Laurels
Blue ribbons, gold stars, honorable mentions...
12 February 2009
CAL Prep, a public charter school co-designed by UC Berkeley and Aspire Public Schools, has been recognized by the state Department of Education as a 2008-09 Title I Academic Achievement school. Formally named California College Preparatory Academy, CAL Prep is one of 200 schools throughout the state to win the honor, to be bestowed at a ceremony in Anaheim in late April.
Economist Hayne Leland, a longtime professor at the Haas School of Business, has won the inaugural Stephen A. Ross Prize, awarded by the Foundation for the Advancement of Research in Financial Economics (FARFE) for “his influential work on corporate debt pricing and capital structure,” and specifically for a paper on that topic published in 1994 in the Journal of Finance.
FARFE, a consortium of finance academics and practitioners from around the world, selected Leland’s paper for the “elegant and rigorous approach it took in addressing an important problem in finance,” as well as its influence on subsequent research.
Patricia Berger, associate professor of Chinese art, has won the 2008 Shimada Prize for her book Empire of Emptiness: Buddhist Art and Political Authority in Qing China (2003, University of Hawai’i Press), which dealt with the 18th-century Qing court’s use of Buddhist art in their relationship with Mongolia and Tibet. Berger, who was curator of Chinese art for the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco at the time of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, began exploring the subject in depth as a result of damage to the museum’s collection, which prompted her to buy Qing material. She joined the Berkeley faculty in 1997.
The American Astronomical Society’s 2009 Newton Lacey Pierce Prize for 2009 has been awarded to Joshua Bloom, an associate professor of astronomy, for his work in exploring and understanding the nature of gamma-ray burst sources.
The prize is given to an astronomer under the age of 36 for outstanding achievement in observational astronomical research based on measurements of radiation from an astro-nomical object. Bloom, who earned his doctorate at Caltech in 2002, joined the Berkeley faculty in 2005.
Ken Min, founder of the UC Martial Arts Program, has been recognized by the South Korean government for his lifetime of contributions to world taekwando. Min, one of 40 Koreans living overseas to receive the honor, was feted as a special guest at a reception and dinner hosted by South Korea’s president, Lee Myung Bak, and his wife.
Richard Buxbaum, the Jackson H. Ralston Professor of International Law, has been named the winner of Berkeley Law’s 2009 Faculty Lifetime Achievement Award. Buxbaum, the first director of the Earl Warren Legal Institute and dean of International and Area Studies from 1993 to 1999, championed numerous causes during his nearly five decades on campus, including representing students during the Free Speech Movement and Vietnam war protests. The prize will be presented at the law school’s Citation Award Dinner on Friday, May 1, at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in San Francisco.