ALSO OF NOTE — Short takes on faculty and staff accomplishments for Oct. 4

The University's many websites are usually bursting with news about faculty and staff. Each issue, we'll publish an aggregation of that content so you can see what your colleagues are doing.

  • Donna Naples, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, has been elected a 2018 Fellow of the American Physical Society: “For advances in the techniques of flux and cross-section determinations in the current and upcoming generation of accelerator-based neutrino experiments and fundamental contributions to neutrino event generators.” The number of APS Fellows elected each year is limited to no more than one half of 1 percent of the membership.
  • Alison Langmead, who has a dual appointment in the Deitrich School’s Department of History of Art & Architecture and the new School for Computing and Information, was awarded $223,000 from the Getty Foundation to do Digital Humanities workshops. It is the first gift the University has received from Getty. This is a first-of-its-kind series of workshops in the digital humanities, following projects from an initial two-week conference through a year of monthly virtual meetings, and a final two-week conference in summer of 2020.  She also was awarded a grant from the Mellon Foundation for Pitt’s first Sawyer Seminar.
  • University of Pittsburgh professors Samuel Dickerson and Renee Clark received an NSF grant to help students in the Swanson School of Engineering start to think about thinking. The two-year, $200,000 award will support a project to improve learning and development by promoting the frequent use of reflection and “metacognition” among students in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Read more here.
  • The Pittsburgh chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) selected John Oyler, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, as recipient of the 2017 Michael A. Gross Meritorious Service Award. The award, named after Michael A. Gross who provided nearly 70 years of continuous service to the ASCE Pittsburgh Section, recognizes a lifetime of work and commitment to the civil engineering profession.