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Northwestern University

Faculty Honors & Awards

January 21, 2015

2015-2016 Academic Year

Spring Quarter

Tobin J. Marks, the Vladimir N. Ipatieff Professor of Chemistry, will receive the 2017 Priestley Medal from the American Chemical Society in recognition of his landmark research and dedicated service to the chemistry enterprise. It is the highest honor bestowed by the world’s largest scientific society. In addition, Marks recently received two other international honors: the President’s International Award for Distinguished Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and an honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Munich. Marks is a world leader in the fields of organometallic chemistry, chemical catalysis, materials science, organic electronics, photovoltaics, nanotechnology and sustainability.

The Royal Society of Chemistry has recognized Samuel I. Stupp, the Board of Trustees Professor and director of the Simpson Querrey Institute for BioNanotechnology, with the Soft Matter and Biophysical Chemistry Award. The award honors outstanding and innovative research in soft condensed matter and the application of physico-chemical techniques to biological problems. Stupp has also been invited to become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Franz Geiger, professor of chemistry, has been named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Sarah Maza, the Jane Long Professor in the Arts and Sciences and professor of history, has been named the 11th recipient of the Dorothy Ann and Clarence L. Ver Steeg Distinguished Research Fellowship Award.

Adrian Randolph, dean of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and a professor of art history, has won first prize in the 2016 American Association of Italian Studies' Book Award competition in the Renaissance, 18th and 19th century category. Randolph was recognized for his book, Touching Objects (Yale University Press, 2015).

The Faculty of Theology at the University of Helsinki has announced that it will confer upon Christine Helmer, professor of religious studies, the degree of Doctor of Theology honoris causa in June 2017.

Bryna Kra, the Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor of Mathematics, and Michael R. Wasielewski, the Clare Hamilton Hall Professor of Chemistry and executive director of Northwestern’s Institute for Sustainability and Energy, have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Wendy Wall, the Avalon Professor of the Humanities, has won the 2016 Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence award. The award honors Wall’s outstanding performance and dedication to undergraduate education at Northwestern University.

The following Weinberg College faculty members are inaugural winners of the W Awards, which will provide seed funding for exploratory research:

Professor Chad Mirkin will receive the 2017 William H. Nichols Medal based on his outstanding achievements in the chemical sciences, especially his landmark contributions in nanotechnology. The Nichols Medal is one of the oldest and most prestigious awards of the American Chemical Society and the New York Section of the ACS.

Karl Scheidt, a professor of chemistry, has been named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. 

Bruce G. Carruthers, professor of sociology, is serving as the Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.

The British Academy has elected Joel Mokyr, the Robert H. Strotz Professor, a corresponding fellow for 2016.

Marco Gallio, an assistant professor of neurobiology, has been named a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Associate Professor Daniel Galvin has won the American Political Science Association's Best Paper in Public Policy Award for his paper "Deterring Wage Theft: Alt-Labor, State Politics, and the Policy Determinants of Minimum Wage Compliance."

Assistant Professor Dan Krcmaric has won the American Political Science Association's Kenneth Waltz Dissertation Award for the best dissertation in the field of international security submitted in 2015. The dissertation is entitled: “The Justice Dilemma: International Criminal Accountability, Mass Atrocities, and Civil Conflict."

Michael Rodriguez, an incoming assistant professor of sociology and Latino/Latina Studies, has won the 2016 Dissertation Award from the American Sociological Association.

Kristian Hahn, an assistant professor of physics, is one of 49 young scientists from across the country to receive 2016 Early Career Research Program funding from the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. 

Mark Hauser, an associate professor of anthropology, has been named a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Noelle Sullivan, an assistant professor of instruction in the Global Health Studies Program, has received an Alumnae of Northwestern University Grant. She will use the grant to bring the Canadian aboriginal artist Sonny Assu to campus to do a public talk, offer studio sit-in sessions with two undergraduate art classes, and present a guest lecture in an undergraduate indigenous studies course on campus during the spring quarter of 2017.

Katherine Amato, an assistant professor of anthropology, has won an appointment to the Humans & the Microbiome program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, a group of more than 1,000 scientists and engineers from universities around the world, recently received two significant honors: the $3 million Special Breakthrough Prize, recognizing extraordinary scientific achievement, and the 2016 Gruber Foundation Cosmology Prize, recognizing a discovery leading to fundamental advances in understanding the universe. A number of Northwestern University researchers, including Vicky Kalogera, the Erastus O. Haven Professor of Physics and Astronomy and director of Northwestern’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics, are co-authors of this year’s gravitational-wave discovery paper and therefore awardees for both prizes.

