a Fellow Member of The Optical Society, the leading professional association in optics and photonics. Odom is being honored specifically for pioneering contributions to multi-scale plasmonic nanostructures and nanophotonics.

Professor of Psychology Steven Franconeri has won a Cattell Fellowship from the James McKeen Cattell Fund. The fellowship will support Franconeri's work on a book that synthesizes three research literatures: visual perception, graph comprehension, and data visualization. These research communities often study similar questions and bring highly complementary expertise and styles of inquiry, yet too rarely interact. Franconeri, director of the College's Cognitive Science Program, will serve as an ambassador among these fields by abstracting over jargon, motivating methodologies, and explaining models, from one field to the others.

John A. Rogers, the Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Neurological Surgery and a professor of chemistry at Weinberg College, will receive the 2018 MRS Medal from the Materials Research Society. The honor  recognizes Rogers’s “pioneering contributions to materials for diverse classes of bio-integrated electronic systems.”

Chad A. Mirkin, the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry and director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology, has received the Friendship Award from the nation of China. The honor is China's highest recognition for “foreign experts who have made outstanding contributions to the nation.”

Teri Odom, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry and chair of the Department of Chemistry, and research professor Takashi Nishikawa have been named 2018 Fellows of the American Physical Society. The APS's fellowship program recognizes members who have made advances in physics through original research and publication or significant innovative contributions in the application of physics to science and technology.

Board of Trustees Professor of Statistics Larry Hedges has been awarded the 2018 Yidan Prize for Education Research, the world’s largest prize in education research. The award comes with $3.9 million in support. The Yidan Prize Foundation recognized Hedges for his ground-breaking statistical methods for meta-analysis, which serve as a foundation for much of the rigorous, evidenced-based education policy across the country and the globe. 

Danna Freedman, an associate professor of chemistry, has won the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry for her joint contributions to developing a molecular approach to quantum information science and harnessing diamond anvil cells as tiny, transparent synthetic vessels to create new chemical bonds. This prestigious award is given to a chemist within 10 years of her terminal degree and whose work demonstrates independence of thought and originality in research. The award dates back to 1931, with the inaugural recipient being Linus Pauling.

Sadie Wignall, an assistant professor of molecular biosciences, and graduate student Timothy Mullen have won the 2018 PLOS Genetics Research Prize for their work, "Interplay between microtubule bundling and sorting factors ensures acentriolar spindle stability during C. elegans oocyte meiosis." The prize, which recognizes outstanding primary research, is awarded on the basis of scientific excellence and community impact.

Bryna Kra, the Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor of Mathematics, has been selected by the Association for Women in Mathematics and the American Mathematical Society to deliver the Noether Lecture at the 2019 Joint Mathematics Meetings. Kra was chosen for her “profound impact on mathematics, both through her work in the fields of dynamical systems and ergodic theory and though her service to the profession,” the Association for Women in Mathematics said.

Will Dichtel, the Robert L. Letsinger Professor of Chemistry, has won the Akron Section Award from the Akron Section of the American Chemical Society. The award recognizes young scientists who demonstrate exceptional promise for making significant contributions to chemical science

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