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July 26, 2007

PEOPLE OF THE TIMES

History professor Anthony Novosel will be filling the seat on Senate Council and Faculty Assembly held by Robert Hayden, professor of anthropology, who is going on sabbatical. Novosel will serve the third year of Hayden’s three-year term.

Under University Senate bylaws, the candidate in the most recent election who received the most votes in a unit without winning a seat is asked to serve out a vacant term. Both Novosel and Hayden are in the School of Arts and Sciences social sciences area.

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Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh has elected John C. Camillus as a term trustee. Camillus, who joined the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business faculty in 1977, has held the Donald R. Beall Endowed Chair in Strategic Management since 1991. He also served as associate dean of the Katz school from 1982 to 1990.

Among his honors and awards at Pitt, Camillus won the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 1988 and the Chancellor’s Distinguished Public Service Award in 2006, in addition to several distinguished teaching honors awarded at the Katz school.

Camillus also has been honored for outstanding community service to more than 20 cultural and public service organizations in the region, including the Andy Warhol Museum, Carnegie Science Center, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Riverlife Task Force and Gateway Rehabilitation Center.

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Donald S. Burke, dean of the Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH) and associate vice chancellor of global health, has been named an ambassador in Research!America’s Paul G. Rogers Society for Global Health Research. Burke is among 50 of the nation’s foremost global health experts who have joined forces to increase awareness about the critical need for greater U.S. public and private investment in research to improve global health.

“Our nation’s leaders must understand that increased U.S. investment in global health research will help improve health conditions in impoverished countries and also help to prevent the emergence and spread of diseases that can endanger Americans here and abroad,” said Burke. “Put simply, it’s a matter of national security.”

The society, named for the Hon. Paul G. Rogers, a former Florida congressman and champion for research to improve health, was established in 2006 by Research!America with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In its first two years, the society’s advisory council — which includes three Nobel Laureates — selected 50 of the nation’s leading scientist advocates to serve as ambassadors.

Burke, who was recruited to Pitt from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2006, also directs the University’s Center for Vaccine Research; serves as associate vice chancellor for global health, and is the first occupant of the UPMC Jonas Salk Chair in Global Health.

From 1999 to 2006, Burke was principal investigator of a National Institutes of Health-funded HIV Vaccine Trials Unit, a consortium based at the Johns Hopkins Center for Immunization Research and involving clinical trial sites in China, India and Thailand.

Before retiring from the U.S. Army Medical Corps in 1997 at the rank of colonel, Burke was associate director for emerging threats and biotechnology at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and professor of medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md.

In his new leadership position, Burke will work to raise the visibility of global health research through the news media and in meetings with policy makers, opinion leaders and the public. One of his central messages will be the importance of effective collaboration among the nation’s government, industry, academic, patient advocacy and philanthropic research sectors.

Research!America is the nation’s largest not-for-profit public education and advocacy alliance working to make research to improve health a higher national priority. Founded in 1989, it is supported by 500 member organizations that together represent more than 125 million Americans.

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Juan Manfredi, chair of the Department of Mathematics, will become the School of Arts and Sciences associate dean for undergraduate studies, effective Sept. 1.

As associate dean, Manfredi will chair the Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Council and will be responsible for providing leadership on curricular issues. Manfredi also will lead the team of assistant deans and other professionals who provide the academic services traditionally expected of the Office of the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies, including the Advising Center, the Academic Resource Center, the Office of Experiential Learning, Student Records and Freshman Programs.

“Dr. Manfredi has a distinguished record as a teacher,” stated N. John Cooper, dean of Arts and Sciences, in announcing Manfredi’s appointment. “He has been deeply engaged with our undergraduate program throughout his career at the University of Pittsburgh, and led the team that started our Calculus Project, an initiative that brought core calculus instruction into the digital age in the early 1990s. Dr. Manfredi’s innovative teaching of undergraduate calculus was supported financially by the NSF (National Science Foundation) between 1993 and 1996, and his contributions were recognized through the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 1994.”

Manfredi’s research specialty is nonlinear potential theory, using the methods of classical complex analysis, nonlinear partial differential equations, harmonic analysis and the theory of quasi-regular mappings. Manfredi has published extensively in the peer-reviewed journals of his discipline and has a strong record of NSF support for his research.

He came to Pitt as an assistant professor in 1989 and was promoted to associate professor and awarded tenure in 1993. He was promoted to professor in 1998.

Mathematics professor Ivan Yotov will serve as interim chair of the math department from Sept. 1, 2007, until Aug. 31, 2008.

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Sanford Asher, Distinguished Professor of Analytical Chemistry, Biophysical Chemistry, Materials Sciences and Physical Chemistry in the School of Arts and Sciences, will receive the 2008 Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award at the Pittcon Conference & Expo in New Orleans next March.

Established in 1957, the award honors individuals with an outstanding record of contributions to the field of applied spectroscopy, or the study of the interaction of light particles and matter.

Asher has been at the forefront of spectroscopy for more than 20 years, having pioneered the development of UV Raman Spectroscopy, which allows the study of interactions between molecular electron clouds and nuclear vibrations.

Asher also was instrumental in the development of a non-invasive method to detect glucose levels in bodily fluid. Using a sensory material worn like a contact lens, diabetics could one day be spared having to prick their fingers to check blood sugar levels. The thin plastic sensor would change colors based on the concentration of blood glucose.

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Susan Albrecht, associate professor and associate dean for student and alumni services, development and public relations at the School of Nursing, received the 2007 University of Pittsburgh School of Education Distinguished Alumni Award.

