Awards & More

Kaleab Abebe, an associate professor of medicine, School of Medicine, has been appointed to the Advisory Panel on Clinical Trials for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization in Washington, D.C. The advisory panel advises the institute on such issues as the research design, implementation, and technical issues of clinical trials. Abebe is also an associate professor of biostatistics in the Graduate School of Public Health and director of the Center for Clinical Trials and Data Coordination at Pitt.

Mary Besterfield-Sacre received the Betty Vetter Award for Research from the Women in Engineering ProActive Network. Besterfield-Sacre is the Fulton C. Noss Faculty Fellow of Industrial Engineering and director of the Engineering Education Research Center in Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering. The award recognizes her notable achievements in research related to women in engineering.

The David Berg Center for Ethics and Leadership received the 2016 Research Center Impact Award from the Academy of Management’s Practice Theme Committee. The international honor, which is awarded to one university in the world each year, recognizes an academic center’s impact in terms of its scholarly contributions and collaborations with the business and nonprofit community. The Berg Center is part of the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business and College of Business Administration.

John M. Jakicic and Kirk I. Erickson have been appointed to the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans Advisory Committee by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell. They will collaborate with 15 other national experts—leaders in the fields of exercise science and public health—to produce the 2018 edition of the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, a nationally recognized resource for health professionals. Jakicic chairs the Department of Health and Physical Activity in Pitt’s School of Education and directs the University’s Physical Activity and Weight Management Research Center. Erickson is an associate professor of psychology in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, and he holds appointments with the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition and Center for Neuroscience.

Karl Johnson, a chemical engineering professor in the Swanson School of Engineering, has been named program chair for the 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Annual Meeting to be held in Pittsburgh. David Missenda (ENGR ’00), a senior chemical engineer at the engineering design firm AECOM, will serve as the conference program co-chair.

Department of English associate professor Michael Meyer has received a 2016-17 Public Scholar Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The award provides $50,000 to support the research of a nonfiction book in the humanities. Meyer plans to use the funds to conduct archival research for his third book, tentatively titled, Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet: How a Founding Father’s Daring Philanthropy Reshaped the American Will.

Pitt Tonight, the student-run late-night talk show, and its host have received their first nominations for two college Emmy awards in the College/University Award division. The Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences nominated Pitt Tonight’s first episode in the Arts and Entertainment/Cultural Affairs category. Jesse Irwin, the show’s host and creator and a Pitt senior, was nominated in the Talent category. The award ceremony will be held Sept. 24 in Philadelphia.

Renã A. S. Robinson, an assistant professor of chemistry, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, has been selected as one of the Talented 12—young, rising stars in chemistry who are chosen annually by Chemical and Engineering News, the American Chemical Society’s journal. The journal cited Robinson’s work in the chemistry of aging and neurodegenerative diseases, particularly Alzheimer’s Disease, as the reason for her selection.

Richard Schulz received the 2016 Distinguished Mentorship in Gerontology Award from the Gerontological Society of America. He is a Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, and director of the Gerontology Program, part of the University Center for Social and Urban Research. The honor is given annually to professionals who have fostered excellence in the field of aging and have made a major impact through mentoring. Schulz has mentored dozens of post-doctoral students and faculty members at Pitt and other universities in the United States and Germany.

Adam Shear has been named one of two editors of the Association for Jewish Studies’ AJS Review, published by Cambridge University Press. Shear, who directs Pitt’s Jewish Studies Program, is an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences.