Archive for the ‘Awards’ Category

Stanford’s Medical School recently launched a blog, called “Scope,” as another way to provide the public with information about biomedical research and health-care policy. Scope covers achievements of Stanford faculty, staff and students, but also offers insight on medical and scientific developments around the world. Recent topics include a Stanford exhibit on vintage cigarette ads, research showing a gap in women’s knowledge on heart disease, and a video on ways to eat healthily on a limited budget.

The blog, conceived and maintained by MICHELLE BRANDT and JOHN STAFFORD, of the Medical School’s Office of Communications and Public Affairs, recently was nominated for a “Best New Medical Weblog” award in the annual Medgadget Medical Weblog Awards, and its contributors are asking for help to get it in first place. (Perhaps as an added incentive to vote, it should be noted that the blog currently in first place is written by Harvard faculty!) The ballot box is open until Sat. at 9 p.m.

Scope can be found at https://scopeblog.stanford.edu. To vote, go to https://medgadget.com/2009bestnewmedical.html

On Wednesday, Jan. 6, Richard Zare, second from the left in the second row, attended a White House ceremony for the winners of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring. Today, the Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society named him the winner of the 2010 Theodore William Richards Award and Medal. Official White House photo by Samantha Appleton. Click on photo to enlarge.

In recognition of achievement in the advancement of chemistry, RICHARD ZARE has won the 2010 Theodore William Richards Award and Medal. The award, announced by the Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society today, includes two medals – a silver medal for display and a gold medal. Zare will receive the award on March 4 at Harvard University at a meeting of the Northeastern Section of the society. Zare, the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science, was at the White House last week to receive a Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring. That award was announced last summer.

In her book Reindeer with King Gustaf: What to Expect When Your Spouse Wins the Nobel Prize, Anita Laughlin, wife of physics Professor ROBERT LAUGHLIN, descibes the pomp, the wardrobe changes and the ways the prize changed her family’s life. But the heady journey began at their campus home.
“Twenty years after our first date, on October 12, 1998, the director of the Stanford News Service called Bob at his office to inform him that he was on an ‘even shorter list’ of possible recipients to win a Nobel Prize, and that Bob was to call him immediately if he heard anything,” she writes. “Bob promptly threw the phone number away, believing that Stanford could not possibly win a third year in a row” (STEVEN CHU 1997; DOUG OSHEROFF 1996). Laughlin goes on to write about the call that came the next morning and what transpired during the hours that followed - the couple’s 13-year-old son answering the call on his Mickey Mouse telephone, then sleepily announcing that “some guy” from Sweden was calling. She describes the onslaught of folks who showed up at their house in the wee hours of the morning.
“The prize had been announced at 6:00 a.m. Eastern Time, and 3:00 a.m. West Coast time. At 3:30 a.m., an intrepid JACK HUBBARD from the Stanford News Service knocked on the front door. With remarkable trust, because I was still in my bathrobe, I let him in. He was immaculately dressed. He asked where the phone was, tossed his own cell phone on the desk, and explained: ‘I am here to get you through the day. I am here to answer the phone, set up newspaper interviews, be Bob’s bodyguard and chauffeur. We need to keep him calm and not let things get overwhelming. I take my cues from you on this.’”
An excerpt of the book, published by Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing, accompanies an audio interview (recorded in the studio of Stanford Video) on National Public Radio’s website.

And, by the way, ROBERT LAUGHLIN himself is scheduled to give a lecture this afternoon titled “Here Comes the Sun,” in which he will discuss some of the recent developments that have changed solar energy from a scientific toy to a serious technology. The lecture is scheduled to take place at 4:15 p.m. in the Hewlett Teaching Center, Room 201.

Zhi-Xun Shen

ZHI-XUN SHEN, a pioneer in the field of materials science, has won the U.S. Department of Energy’s most prestigious science prize, the E.O. Lawrence Award. Shen is the director of the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Science, or SIMES, a joint institute of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the main Stanford campus. He is the Paul Pigott Professor of Physical Sciences in the departments of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford, and a professor of photon science at SLAC. His work includes superconducting materials, among other areas, with experiments that may produce improved electronics. Shen, who is among six other distinguished awardees, will receive the award from the secretary of energy, Stanford physics Professor Emeritus STEVEN CHU. The complete announcement is available on the SLAC website.

Kelley O'Hara

While most eyes were on the Heisman Trophy sweepstakes this weekend – more specifically on whether Cardinal running back TOBY GERHART would receive the ultimate college football honor – rumors were rampant that JIM HARBAUGH was being wooed by other football programs. But he insisted Saturday that he planned to remain head coach at Stanford. “I trust this puts an end to these rumors and reports, allowing the focus of fans and the media to shine a bright spotlight on Toby Gerhart today,” Harbaugh said in a statement to the Associated Press. Harbaugh’s news, which was further confirmed Sunday, was at least some consolation after Gerhart came in second to Alabama’s Mark Ingram for the Heisman in the closest vote in the trophy’s 75-year history . . . Meanwhile, a big prize is still possible for Cardinal soccer forward KELLEY O’HARA, who on Friday became the first Stanford player since JULIE FOUDY in 1992 to be named a finalist for the Hermann Trophy, college soccer’s highest honor. O’Hara, a senior, and the other finalists – UCLA’s Lauren Cheney and North Carolina’s Tobin Heath – are scheduled to be in St. Louis for the award ceremony Jan. 8 . . . Also on Friday, O’Hara’s coach, PAUL RATCLIFFE, was named as the CaptainU Division I Women’s College Soccer Coach of the Year.

