Campus & Community

Newsmakers

4 min read

Lecturer Chapman named Levenson winner

Lecturer on anthropology Judith Flynn Chapman has been named the junior faculty recipient of the Levenson Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Undergraduate Council. Chapman (who is also the Allston Burr Senior Tutor in Quincy House) was selected to receive the award by the Student Affairs Committee of the Undergraduate Council, based on nominations by students.

Stager appointed to Austrian Academy of Sciences

Lawrence E. Stager, the Dorot Professor of the Archaeology of Israel and director of the Harvard Semitic Museum, was recently elected a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften) in the Philosophical Historical Section. The official installation will be held May 23. The Austrian Academy of Sciences is the leading organization promoting non-university academic research institutions in Austria. Highly qualified researchers from Austria and abroad are included among the members of the academy.

Cyber artists, Harvard affiliates win IBM Innovation Awards

Filmmaker Clea T. Waite, a 2006-07 Radcliffe Institute fellow, recently received the Grand Award of $5,000 as part of the first-ever IBM Innovation Awards for her experimental film “Moonwalk.” Waite screened the film May 5 and 6 at the Radcliffe Gym in conjunction with the 2007 Boston Cyberarts Festival. Designed for projection on a traditional planetarium cupola, “Moonwalk” is a unique blend of science, technology, and art — found footage, astronomical photographs, sound bites, and poems — that investigates humanity’s relationship with the moon.

Additionally, artist-in-residence at Harvard Medical School (HMS) Brian Knep received a $500 prize as part of the IBM awards for his video “Aging: Works in Progress from the Harvard Medical School Residency.” Working with one particular lab at HMS that focuses on the aging process, Knep observed and filmed frogs over the amphibians’ life span and created videos (projected on walls) in which the frogs swim up and down as they age. The video was on view at the Judi Rotenberg Gallery in Boston April 21-28 in association with the Boston Cyberarts Festival. The IBM Innovation Awards are given in recognition of outstanding exhibitions and events featured in the festival. The awards were presented earlier this month at the Hotel@MIT.

Bloom receives leadership award from U.N. Assoc. of Greater Boston

Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health Barry R. Bloom received a Leadership Award from the U.N. Association of Greater Boston on April 27. The ceremony took place at the association’s fourth annual Consuls Ball, a gala event that pays tribute to Boston’s Consular Corps — the diplomatic representatives of more than 50 countries in Boston. The event supported global education in local schools.

The association cited Bloom “for his outstanding efforts in fighting infectious diseases worldwide and promoting and implementing international public health initiatives.” A leader in international health and former consultant to the White House, Bloom continues to pursue an active interest in bench science as the principal investigator of a laboratory researching the immune response to tuberculosis, a disease that claims more than 2 million people each year. He has been extensively involved with the World Health Organization (WHO) for more than 30 years and is a member of the WHO Advisory Committee on Health Research. He has chaired WHO’s committees on leprosy research and tuberculosis research, as well as the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee of the U.N. Development Program/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases.

Institute named for HSPH Adjunct Professor Leape

The National Patient Safety Foundation in Washington, D.C., has announced that it will establish the Lucian Leape Institute in honor of the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) adjunct professor of health policy, who is regarded as a pioneer in the field of preventing medical error. According to the foundation, the Lucian Leape Institute will serve as a think tank, issue reports, and define strategic paths and calls to action for the field of patient safety.

Sen collects Kiel Prize

Amartya Sen, Lamont University Professor at Harvard and adjunct professor of population and international health at the Harvard School of Public Health, has been named one of three recipients of the World Economy Prize, also known as the Kiel Prize. The award, given by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the Schleswig-Holstein State Chamber of Industry and Commerce, and the German city of Kiel, honors economists, politicians, and business leaders who enable society to live under free economic principles open to world markets.

A Nobel Prize winner, Sen is renowned for his research into welfare economics and poverty. The other two recipients of the Kiel Prize this year are Helmut Schmidt, former German chancellor, and Ingvar Kamprad, founder of Ikea.