Emanuele Berti, Professor, Physics and Astronomy, was named a Fellow and President Elect of the International Society of General Relativity and Gravitation.
Veena Das, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor, Anthropology, was named a Fellow to the British Academy. Das also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bern, Switzerland, in addition to one from Durham University, England.
Laura Di Bianco, Assistant Professor, German and Romance Languages and Literatures, was awarded the Lauro De Bosis Postdoctoral Fellowship in the History of Italian Civilization at Harvard University, for spring 2020, for her research project “Crumbling Beauty: Italian Cinema in the Age of the Anthropocene.”
Karen Fleming, Professor, Biophysics, was awarded the $50,000 Provost’s Prize for Faculty Excellence in Diversity for her work supporting gender equity in science fields.
Andrei Gritsan and Oleg Tchernyshyov, both professors in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and Michael Falk, Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy with a joint appointment in the Whiting School, were elected Fellows of the American Physical Society.
Taekjip Ha, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, Biophysics, was named a 2020 Fellow of the Biophysical Society. The honor recognizes members who have demonstrated excellence in science and contributed to the expansion of the field of biophysics.
Marc Kamionkowski, William R. Keenan, Jr. Professor, Physics and Astronomy and Robert Moffitt, Krieger Eisenhower Professor, Economics, were named to the National Academy of Sciences.
Michael Levien, Assistant Professor, Sociology, won three additional awards for his book Dispossession without Development: Land Grabs in Neoliberal India: the Sociology of Development Section Book Award; the Political Economy of World System Distinguished Book Award; honorable mention, Asia/Transnational Book Award; and the Global and Transnational Sociology Best Scholarly Book Award.
Brice Ménard, Associate Professor, Physics and Astronomy, gave the prestigious Hans Jensen Lecture at the University of Heidelberg in October. The lecture is named for Hans Jensen, who shared the 1963 Nobel Prize for the nuclear shell model, and is intended to honor speakers who have made fundamental contributions to a research area in modern physics.
Deborah McGee Mifflin, Associate Teaching Professor, Department of German and Romance Languages and Literatures, was elected president of the Maryland/DC Metro chapter of the American Association of Teachers of German.
Samuel Spinner, Assistant Professor and Zelda and Myer Tandetnik Chair in Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture; German and Romance Languages and Literatures, was awarded a fellowship at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, where he will work on a book, Museums of Words: Holocaust Museums and Literature.
V. Sara Thoi, Assistant Professor, Chemistry, received the Maryland Innovation Initiative Award from TEDCO and the State of Maryland, to support development efforts on MOF-based energy storage devices.
David Yarkony, Associate Professor, Chemistry, received the 2019 Herschbach Medal in Theory Award, which recognizes “bold and architectural work, inspiring and empowering.”