The Weinberg College Committee on Teaching Awards has recognized the following faculty for outstanding teaching:

The E. LeRoy Hall Award for Excellence in Teaching
The Distinguished Teaching Award

The Arts and Sciences Alumni Teaching Award

The Award for Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research:


Winter Quarter

The Chemical Heritage Foundation has named Professor Chad Mirkin the recipient of the 2016 American Institute of Chemists Gold Medal.

Igal Hendel, the Ida C. Cook Professor and chair of the Department of Economics, has received the Frisch Medal from the Econometric Society for his paper, "Equilibria in Health Exchanges: Adverse Selection versus Reclassification Risk.” The award is bestowed every two years for an applied article published in the journal Econometrica.

Assistant Professor of Neurobiology Yevgenia Kozorovitskiy has been named a 2016 Searle Scholar. The award, $300,000 over three years, is one of the most prestigious early career awards for biomedical scientists.

Professor of Chemistry Karl Scheidt has been named a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Richard Kraut, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor in the Humanities, has been named a 2016 fellow by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

The Organization of American Historians has bestowed the 2016 Merle Curti Award on Assistant Professor of History Daniel Immerwahr. The award is given annually for the best books published in American intellectual history and American social history. Immerwahr is the author of Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development (Harvard University Press).

Bryna Kra, the Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor of Mathematics, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She works in ergodic theory and dynamical systems, particularly on problems motivated by combinatorics and number theory.

The following faculty members have been named 2016-17 Fellows at the Kaplan Fellows for the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities:

·      Héctor Carrillo, associate professor, Department of Sociology and Gender & Sexuality Studies Program

·      John Alba Cutler, associate professor, Department of English and Latina/o Studies Program

·      Jonathon Glassman, professor, Department of History

·      Brannon D. Ingram, assistant professor, Department of Religious Studies

·      Nitasha Tamar Sharma, Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence, associate professor, Department of African American Studies and Asian American Studies Program; Affiliate of Performance Studies

·      Erica Weitzman, assistant professor, Department of German

·      Michelle M. Wright, professor, Department of African American Studies and Comparative Literary Studies Program; faculty chair of Hobart Women's Residential College

Professors Joseph T. Hupp and Teri W. Odom — both Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry at Weinberg College — have been named fellows by the Materials Research Society. The highly selective fellowship recognizes individuals for their significant contributions to materials research. 

Peter B. Ritzma Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History Dyan Elliot has been awarded the ACLS Fellowship for her project on “Sexual Scandal and the Medieval Clergy.” Her project examines the impact of the church’s scandal-averse policies on medieval clerical culture through the lenses of gender and sexuality.

Professor of Anthropology and Gender and Sexuality Studies Mary Weismantel has received an Alumnae of Northwestern University Award for Curriculum Development. She will spend the summer developing a new undergraduate course that will explore art and architecture through the context of Native American educational and cultural traditions, environmental sustainability and issues of diversity, inequality and politics.

Assistant Professor of History Paul Ramirez won two prestigious awards for his new project “Salt of God: A Religious History of Mexico.” He will spend the fall of 2016 at Notre Dame’s Institute for Advance Study and the spring of 2017 at the Newberry Library’s D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies.

Assistant Professor of History Keith Woodhouse has been awarded the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at the Huntington Library, one of the preeminent residential fellowships in the Humanities. He will spend the 2016-2017 academic year at the Huntington doing research for his second book, which analyzes environmental impact statements in order to understand the shifting meaning of “environmentalism” in American life.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Elad Harel will receive a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers. He has also been selected to receive the prestigious 2016 Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research.

Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy Nathaniel Stern has been selected to receive the 2016 Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research.

Omar Farha, research professor in chemistry, has been named the Kavli Foundation Emerging Leader in Chemistry. Farha will deliver a lecture at the American Chemical Society’s annual meeting in August. 

Chad Mirkin, professor of chemistry, has received the prestigious International Dan David Prize for his groundbreaking research coupling human DNA and nanotechnology. His work has led to the invention of 3-D structures called spherical nucleic acids (SNAs), which hold promise for the development of new health therapies.

