Duke University Year In Review 2004/05

Honors for Distinguished Duke Faculty

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences elected three Duke faculty members as fellows: James Samuel Clark, H.J. Blomquist Professor of Biology; Herbert Edelsbrunner, Arts and Sciences Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics, and Thomas Petes, chair of the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at Duke University Medical Center. They were among 196 new fellows and 17 new foreign honorary members who are leaders in scholarship, business, the arts and public affairs.

The National Academy of Sciences elected two Duke faculty members among 72 new members: Brigid Hogan, professor and chair of the Medical Center's Department of Cell Biology, and Robert Keohane, then the James B. Duke Professor of Political Science.

John Lester Jackson, assistant professor of cultural anthropology, and Cynthia B. Herrup, professor of history, were chosen as National Humanities Center fellows for the 2005-2006 academic year. Jackson's project will be "Black Judah: Race, Gender, and the Twelve Tribes of Transnationalism." Herrup's is "When Mercy Seasons Justice: Pardons and the Constitution in Early Modern England."

The American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest scientific society and publisher of Science, elected three Duke faculty members as fellows among 308 new members: Philip Benfey, professor and chair of the Department of Biology; Joseph Heitman, James B. Duke Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology; and Miguel Nicolelis, professor of neurobiology.

Michael Ehlers, associate professor of neurobiology, was one of 43 scientists named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, joining eight other HHMI investigators at Duke.

The Vatican invited Geoffrey Wainwright, professor of Christian theology at Duke Divinity School, to give an address on behalf of the non-Catholic churches of the West to help mark the 40th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council's decree on ecumenism.

The Society of Women Engineers gave Pratt School of Engineering Dean Kristina Johnson its highest honor, the 2004 SWE Achievement Award, for her outstanding research and teaching on holography, optical and signal processing and liquid crystal electro-optics.

Duke University Health System president and CEO Victor J. Dzau won two separate, prestigious honors for his longstanding international efforts to fight cardiovascular disease: the Golden Door Award and the Max Delbruck Medal.

The Carnegie Corporation of New York named Associate Professor of Religion Ebrahim Moosa a Carnegie Scholar and awarded him one of 16 $100,000 grants to study the influence of traditional Islamic scholars and the educational institutions over which they preside.

Biochemistry Professor Homme Hellinga's research to engineer proteins and tailor organisms for a variety of tasks won one him one of nine inaugural National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Awards. The award provides an unrestricted grant of $500,000 per year for five years "to encourage exceptional researchers and thinkers from multiple disciplines to conduct high-risk, high-impact research related to the improvement of human health."

Sara E. Miller, associate research professor in the Department of Pathology, has been elected president of the Microscopy Society of America (MSA), the world's oldest and largest society for scientists who use microscopes to examine specimens.