Awards & More

Pitt professors Anthony Fabio, Dara Mendez, and Linda Barry Robertson are recipients of the 14th annual Steven D. Manners Faculty Development Awards. Given by Pitt’s University Center for Social and Urban Research, the awards support promising research projects in the social, behavioral, and policy sciences on campus. Fabio and Mendez, both assistant professors in the Graduate School of Public Health’s Department of Epidemiology, are identifying factors to create an index that could indicate which neighborhoods are at risk for poor public health outcomes. Robertson, an assistant professor in the Division of Hematology/Oncology, Pitt School of Medicine, is working to develop methods to explore risk factors for cancer, including exposures to air pollution and neighborhood psychosocial stressors as well as individual factors including smoking, drinking, and psychological distress. The awards honor their namesake, Steve Manners, a sociologist who began working at UCSUR in 1974 and served as its assistant director from 1989 until his death in September 2000.

Patrick Manning, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of World History at the University of Pittsburgh, has been named the president of the American Historical Association, the largest organization in the country devoted to the study and promotion of history. Its 14,000 members represent school teachers, professors of history, and people in many other specializations and professions. Manning, who is also director of Pitt’s World History Center, will serve a three-year term as president. 

M. Ravi Shankar, associate professor of industrial engineering and the William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow in Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, was recognized by the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) with one of its top academic awards. He received the Dr. Hamed K. Eldin Outstanding Early Career IE in Academia Award during the 2014 IEE Annual Conference and Expo in Montreal, Canada, in early June. The honor recognizes individuals in academia who have demonstrated outstanding characteristics in education, leadership, professionalism, and potential in industrial engineering.