Awards & More

Sharon Hillier

Sharon Hillier received the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association’s prestigious Thomas Parran Award during the 18th International Society for Sexually Transmitted Diseases Research meeting in London. Hillier is a professor and vice chair for faculty affairs and director of reproductive infectious disease research in the Pitt School of Medicine’s Division of Reproductive Infectious Diseases and Immunology, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences. Hillier is the principal investigator for the Microbicide Trials Network, an HIV/AIDS clinical trials network established in 2006 by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. She also is a senior investigator at Magee-Womens Research Institute.

Pitt’s School of Information Sciences and the Health Sciences Library System will manage a new degree program to be funded by the federal Institute of Museum & Library Services. The institute announced recently that it would grant $911,311 to support the creation and implementation of the new degree, Post Master’s Degree Certificate of Advanced Studies in Health Sciences Librarianship. The program will offer students who have already earned their Master’s of Library and Information Science degrees specialized preparation for professional positions in health sciences libraries. The grant will support the costs of curriculum development and evaluation, online course delivery infrastructure, and student recruitment. In addition, it will cover tuition costs for 27 students as they progress through this yearlong post-Master’s program. Students will be enrolled in the program beginning in May 2010.

A Pitt team recently won the Best Paper award in the international division of the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) for an evaluation of Pitt’s Plus3 program, a first-year study abroad program for engineering and business undergraduates that exposes them to international markets through an intensive two-week trip abroad and requires a team research paper. Pitt staff member Kristine Lalley, the paper’s lead author and director of International Engineering Initiatives in the Swanson School of Engineering, accepted the award at the 2009 ASEE Annual Conference in Austin, Texas, on June 15; the paper also was published in the conference proceedings. Lalley worked with Josephine Olson, director of the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business’s International Business Center and a professor of business administration, and College of Business Administration student Brant Hawk. They surveyed 101 students (76 engineering, 25 business) who participated in Plus3 in 2005 or 2006 about the program’s influence on their academic careers. Lalley, Olson, and Hawk found that 31 percent of students pursued one or more foreign languages after the program, and 29 percent studied abroad again or did a later international internship.

Suzanne W. Broadhurst

Suzanne W. Broadhurst, vice chair of the Pitt Board of Trustees and director of corporate giving for Eat’n Park Hospitality Group, was the commencement speaker for Wheeling Jesuit University’s commencement exercises on May 16.

Freddie H. Fu

Freddie H. Fu was named president of the International Society of Arthroscopy, Knee Surgery, and Orthopaedic Sports Medicine (ISAKOS) during its Biennial Congress in Osaka, Japan. Fu, who has been a member of the ISAKOS Board of Directors for 10 years, will serve a two-year term as president. Fu has been the David Silver Professor and Chair of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery in the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine since 1997. He was the founding medical director of UPMC’s Center for Sports Medicine. Fu also is the current president of the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine.

Peter Brusilovsky, a professor in the School of Information Sciences, was honored by the Slovak University of Technology with the degree of Doctor honoris causa. He was selected because of his contributions to the fields of informatics and information technologies. He received the honorary degree during a ceremony in Bratislava.

Satdarshan P.S. Monga

David J. Hackam

David J. Hackam, an assistant professor of surgery, cell biology and physiology, and Satdarshan P.S. Monga, director of the Division of Experimental Pathology, a professor of pathology, as well as a professor of medicine in the Pitt School of Medicine’s Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition, were elected into the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI). The honor recognizes the contributions of physician-scientists at a young age. They were inducted into the Society in April during the Association of American Physicians and  ASCI Joint Meeting in Chicago.

A project to provide people in Inner Mongolia with arsenic-free drinking water earned a Pitt team recognition at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 P3: People, Prosperity, and Planet sustainable design competition held April 18-20 in Washington, D.C. Led by Di Gao, a Swanson School of Engineering assistant professor and William Kepler Whiteford, Faculty Fellow in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering (CPE), the team received the Youth Council on Sustainable Science and Technology award for a low-cost arsenic filter that employs absorbent iron oxide particles. The Pitt team also included CPE undergraduate Brian Novicki and graduate student Liangliang Cao, Honors College student Allison Hahn, civil and environmental engineering (CEE) student Bradley Harden, CEE research assistant professor Jason Monnell, and Edward McCord, the Honors College director of programming and special projects.