University Times

Bernard Fisher, Distinguished Service Professor of Surgery at the School of Medicine, has received a Distinguished Medical Service Award from the Friends of the National Library of Medicine for his contributions to the treatment and understanding of breast cancer.

Fisher received the award May 8 at a “Celebrating Pioneers in Cures for Breast Cancer” event at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.

Fisher, a 1943 graduate of Pitt’s medical school, demonstrated in clinical trials that breast-conserving surgery was as effective as radical mastectomy for treating breast cancer, established the effectiveness of treatment using chemotherapy and/or tamoxifen and, more recently, was the first to prove that tamoxifen could help to prevent breast cancer in high-risk women.

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Frits K. Pil, professor of business administration and research scientist in the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business, won the 2006-07 Sloan Industry Studies Best Book Award competition.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation award committee said Pil’s book, “The Second Century: Reconnecting Customer and Value Chain Through Build-to-Order: Moving Beyond Mass and Lean Production in the Auto Industry,” meets all the criteria for an excellent industry studies book and proposes solutions that can be understood and adopted by managers in a wide array of manufacturing industries around the world.

The book was co-authored by Matthias Holweg, University of Cambridge. The authors share the prize with Jeffrey Liker, author of “The Toyota Way.”

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Harvey White, professor of public and urban affairs and international development in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, has been elected president of the American Society for Public Administration.

ASPA ’s 9,500 members serve as advocates for greater effectiveness in government.

In addition to his service at Pitt, White leads the University of Southern Alabama Center for Healthy Communities, which coordinates community education, research, public service and health activities.

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Several researchers from the School of Engineering have been recognized by the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE), the world’s largest organization focused on improving industrial quality and productivity.

Andrew J. Schaefer, Pitt associate professor of industrial engineering and a Wellington C. Carl faculty fellow, won the Dr. Hamed K. Eldin Outstanding Young IE Award in Education. The award recognizes individuals in academia younger than 35 who have demonstrated outstanding characteristics in leadership, professionalism and potential in industrial engineering.

Schaefer studies the optimum time to make certain medical decisions, particularly regarding liver transplants and initiating treatment for HIV.

Assistant professor Lisa M. Maillart won the IIE award for the best paper on quality and reliability engineering to appear in IIE Transactions, the institute’s peer-reviewed journal. Published last year, Maillart’s paper, “Maintenance Policies for Systems With Condition Monitoring and Obvious Failures,” took a unique approach to analyzing industrial systems that break down over time.

A shared award went to Mary E. Besterfield-Sacre, an associate professor of industrial engineering; Renee M. Clark, a visiting research assistant professor; Larry J. Shuman, an industrial engineering professor and senior associate dean of engineering; emeritus professor Harvey Wolfe, and graduate student Tuba Pinar Yildirim.

The researchers received the Best Paper Award in Engineering Education at the national conference’s research sessions. The team investigated whether a formula largely used to evaluate industrial systems also can be used to streamline group projects in the workplace.

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Megan Spence, assistant professor of chemistry, this month received the 2007 Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award sponsored by the Oak Ridge Associated Universities. The Powe award is “intended to enrich the research and professional growth of young faculty and result in new funding opportunities.”

Spence’s research focuses on peripheral and integral membrane proteins with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques. Although one-third of eukaryotic proteins are membrane proteins, only a handful have been characterized structurally, putting membrane-associated proteins at the frontier of structural biology. The partly ordered nature of these membrane-associated systems requires researchers to develop new NMR techniques for systems at the solids/liquids interface as well as employing existing solid-state and solution-state NMR techniques.

The Powe award carries a $5,000 prize that was matched by Pitt.

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Susan Meyer, associate dean for education and professor at the School of Pharmacy, has been elected to a three-year term on the board of directors of the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research. APTR is an inter-professional association that advances population-based public health education, research and service.

APTR provides links to bring together individuals and institutions devoted to health promotion and disease prevention education and research.

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Sati Mazumdar, professor of biostatistics at the Graduate School of Public Health, has been selected as a fellow of the American Statistical Association for her contributions to the statistical profession. This is highest national honor in the discipline. Mazumdar will receive her award July 31.

Mazumdar is a core faculty member in the master’s and doctoral teaching programs in the Department of Biostatistics. She holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Psychiatry.

Mazumdar’s major interest is in psychiatric research. She is the director of a five-year grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) for training doctoral students in biostatistics in psychiatric research.

She is a co-principal investigator of the methodology core of an NIMH Advanced Center for Intervention and Services Research project and the co-PI of a National Institute on Aging-funded project in sleep and aging.

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Keri Ei has been named assistant director of Admissions at the Titusville campus. She assumed her duties May 14.

Ei is a 2007 graduate of Clarion University of Pennsylvania, where she earned a BS in speech communication with a focus on interpersonal communication and leadership.

Prior to joining UPT, Ei worked as an administrative assistant aide at Clarion University where she organized speech communication activities and recruited prospective students. Ei also served as an instructor’s assistant, assisting professors’ with lecture material and planning study meetings. She also worked one-on-one with students.

Ei’s primary responsibility at UPT will be the recruitment of full-time, traditional-age students.

She also will represent the campus at high schools and college fairs and will serve as an adviser to student ambassadors.

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