Three Weinberg College professors — T. David Harris, Yevgenia Kozorovitskiy and Mar Reguant — have each received a prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship for 2016 from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. 

Aldon Morris, the Leon Forrest Professor of Sociology and a professor of African American studies, was awarded the 2016 Prose R.R. Hawkins Award for his book “The Scholar Denied.”

Professors of Chemistry Chad Mirkin, Samuel Stupp and Richard Van Duyne have all been inducted into The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering’s (AIMBE) College of Fellows.

Associate Professor of History Ji-Yeon Yuh has received a grant from Humanities Without Walls Global Midwest.  She will be working with colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on a project to collect oral histories from Asian Americans in the Midwest, and with a playwright to create a dramatization of their stories.

Assistant Professor of History David Shyovitz has won the 2016 Van Courtlandt Elliott Prize of the Medieval Academy of America, granted to the author of the best first article in medieval studies. The winning article is “Christian and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Werewolf Renaissance,” Journal of the History of Ideas 75 (2014):521-43.  

Associate Professor of History Ipek Yosmaoglu has won a Lise Meitner Fellowship. She will spend 2016-17 on academic leave at the University of Graz in Austria.

Fall Quarter

Krista Thompson, the Board of Visitors Professor in the Department of Art History, has been awarded the 2016 Charles Rufus Morey Book Award by the College Art Association for her book Shine: The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Aesthetic Practice (Duke University Press).

Tobin J. Marks, the Vladimir N. Ipatieff Professor of Chemistry, and Antonio F. Facchetti, an adjunct professor of chemistry, have been named 2015 Fellows of the National Academy of Inventors.

Associate professor of political science Elizabeth Shakman Hurd has won a three-year, $390,000 grant from the Luce Foundation to explore the relationship between U.S. domestic and foreign policy and religion and religious governance.

The Russell Sage Foundation has selected Mesmin Destin, an assistant professor of psychology, to be a visiting scholar for the 2016-2017 academic year.  

Two Weinberg College faculty members have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Thomas McDade, the Carlos Montezuma Professor of Anthropology, was chosen for his contributions to the field of biological anthropology. Adilson Motter, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Physics and Astronomy, was selected for his contributions to the fields of complex systems and nonlinear dynamics.

Vicky Kalogera, the Erastus O. Haven Professor in physics and astronomy, has been awarded the 2016 Hans A. Bethe Prize from the American Physical Society

Judith N. Levi, an associate professor emerita of linguistics, has received the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Levi was honored for her "exceptional achievements in promoting reconciliation between the German and Jewish peoples."

Wesley G. Skogan, a professor of political science and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research, has received the 2015 Distinguished Achievement Award in Evidence-Based Crime Policy from the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy. This award is the center's highest honor and recognizes individuals who have made a significant contribution and commitment to advance the integration of science with criminal justice practice.

Tracy C. Davis, the Barber Professor of Performing Arts and a professor of English and theatre, has won the Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The award honors researchers whose fundamental discoveries, new theories or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the future.

Laurie Shannon, the Franklyn Bliss Snyder Professor of English Literature, has received the Elizabeth Dietz Memorial Award for her book, “The Accommodated Animal: Cosmopolity in Shakespearean Locales.” The Dietz Prize honors the year’s most outstanding contribution to English Renaissance studies. 

Yarrow Axford, an assistant professor of Earth and planetary sciences, and Danna Freedman, an assistant professor of chemistry, have received prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Awards from the National Science Foundation. Axford will receive nearly $600,000 over five years to reconstruct the climate history of southern Greenland. Freedman will receive $600,000 over five years to advance her work on quantum computing.

Mercouri Kanatzidis, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry, has been awarded the American Physical Society's 2016 James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials. The award, which comes with a $10,000 prize, recognizes outstanding achievement in the science and application of new materials.

James Sauls, a professor of physics and astronomy, has been named a distinguished visiting scholar at the Institute for Materials Science at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Joel Mokyr, the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences and professor of economics and history, has been awarded the 2015 International Balzan Prize for his groundbreaking work on the economic history of Europe and roots of technological change.

Chad A. Mirkin, the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry, has been awarded the inaugural $400,000 Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in Convergence Research from the National Academy of Sciences.

Professor of Chemistry Franz Geiger and his team have received a five-year, nearly $20 million renewable grant from the National Science Foundation to study nanoparticles in emerging technologies and their effects on the environment. 


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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