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Faculty and Student Highlights

Yakein Abdelmagid (1st-year Ph.D. student, Cultural Anthropology), Navid Naderi (1st-year Ph.D. student, Literature) and Alyssa Miller (2nd-year Ph.D. student, Cultural Anthropology) were three of five featured speakers at the Young Scholars Roundtable held on the final day of the Duke-UNC “Arab Springs: Revolution and Repression” conference held at Duke University on February 18. Abdelmagid spoke about the resistance movement in Egypt, Naderi addressed the Green Movement in Iran, and Miller discussed the Tunisian revolution.

Shayla Adams (Master of Arts in Teaching ’09) was selected as Teacher of the Year at Hillside New Tech High School in Durham, North Carolina.

Susan C. Alberts, The Jack H. Neely Professor of Biology, received the 2012 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring.

Anne-Marie Angelo (Ph.D. candidate, History) has received the 2012 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring.

Noëlle Boucquey (Ph.D. candidate, Environment), was first author on the paper “Interpreting amenities, envisioning the future: common ground and conflict in North Carolina’s rural coastal communities,” published in GeoJournal.

Merlise Clyde, Professor of Statistical Science, has been elected President of ISBA, the International Society for Bayesian Analysis–the world’s leading professional organization for Bayesian statistics and related disciplines. She will serve as President Elect of ISBA in 2012, President in 2013 and Past President in 2014. See www.bayesian.org.

Amy Dent (4th-year Ph.D. student, Psychology & Neuroscience) has been awarded a Bass Fellowship.

Brian Goldstone (Ph.D. candidate, Cultural Anthropology) has received a three-year postdoctoral fellowship in the Society of Fellows at Columbia University.

Farshid Guilak, The Laszlo Ormandy Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and Professor of Biomedical Engineering, has received the 2012 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring.

Richard Hays, George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testament, has been appointed to a full term as dean of Duke Divinity School, a role he assumed on a two-year basis in August 2010. Hays’ appointment as the school’s 12th dean comes after a six-month national search. Hays recently returned from Scotland, where he delivered the Gunning Lectures at the University of Edinburgh.

Stephen Jaffe, Mary and James H. Semans Professor of Music Composition, will be inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in May 2012.

Aaron Kay, Associate Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience and Associate Professor of Management, has received the American Psychological Society’s Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions to Psychology.

Hwansoo Kim, Assistant Professor of Religion, has been Awarded the Korea Foundation Fellowship.

Maxwell Leung (Ph.D. candidate, Environment) and Xinyu (Candy) Yang (Ph.D. candidate, Environment) won first place prizes in the platform and poster presentation categories (respectively), at the North Carolina Society of Toxicology meeting. 

Shannon McDermott (Ph.D. candidate, Genetics & Genomics) has received the 2012 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Joseph Miller (Ph.D. candidate, Classical Studies) received the Fay Horton Sawyier Pre-Doctoral Teaching Fellowship at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

David Morgan, Professor of Art, Art History & Visual Studies and Religion and Director of the Graduate Program in Religion, has published The Embodied Eye: Religious Visual Culture and the Social Life of Feeling, University of California Press. He has also been invited by the University of Birmingham, England, to deliver the 2012 Cadbury Lectures in March. His topic will be: “Visual Worlds: A History of Christian Visual Culture since the Reformation.”

Elizabeth Munch (4th-year Ph.D. student, Mathematics) has been awarded the Jo Rae Wright Fellowship for Outstanding Women in Science.

Wendy Dow Piniak (Ph.D. candidate, Marine Science and Conservation) has received the 2012 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Charlie Piot, Professor of Cultural Anthropology, received the 2012 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring.

Victor Ray (Ph.D. candidate, Sociology) has received the 2012 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring.

Jane Richardson, James B. Duke Professor of Biochemistry, currently serving as President-Elect of the Biophysical Society was elected president of the society on February 27, 2012 during the annual meeting in San Diego.

Lawrence Richardson, Jr., James B. Duke Professor of Latin, Emeritus has received the AIA Gold Medal for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement from the Archaeological Institute of America.

Elizabeth Ruzzo (Ph.D. candidate, Genetics and Genomics) has been awarded the Jo Rae Wright Fellowship for Outstanding Women in Science.

Allison Schmitt (Ph.D. candidate, Chemistry) has received the 2012 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Orin Starn, Professor of Cultural Anthropology, has published The Passion of Tiger Woods: An Anthropologist Reports on Golf, Race, and Celebrity Scandal (a John Hope Franklin Center book).

Molly Stroud-Weeks (5th-year Ph.D. student, Psychology & Neuroscience) has been awarded a Boone Fellowship.

Richard Surwit, Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience, will receive the Society of Behavioral Medicine Distinguished Scientist Award for 2012.

Jaclyn Turnwald (Master of Arts in Teaching ’09) was named Teacher of the Year at J.D. Clement Early College High School in Durham, North Carolina.

Robyn Wiegman, Professor of Women’s Studies & Literature has recently published Object Lessons (Duke University Press, 2012).

Tong Zhang (4th-year Ph.D. student, Civil & Environmental Engineering) received a 2012 Graduate Student Paper Award from the American Chemical Society, Division of Environmental Chemistry. This is the highest award given to students by the Divsion of Environmental Chemistry. Tong will present the paper at the Fall ACS Meeting in Philadelphia at the special C. Ellen Gonter Environmental Chemistry Awards Symposium.