Accolades

Zachary Freyberg and Jason L. Sperry of Pitt’s School of Medicine are among 95 newly elected members of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI).

ASCI, founded in 1908, is one of the oldest and most esteemed nonprofit honor societies of physician-scientists. Membership is by election only and serves as a recognition of a researcher’s significant contributions, at a relatively young age, to the understanding of human disease.

The Society seeks to support the scientific efforts, educational needs and clinical aspirations of physician-scientists across the breadth of academic medicine to improve the health of all people. Members are committed to mentoring future generations of physician-scientists of diverse backgrounds and biomedical disciplines.

Freyberg, assistant professor of psychiatry and cell biology, focuses on improving our understanding of the mechanisms associated with disorders such as addiction, schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease.

Sperry, professor of surgery and critical care medicine, focuses on pre-hospital trauma care and sex-based outcome differences following injury or surgery.

They were formally inducted in April.

Eva Lai has been impressed by the innovative research at the University of Pittsburgh for some time. Now she’s part of the team that’s growing its potential. 

Lai was named director for partnerships and innovations at the Swanson School of Engineering, with an additional appointment as visiting research professor of mechanical engineering and materials science. She began her appointment Feb. 1, 2022.

Lai made a site visit to Pitt in 2006 when she was building a national research program for regenerative medicine for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to address wounded warriors’ injuries. Lai, a chemical engineer and deputy chief scientist with the DoD, was in the process of meeting with experts from universities, government and industry to understand the state of the science and determine how to create a program that could move more discoveries from laboratories into commercialization. She was impressed by the depth and collaborative spirit of the bioengineering work underway at Pitt. 

Over the years, as Lai continued developing and managing complex multi million-dollar research programs for the DoD, she was always impressed when she came across conference posters or plenary talks about Pitt research and technologies. Now she is working at Pitt to elevate research and the transfer of the University’s technologies into real-world uses. 

She earn a Ph.D. in chemical engineering at Johns Hopkins University and later worked as a senior scientist for NASA. At the Office of Space Flight, she led a $1 billion robotics development and acquisition program.

Lai served in multiple positions, including as deputy chief scientist, with the DoD’s U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command from 2006 to 2021. She played a key senior role in launching the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine that resulted in more than $200 million in research investments, provided oversight of $500 million in annual research programs for the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center as its deputy chief scientist, and leveraged the Small Business Innovation Research program to fund more than $40 million in new product lines ranging from mobile health applications to sensors to cell therapies.

Mary Beth Rauktis, research associate professor in the School of Social Work, was awarded a Fulbright Specialist Program grant, part of the larger Fulbright Program, to travel to Assam, India, in August.

Rauktis will work with faculty and students at Don Bosco University, which offers a two-year MSW program and a doctoral program at its Tapesia campus. Her seminars will touch on subjects including global perspectives of social work; locating the self in the journey of social work; and principles and approaches of child- and family-centered social work practice. She will also assist faculty in preparing their textbook on community-engaged practice and research.

School of Law Professor Kevin Ashley, also a senior scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center, received the second annual CodeX Prize.

The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics announced the recipients at this year’s CodeX FutureLaw 2022 Conference, which brought together researchers, engineers, entrepreneurs, lawyers, investors and policymakers worldwide to focus on how technology is changing the legal profession and the law itself and how these changes affect us all.

Edwina Rissland, University of Massachusetts Amherst, also received the award, which acknowledged the pair’s work on case-based reasoning in automated legal analysis and the development of the HYPO system while Ashley was at the University of Massachusetts for precedent-based legal rationale.

The CodeX Prize is given to individuals for a noteworthy contribution to computational law — an idea, article, book, computer application, computer tool, organization, etc., that has had a significant and enduring positive impact on the field.

[Read more here]

The University of Pittsburgh Police Department announced four promotions, which took effect on April 3.

Brooke Riley and Michael Mock were promoted to lieutenants, and Jessica Urban and Scott Dubrosky were promoted to sergeants.

“I believe we are very fortunate to have such high caliber personnel in our department," Deputy Chief Holly Lamb said. "These four individuals will bring integrity, a great work ethic and leadership abilities to their new positions. These values will serve as examples for everyone, which will make the department much better as a whole.”

Riley, who joined the department in 2013, has spent the last three years as supervisor for the Community Programs Unit, which provides outreach to the campus community. She also oversees the Citizens Police Academy and the department's internship program.

Mock joined the department in 2005 and has overseen the emergency dispatchers and implementation of the Emergency Notification Service and the Rave Guardian mobile app. He also assists in compiling the data used to ensure the University is in compliance with the federal Clery Act, which requires that schools report campus crime data

Urban is a member of the motorcycle unit who's spent seven years with the department.

Dubrosky's 11 years with the Pitt Police department have been spent in a number of roles. He's a member of the department's Specialized Emergency Response Team, serves as a field training officer and firearms instructor, and he is an instructor in the Active Killer program, which provides guidance on situational awareness and reaction to a real-time campus crisis.

