Newsmakers

Holdren honored as guest professor of Tsinghua University

John P. Holdren, director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, has been appointed a guest professor of Tsinghua University in Beijing. A co-principal investigator with the center’s Energy Technology Innovation Policy research program, Holdren was installed into the professorship late last month. As part of the May 26 ceremony he presented a lecture titled “Meeting the Climate-Change Challenge:  What Do We Know? What Should We Do?”

Known as the “the MIT of China,” Tsinghua University is one of that country’s most important universities. Holdren’s three-year appointment with the university is with the School of Public Policy and Management.

“I am deeply honored by this appointment,” he said, “which will help deepen the ongoing collaboration among the Belfer Center of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Woods Hole Research Center, and Tsinghua University and other Chinese institutions on how our two countries can work together to address the challenge of climate change.”

Locke given innovation award

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) psychiatrist Steven E. Locke was awarded the Ronnie Stangler Award for Innovation by the American Association of Technology in Psychiatry (AATP), an affiliate of the American Psychiatric Association, at its annual meeting held in Washington, D.C., on May 3.

The AATP Technology Innovation Award is presented to “individuals who have shown creativity and innovation in applying technology to the practice of psychiatry and medicine.”

Locke organized the annual Summit on Behavioral Health, which was held June 2-3 at the Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School. The summit focuses on the intersection of innovative health technologies, disease management, and behavioral change. Additionally, Locke is the founding director of “Information Technology in the Healthcare System of the Future,” a Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology elective held each spring that teaches student teams to solve health care problems using innovative technology solutions.

HBS’s Thomas McCraw receives Hagley book prize

Thomas McCraw, the Isidor Straus Professor of Business History Emeritus at Harvard Business School, has received the Hagley Prize in Business History for his book “Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction” (Belknap Press, 2007). The Hagley Prize is awarded annually by the Business History Conference (BHC) for the best book in business history.

Zhang awarded prestigious Merck Award

Yun Zhang, an assistant professor of biology in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and the Center for Brain Science, was recently awarded a John Merck Scholar Award for her research aimed at understanding learning and the pathology of neurological defects. The John Merck Award, which includes a prize in the amount of $300,000 to support research, is one of the most prestigious awards given to young scientists.

One of two neuroscientists nationwide to have been named a winner for 2008, Zhang (and her lab group) is using a model organism, C. elegans, to characterize the functional organization of neural circuits underlying learning.

— Compiled by Andrew Brooks