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Ann Mitchell, assistant professor in the Department of Health and Community Systems at the Pitt nursing school, received the Cameos of Caring Nurse Educator Award. The award was established by the School of Nursing in 1999 to honor bedside nurses who demonstrate excellence in nursing care, serve as an advocate for patients and families and embody the essence of the nursing profession.

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Kathy S. Magdic, coordinator of the acute care nurse practitioner program and instructor in the Department of Acute and Tertiary Care at the School of Nursing, last month was inducted as a fellow of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners during the AANP national conference in Indianapolis.

The AANP fellowship program was established in 2000 to recognize nurse practitioner leaders who have made outstanding contributions to health care through nurse practitioner clinical practice, research, education or policy. Priority initiatives of AANP are the development of leadership and mentorship programs for nurse practitioners and nurse practitioner students.

Fellows of the AANP are committed to the global advancement of nursing through the development of imaginative and creative future nurse practitioner leaders and, as such, hold an annual think tank to strategize about the future of nurse practitioners and health care. Magdic serves on the boards of the Nurse Practitioner Association of Southwestern PA and the Pennsylvania Coalition of Nurse Practitioners.

AANP was founded in 1985 and is the oldest, largest and only full-service national professional organization for nurse practitioners of all specialties. AANP represents approximately 95,000 nurse practitioners around the country. The group advocates for the active role of nurse practitioners as providers of high-quality, cost-effective and personalized health care.

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The Society for Risk Analysis has awarded Felicia Wu the 2007 Chauncey Starr Award, which each year honors the individual aged 40 or under who has made the most exceptional contributions to the field of risk analysis. Wu, an assistant professor of environmental and occupational health in the Graduate School of Public Health, specializes in the use of risk and economic analysis in environmental health and policy.

One of Wu’s main research areas is indoor air quality. She said, “Though we spend over 90 percent of our time indoors, indoor environments have received far less regulatory and public health attention than outdoor environments.”

Her research aims to: establish the link among mold and moisture prevalence in homes, children’s asthma and socio-economic factors; examine the cost-effectiveness of interventions to improve indoor air quality; develop effective communication tools to inform homeowners on how to improve and maintain their home environments, and develop recommendations for national and local policy to improve indoor air for better public health.

Wu also studies mycotoxins — toxic and carcinogenic chemicals produced by fungi — in food. She has developed models to estimate the economic impacts of mycotoxins in several areas: human health, animal health and regulations, particularly the strict mycotoxin regulations imposed by the European Union.

Her newest research area concerns estimating the impact on livestock health of mycotoxins in corn-based ethanol co-products, which are fed to animals.

Wu is the recipient of a National Institutes of Health Early Career Award. She chaired an international conference on indoor environmental quality in 2005, from which papers were published as a mini-monograph in the June 2007 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives, of which she is guest editor.

Wu also is an elected member of the Delta Omega National Honor Society for Public Health and is a consulting editor of the Archives of Environmental and Occupational Health and an area editor (economics and regulation) of the new World Mycotoxin Journal. She also has served as an ad hoc reviewer for multiple journals.

SRA unites international experts in science, engineering, economics, psychology, law and policy to study the assessment, communication and management of risks to health, safety, environment and security.

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Kenton Zehr, professor of surgery and chief, Division of Cardiac Surgery at the School of Medicine, was awarded the 2007 Cardiothoracic Surgical Faculty of the Year Award.

Rodney Landreneau, professor of surgery at the medical school, was awarded the 2007 General Thoracic Surgical Faculty of the Year Award.

Both awards are given annually by the Heart, Lung and Esophageal Surgery Institute. The awards recognize Zehr’s and Landreneau’s efforts in training and educating the residents during the 2006-2007 academic year.

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Katherine L. Wisner, director of Women’s Behavioral HealthCARE at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic and professor of psychiatry at the School of Medicine, received a Service Award from the Pennsylvania Perinatal Partnership “in recognition of outstanding contributions to pioneering research and service delivery on the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of perinatal depression” at the Pennsylvania Leadership Summit on Depression During and After Pregnancy held last month.

Wisner is the principal investigator of the first large-scale National Institute of Mental Health-funded trial of methods to identify and treat postpartum depression.

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Judith Klein-Seetharaman, assistant professor of structural biology at the School of Medicine, has been named the winner of the 2007 Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Award by the Biophysical Society.

This award, which is presented at the annual meeting of the Biophysical Society and consists of a $2,000 prize, honors the memory of Margaret Dayhoff, former president of the society, professor of biophysics at Georgetown University and director of research at the National Biomedical Research Foundation.

The award is given to a “woman of very high promise who has not yet reached a position of high recognition within the structures of academic society, or to a woman who has begun to achieve prominence, in spite of obtaining her degree recently.”

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Rory Cooper, director of the Human Engineering Research Laboratories and professor at the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, was selected to receive the 2007 da Vinci Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society Michigan chapter. The award will be presented in September.

The da Vinci Awards recognize those in the engineering, construction and technical fields whose design innovations have exceeded legally mandated requirements, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act.

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Isaum Sando, professor emeritus in the Department of Otolaryngology at the School of Medicine, was awarded the Japanese Order of the Sacred Treasures medal, including Gold Ray with Neck Ribbon, for his long and meritorious services in the field of otolaryngology.

Sando received the decoration in May at the Japanese Government Office, which was followed by a visit to the Imperial Palace where he was greeted by the Emperor and Empress.

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