Berkeleyan

Awards

03 August 2005

Hellman Family Faculty Fund 2005 Awards

Fifteen Berkeley faculty members have received Hellman Family Faculty Fund awards, cumulatively totaling $399,000.

The fund was Established by F. Warren Hellman in 1995. Its purpose is to support substantially the research of promising assistant professors who show capacity for great distinction in their research. For many recipients, the Hellman plays a critical role in their careers — leading to publication, important new contacts, research funding from other sources, or new research directions.

At least two-thirds of the funds allocated each year support assistant professors in the physical and life sciences and engineering; up to one-third support assistant professors in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. The maximum award is $50,000.

A list of recipients and their proposed research projects follows:

Shahwali Ahmadi, Near Eastern Studies, Parables of Memory and Vision: Anomalies of History and Form in Modern Fiction of Afghanistan

David Bilder, Molecular and Cell Biology, Identification of Malignant Tumor Suppressors via a Novel Genetic Screen in Drosophila

Irene Bloemraad, Sociology, Organizing for Political Voice: The Role of Community Organizations in Immigrant Political Incorporation

Rastislav Bodik, Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, Programming by Sketching

Natalia Brizuela, Spanish and Portuguese, Between Empire and Republic or on Photographic Melancholy in Brazilian Modernity

Michael B. Eisen, Molecular and Cell Biology, Genomic Dissection of the Fungal Infection Responsible for Global Amphibian Decline

Daniel Fletcher, Bioengineering, Some Assembly Required: Rebuilding the Actin Motility Machinery

Corinne Hayden, Anthropology, (At) the end of the Patent: Generic Medicines and the "Health of the Public" in Mexico

Donna Jones, English, Promise of European Decline: Vitalism, Aesthetic Politics and Race in the Interwar Years

Taeku Lee, Political Science, Between Social Theory and Social Science Practice: Toward a New Approach to the Survey Measurement of 'Race'

Saba Mahmood, Anthropology, Secular Islam and its Discontents: The Case of the Middle East and South Asia

Sara McMains, Mechanical Engineering, Real-time Design for Manufacturability Feedback

Yasunori Nomura, Physics, Exploring New Physics at the TeV Scale

Haw Yang, Chemistry, Visualizing Complex Biochemical Processes at the Single-Molecule Level

Jiwon Shin, East Asian Languages and Culture, Intimate Objects: The Circulation of Literature in Late Choson Korea.

Paul Gray

Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Paul Gray received the Benjamin Garver Lamme Award at the American Society for Engineering Education Conference and Exposition in Portland, Ore., last month. Established in 1928, the award recognizes excellence in teaching, contributions to research and technical literature, and achievements that advance the profession of engineering-college administration.

Gray was recognized for his contributions to electrical-engineering education through guiding and mentoring of students, conducting research, writing a textbook, and engaging in universitywide academic leadership. A leader in research on analog and mixed-signal circuits for 30 years, he co-authored Analysis and Design of Analog Integrated Circuits, a leading textbook in its field that has been translated into most major languages. Gray is former dean of Berkeley's College of Engineering.

Oscar Dubon, Jr.

Oscar Dubon, Jr., an assistant professor of materials science and engineering and a faculty scientist in the Materials Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, received the 2004 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., last month. The PECASE award recognizes the most promising young researchers in the nation.

Dubon's research focuses on semiconductor materials and manufacturing methods that address challenges presented by nanoscale electronics. He applies advanced thin-film growth techniques to control how different materials grow on each other to form new materials systems with unique chemical, physical, and electronic properties. His lab is currently investigating the growth of semiconductors on patterned and electrically insulating surfaces.

"We are exploring methods to manipulate how atoms of different materials interact with each other on a surface so that the atoms of one material can assemble into ordered crystalline nanostructures," said Dubon. This research may lead to fundamental breakthroughs in the realization of complex semiconductor systems for applications in nanoelectronics, he said.