Berkeleyan

Awards

26 August 2004

Hellman Family Faculty Fund 2004

Fourteen junior faculty members were selected to receive awards this year from the Hellman Family Faculty Fund.

The purpose of the fund is to support assistant professors who show promise and the potential for distinction in their area of research. As in previous years, awards are made without regard to timeliness or popularity of the field of study. Excellence in the proposed research is the primary criterion for selection.

The 2004 recipients and their study subjects are:

Sharon Amacher, Molecular and Cell Biology; Fishing the Genome for Transcription Factor Targets and cis Regulatory Code

Ozlem Ayduk, Psychology; Continuities in Children’s Ability to Delay Gratification Across the Life Span

Laurent Coscoy, Molecular and Cell Biology; A Novel Family of E3-Ubiquitin Ligases Regulates the Expression of Key Components of the Immune System

Marian Feldman, Near Eastern Studies; The Shared Culture of Wall Painting in the Eastern Mediterranean, 2000–1500 B.C.

Matthew Francis, Chemistry; Modified Viral Capsids as Targeted Delivery Vectors for Anticancer Agents

Anne-Lise Francois, English; Open Secrets: The Literature of Uncounted Experience

Jay T. Groves, Chemistry; Surface Chemistry on Cell Membranes

Carla Hudson Kam, Psychology; The Domain Specificity of Learning Mechanisms and Regularization: Is it Really Just Language?

Alessandra Lanzara, Physics; Unlocking the Mystery of Materials at the Nanoscale by Enhancing the Investigation of Electronic Structure

Song Li, Bioengineering; Engineering of Functional Muscle in vitro Using Mesenchymal Stem Cells and Micropatterned Polymers

Maria Mavroudi, History; Bilingualism in Greek and Arabic: Evidence From the Manuscripts

James O’Brien, Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences; Combined Audio and Visual Stimulation for Synthetic Environments

Isha Ray, Energy and Resources Group; From Wells to Well-Being? Water for Women in the Developing World

Bryan Wagner, English; Disturbing the Peace: Black Vagrancy and the Grounds of Racial Difference

Richard Mathies

Chemistry professor Richard Mathies has been selected by the Optical Society of America (OSA), the Coblentz Society, and the Society of Applied Spectroscopy to receive the R. Lippincott Award in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of vibrational spectroscopy. Mathies is being honored for his innovative work in experimental and interpretative methods in resonance Raman spectroscopy and the applications of these methods to elucidate ultrafast dynamical processes in photochemistry and photobiology. The award will be presented on Oct. 14 during OSA’s annual meeting, “Frontiers in Optics,” which will be held this year in Rochester, NY.

Nicole King

Genetics and Development/ Integrative Biology assistant professor Nicole King has been chosen as a 2004 Pew Biomedical Scholar. Her abstract is entitled “Choanoflagellates and the origin of animal multicellularity.” Funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by UCSF, the prestigious scholarship program provides each of its 15 awardees $240,000 over a four-year period to help support his or her biomedical research.

CASE Circle of Excellence Awards

UC Berkeley won four awards from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), presented at the group’s annual conference in San Diego in mid-July. University Relations’ Development Communications unit received two gold medals, one in the “special-program publications packages” category for its Builders of Berkeley Recognition Program, including the two etched granite walls and bronze plaque in front of Doe Library, ancillary materials, and website; the other was in the “visual design in print” category for an international calendar. University Relations’ Public Affairs unit also won a gold medal in the “visual design in print” category for the banners depicting UC Berkeley Nobel Prize winners that are currently displayed on Southside streets. In addition, the College of Engineering’s Lab Notes garnered a silver medal.

With a membership of more than 3,000 colleges, universities, and independent elementary and secondary schools in the United States, Mexico, and 42 other countries, CASE is the largest nonprofit educational association in terms of institutional membership.

Scott Saul

Scott Saul, assistant professor of English, has received an American Book Award for his book, Freedom Is, Freedom Ain’t: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties. Saul describes his work of nonfiction as a blend of three different kinds of books: those “about the music … written for an audience of musicologists or musicians,” biographical works centering on the life of a musician, and “historical books that tell the history of the civil-rights movement through the major flashpoints such as sit-ins and protests but neglect cultural life: music, film, and literature.” Saul, who joined the Berkeley faculty last year, is working on a study of the cultural history of Los Angeles between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s.

Awarded annually in June, the American Book Awards are promoted as “an alternative to the monolithic cultural uniformity [of] the National Book Awards and others.”