As per department policy, all officers have four-year college degrees.

Two professors in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences have been named 2022 Guggenheim Fellows.

Historian Keisha N. Blain, an associate professor in the Department of History, and poet Yona Harvey, an associate professor in the Department of English, are among 180 individuals chosen from nearly 2,500 applicants for the prestigious award, which recognizes “prior achievement and exceptional promise” among its broad selection of scientists, writers and artists across 51 fields of expertise.

The Guggenheim signifies excellence, thought leadership and innovation of craft among its recipients. Grants from the fellowship vary between $35,000 and $45,000 to use as the recipients choose.

Blain is an accomplished historian and writer focusing on African American history, the modern African diaspora and women’s and gender studies. A two-term former president of the African American Intellectual History Society, Blain has received wide praise for her writing: her book “Set the World on Fire” won the 2019 Darlene Clark Hine Award from the Organization of American Historians, and her recent book “Until I am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America” was recognized by Smithsonian Magazine as among the best history books of 2021.

“Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019,” which she co-edited with Ibram X. Kendi, garnered significant media attention and debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times Best Sellers list.

In addition to her research and book writing, Blain holds fellowships at New America, Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights and the Institute for Advanced Studies, as well as being an opinion columnist for MSNBC. Blain has been on the faculty at Pitt since 2017, having received a bachelor’s of history and Africana studies from Binghamton University and her doctorate in history from Princeton University.

Harvey is the author of the poetry collections “You Don’t Have to Go to Mars for Love,” which won the Believer Book Award for Poetry and “Hemming the Water,” winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She co-wrote with professor and essayist Roxane Gay “Marvel’s World of Wakanda” and co-wrote with author and MacArthur “genius grant” winner Ta-Nehisi Coates “Black Panther & the Crew.” She has also worked with teenagers writing about mental health issues in collaboration with Creative Nonfiction magazine. In addition, she is the recipient of the inaugural Lucille Clifton Legacy Award in poetry from St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

Harvey earned her undergraduate degree from Howard University, a Master of Fine Arts from The Ohio State University, and a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh.

“I’m honored. I’m thrilled. I think I’ve accepted it as real now,” Harvey wrote on Twitter in reaction to the announcement. “Congratulations to all Fellows. Thank you thank you thank you.”

Peggy Liu (pictured), Ben L. Fryrear chair of marketing in the Katz Graduate School of Business, and Rebecca Reed, assistant professor of psychology in the Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences, have received the Association for Psychological Science’s Rising Star designation. 

The honor recognizes researchers early in their careers whose innovative work has advanced the field and signals great potential for continued contributions.

Liu’s research and teaching expertise is in consumer behavior with a focus on work that increases the appeal of health activities in social contexts. In 2021, Liu won $115,000 in the Pitt Innovation Challenge with Jacqueline Burgette from the School of Dental Medicine, for their “Healthy Teeth Healthy Me Family Activity Box” to prevent tooth decay in vulnerable children. [Read more about Liu’s research.]

Reed directs the Psychoneuroimmunology Research Lab at Pitt. Her work focuses on biopsychosocial factors that contribute to healthy physical and cognitive aging. She uses biological and psychosocial measures in the laboratory and in daily life settings to examine these processes over time.

Executive Vice Chair of Pediatrics Alejandro Hoberman received the Top 10 Clinical Research Achievement Award for 2022 from the Clinical Research Forum, a nonprofit association of clinical research experts and thought leaders from the nation’s leading academic health centers.

Hoberman is the first person to receive this award twice from the forum.

This year's award recognizes Hoberman and his research team for a study entitled “Tympanostomy Tubes or Medical Management for Recurrent Acute Otitis Media.” First published in May 2021 in the New England Journal of Medicine, the study found no long-term benefit to surgically placing ear tubes in a young child’s ears to reduce the rate of recurrent ear infections compared to use of episodic oral antibiotics.

In 2015, the Clinical Research Forum recognized Hoberman for his team’s findings in “Antimicrobial Prophylaxis for Children with Vesicoureteral Reflux.”

Leigh Patel, professor in the School of Education, has been elected to the National Academy of Education, an honorific society of scholars and educators who make outstanding contributions to the education field.

She is one of 17 new members elected from around the United States.

As a member of academy, Patel will serve on expert study panels that address pressing issues in education and will be a mentor for the organization’s professional development fellowship programs.

Patel is a transdisciplinary scholar who studies the narratives that shape how people are treated in society. She is an internationally known scholar of education, ethnic studies, critical higher education studies and literacy.

“This is a significant honor that means a great deal to me,” Patel said. “There are a number of Black, Indigenous, migrant and decolonial women in the Academy doing quality research that impacts the possible futures of Black and Brown children. Their work has deeply influenced me, and it’s an honor to be in the same group.”