Campus & Community

Newsmakers

3 min read

ROCKEFELLER FELLOWS CHOSEN

The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Fellowships administrative board has awarded fellowships to six graduating seniors for 2009-10. Rockefeller Fellowships contribute $18,000 toward a year of purposeful postgraduate immersion in a foreign culture for individuals at critical stages in their development who feel a compelling need for new and broadening experiences.

The six recipients are Lauren Brants ’09 of Kirkland House, for travel to Mexico; Wilmarie Cidre ’09 of Kirkland House, for travel to Chile; Nicholas Rizzo ’09 of Lowell House, for travel to India; Nora Sluzas ’09 of Eliot House, for travel to China; Brittan Smith ’09 of Pforzheimer House, for travel to South Africa; and Cristiana Strava ’09 of Eliot House, for travel to Morocco.

HEDLEY-WHYTE WINS AAMI AWARD

John Hedley-Whyte, the David S. Sheridan Professor of Anaesthesia and Respiratory Therapy at Harvard Medical School, has been awarded the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) Technical Committee Award for his role in the development of American National Standards and the corresponding International Standards in the Application of Risk Management to Medical Devices. These efforts are part of a White House initiative on Medical Device Interoperability.

GOLDMAN INVITED TO SPEAK TO HOMELAND SECURITY COUNCIL

Julian M. Goldman, a Harvard Medical School instructor in anesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), has recently given an invited presentation to the White House Homeland Security Council on medical device interoperability requirements and technologies that improve patient treatment and safety. Before coming to MGH, Goldman was the vice president of medical affairs for a medical monitoring company and a chair of the U.S. national standards committee for anesthetic and respiratory equipment.

STEINKELLER RECEIVES HUMBOLDT AWARD

Piotr Steinkeller, professor of Assyriology in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, has received the Humboldt Research Award from Germany’s Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The award provides funding for internationally renowned scientists and scholars to pursue research in Germany. From May 2009 through January 2010, Steinkeller will research the political and economic organization of Babylonia at the end of the third millennium BCE, at the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München. He will work in collaboration with Walther Sallaberger, a professor of Assyriology at the university’s Institut für Assyriologie und Hethitologie.

Steinkeller, who has taught at Harvard since 1981, has published three books and written more than 100 scholarly articles and book reviews. His work focuses primarily on Mesopotamia, and Steinkeller has led a range of courses on the history of ancient Mesopotamia, Mesopotamian culture and religion, as well as the Sumerian and Akkadian languages.

COUNTER AT NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY

S. Allen Counter, director of the Harvard Foundation, attended the 2008 Nobel Prize Ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, on Dec. 10. Counter was invited to the ceremony by the Nobel Foundation and the Karolinska Nobel Institute, where he received his doctor of medical science degree in 1989. At the event, Counter was able to meet with Luc Montagnier, the winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology for his discovery of the HIV/AIDS virus.

— Compiled by Gervis A. Menzies Jr.