“I can hardly believe it,” says KRIS NEWBY. But it’s true: Her documentary on Lyme disease has made it to the short list of 15 entries for the Academy Awards. Newby, who writes the newsletter for the Program in Human Biology, will find out on Feb. 2 whether Under Our Skin makes the next cut to become one of the five finalists with a shot at the Oscar statue for best documentary.
Newby, the senior director of the film, has screenwriting experience, but her Stanford master’s degree is in engineering (’82.) The film’s editor, EVA ILONA BRZESKI, earned a master’s in documentary filmmaking on the Farm in 1992.
Newby and her husband, Paul, come to the subject from personal experience; both have suffered from the misunderstood ailment, spread through tick bites. “It’s been mostly good for this last year, but I still have lingering symptoms,” she said.

The making of the film (”A gripping tale of microbes, medicine and money”) is an effort to raise awareness that chronic Lyme disease is real. “Definitely, without antibiotics, both Paul and I would be dead,” she said.

-Dan Stober

Joan Ramon Resina

In announcing this year’s Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize, the Modern Language Association awarded JOAN RAMON RESINA, professor of Iberian and Latin American cultures, honorable mention for his book Barcelona’s Vocation of Modernity: Rise and Decline of an Urban Image, published by Stanford University Press. The Kovacs Prize was established in 1990 by a gift from Joseph and Mimi B. Singer, parents of the late KATHERINE SINGER KOVACS, a specialist in Spanish and Latin American literature and film who taught at Stanford, the University of Southern California and Whittier College before her death in 1989. Nicolás Wey Gómez of Brown University won this year’s Kovacs Prize for his book The Tropics of Empire: Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies, published by MIT Press. The prize is awarded for an outstanding book published in English or Spanish in the field of Latin American and Spanish literatures and cultures . . .

Reykjavik, a two-act play written by RICHARD RHODES, an affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, will be staged Saturday in Monterey. The play is based on the historic summit meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev held at Reykjavik, Iceland, in October 1986, at which the two leaders came close to agreeing to pursue the elimination of nuclear weapons. Rhodes is the author or editor of more than 20 books, including The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which won a Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction, a National Book Award and a National Book Critics Circle Award. The play reading will be staged with a full cast at 2 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 5, in the Monterey Institute’s Irvine Auditorium at 499 Pierce St., Monterey, CA 93942. Admission is free and open to the public.

Rob Dunbar

ROB DUNBAR, professor of geological and environmental sciences, received this year’s Lyman Award from the Stanford Alumni Association Tuesday. The award recognizes faculty who contribute unique and dedicated initiatives in service to the university.

Dunbar was applauded in the award citation “for his years of service as the quintessential faculty ambassador to alumni near and far, and for the love and respect he shows for this special place between the foothills and the bay where the Stanford spirit was born in him.”

The Lyman Award was established in 1983 in honor of Stanford’s seventh president, RICHARD LYMAN. The prize is presented annually and includes funding toward books and materials for the University Libraries in areas of special interest designated by the recipient.

Photo by L.A. Cicero

IAN HSU, Stanford’s director of Internet media outreach, traveled to Cambridge, Mass., earlier this month to pick up an award for Stanford’s cutting-edge Facebook strategy and Fan Page. The Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) – a global nonprofit research and education foundation and think tank dedicated to the study of new media and communications, handed Hsu the Excellence Award for External Communications and Communities. Past winners of this honor have included Dell, SAP and Edelman. A full press release on this year’s awards is available on SNCR’s website . . . And speaking of new media, according to BRENT IZUTSU, project for manager for Stanford on iTunes U and YouTube, free video downloads of CS193P, the university’s hot course on creating applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch, have surpassed the 4 million mark.

Diehard Stanford football fans won’t let a little thing like a 17-hour time difference or 5,000 miles dampen their Cardinal spirit. U.S. Ambassador to Japan JOHN ROOS, ‘77, JD ‘80, and his wife, SUSIE ROOS, ‘78, will host a Big Game event at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo that starts at 9 a.m. Sunday morning, just before kickoff. The Rooses and their guests, who will include Japanese Prime Minister YUKIO HATOYAMA, MS ‘72, MS ‘73, PhD ‘76, will watch the Cardinal vs. Bears matchup live on the American Forces Network . . .

John Roos is sworn in by Judge Thelton Henderson while Roos's wife, Susie, and son David look on. Photo: David Gonzales

Winslow Briggs

WINSLOW BRIGGS, professor, by courtesy, of biology and director emeritus of the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Plant Biology at Stanford, has won the International Prize for Biology from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. On Nov. 30, Briggs will be presented with the award, consisting of a medal and 10 million yen (approximately $110,000), along with an imperial gift from the emperor of Japan, at a ceremony in Tokyo. The award ceremony is held in the presence of His Majesty Emperor Akihito, who will deliver a congratulatory message. The prize, created in 1985 to commemorate the 60-year reign of Emperor Showa and his longtime devotion to biological research, honors an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of research in fundamental biology. In the Carnegie Institution’s announcement of the award, WOLF FROMMER, current director of the Department of Plant Biology, said, “The work of Dr. Briggs on blue-light receptors in plants and microbes has been a major milestone for our understanding of how organisms detect light, which allows them to respond to environmental changes.”