University Times

The Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has named Jeremy Berg to a five-year term as editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals.

Berg, former director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is Pitt’s associate senior vice chancellor for science strategy and planning in the Health Sciences. He also is the Pittsburgh Foundation Professor of Personalized Medicine and director of the Institute for Personalized Medicine, professor of computational and systems biology, and professor of chemistry.

The journal Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed, general science journal in the world with an estimated weekly readership of 1 million people worldwide.

Berg, who will remain in his roles at Pitt, begins his term as Science editor-in-chief on July 1. He will oversee the journal’s staff of PhD-level editors and its team of science journalists. Science’s editors and news reporters work in Washington, D.C.; Cambridge, U.K.; and other locations worldwide, from China and Japan to Europe and Africa.

The Science family of journals is made up of Science, Science Translational Medicine, Science Signaling, the open-access journal Science Advances, and — coming soon — Science Robotics and Science Immunology.

For more information, visit www.aaas.org.

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School of Nursing faculty member Janice Dorman was among five Graduate School of Public Health alumni recognized for their outstanding service to the field of public health in a May 20 event at the University Club.

Dorman received the public health school’s Distinguished Alumni Award for Teaching and Dissemination in recognition of her work teaching graduate and undergraduate courses for 29 years, primarily in molecular epidemiology and genetics.

Dorman is a faculty member in health promotion and development and holds secondary appointments in public health.

She also has taught courses at the University of Michigan, in Buenos Aires and in Beijing.

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Carol Reichbaum of the Graduate School of Public Health has been awarded a Walking College Fellowship by America Walks, a national advocacy organization that promotes walking and walkable communities.

Reichbaum is the program manager of WalkWorks, a collaboration between the public health school and the Pennsylvania Department of Health, funded through a grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the Department of Health.

Reichbaum will join 24 other advocates from around the country in a four-month training program designed to strengthen local efforts to make communities more walkable.

Through the fellowship, she will complete a six-module distance-education training program this summer and participate in the international Pro Walk, Pro Bike, Pro Place conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, in September.

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Paul Leu, industrial engineering faculty member in the Swanson School of Engineering, is the recipient of the 2016 Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers’ (IISE) UPS Award for Minority Advancement in Industrial Engineering.

The UPS award recognizes individuals who, through innovative means, have developed programs or projects directed to the advancement of women, minorities or the disabled in the field of industrial engineering.

Since joining the Pitt faculty in 2010, Leu has worked with the school’s Office of Diversity supervising Investing Now engineering summer workshops.

Investing Now is a college preparatory program created to stimulate, support and recognize the academic performance of precollege students from groups that are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Leu and his research group also have worked with the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation in developing modules that cover topics such as engineering, renewable energy, water sustainability, solar energy and sustainable design. The modules emphasize hands-on learning in which high school students build their own water filters, solder their own circuit boards and design and build cars to race against one another.

Leu has received a 2016 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award and the 2012 Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award. He has won an NSF nanotechnology for undergraduate education grant and a University of Pittsburgh Academic Council of Instructional Excellence (ACIE) Innovation in Education Award.

IISE (formerly the Institute of Industrial Engineers) is an international, nonprofit association that provides leadership for the application, education, training, research and development of industrial and systems engineering.

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Pitt-Bradford facilities worker Bob Harris was chosen by his fellow staff members as recipient of the Staff Recognition Award.

Harris, a master gardener, is known for his expertise in horticulture, his creative designs for the flowerbeds in the Bromeley Quadrangle each summer, his generosity with gardening advice and his friendly temperament.

Harris has worked at Pitt-Bradford since 2004.

Tonya Ackley, director of community engagement and the Harriett B. Wick Chapel, nominated Harris for the award. “Pitt-Bradford is very fortunate to have such a knowledgeable, hard-working, creative and personable employee,” Ackley said. “He takes great care and effort in all that he does. He always makes sure the campus looks pristine, and he is an excellent representative of the warm and friendly environment at Pitt-Bradford.”

Harris was instrumental in having Pitt-Bradford designated a Tree Campus USA earlier this year.

He hosts a Saturday morning radio show, “Around the Home with Bob Harris” that airs on WESB News Radio 1490 in Bradford.

He has also donated his time to gardening forums, the First Presbyterian Church’s garden tour, designing gardens for the Tuna Valley Trail Association and teaching at the Bradford Landmark Society’s creative women workshop.

—Compiled by K. Barlow 

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The People of the Times column features recent news on faculty and staff, including awards and other honors, accomplishments and administrative appointments.

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