Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons of Vanderbilt University Wins the 2021 Pérez Prize
Campos-Pons grew up on a sugar plantation in the Matanzas province of Cuba, and her family has Nigerian, Hispanic, and Chinese roots. She was a pioneer of the New Cuban Art Movement that opposed Communist repression in Cuba during the late 1980s.
Yale’s Marcella Nunez-Smith Honored to Her Work to Address COVID-19 Racial Disparities
Dr. Nunez-Smith, an associate professor and associate dean for health equity research at Yale Medical School, was honored for her work to address the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Black and brown communities.
Bridgette M. Brawner Honored by the International Society of Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurses
Bridgette M. Brawner is an associate professor in the department of family and community health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. Her research focuses on HIV and AIDS among Black residents of Philadelphia and on how mental health conditions, such as depression in Black youth, correlate with unhealthy behaviors.
William Jackson of the University of California, Davis Honored by the National Science Board
The National Science Board recognized Dr. Jackson, a distinguished researcher and emeritus professor of chemistry at the University of California, Davis, as both a leader in the field of chemistry and a mentor and advocate for increasing minority participation in science.
Vanderbilt University’s Steven Townsend Honored by the American Chemical Society
Dr. Townsend received the 2021 David Y. Gin Young Investigator Award from the American Chemical Society. The award recognizes "outstanding contributions to research in carbohydrate chemistry by scientists in the first seven years of their independent career."
Nicole Fleetwood of Rutgers University Wins National Book Critics Circle Award
Dr. Fleetwod's book - Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration - which took nine years to complete, is based on scores of interviews with incarcerated people and their families, prison staff, activists, and other observers. It explores the importance of people in prison creating art as a means to survive incarceration.
CalTech’s Ibrahim Cissé Awarded the Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science
The $100,000 prize is awarded annually to young immigrant scientists living and working in the United States "whose early-career work exemplifies outstanding scientific accomplishment, and presents a significant contribution to their field of study."
North Carolina A&T State University Names New Engineering Complex After Its Chancellor
The new Harold L. Martin, Sr., Engineering Research and Innovation Complex, scheduled for completion in August, is a $90-million facility that will enhance the research and instructional capacities of a college that leads the nation in the graduation of African American engineers.
Nicole Ausmer to Receive the Outstanding Achievement in Diversity Award
The award is presented by the National Association of Campus Activities to individuals that positively contribute to the development of programs and services promoting cultural diversity, understanding, and awareness. Dr. Ausmer is director of Student Activities and Leadership Development at the University of Cincinnati.
University of Arkansas’ Jeffrey Allen Murdock Wins the 2021 Grammy Music Educator Award
The prestigious Grammy Music Educator Award recognizes current educators who have made a significant and lasting contribution to the field of music education and who demonstrate a commitment to the broader cause of maintaining music education in the schools.
Samson Jenekhe Wins the 2021 Polymer Physics Prize
Samson Jenekhe is the Boeing-Martin Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington. The Polymer Physics Prize was established in 1960 in conjunction with the Dow Chemical Company, which remains its chief supporter, and includes a cash award of $10,000.
University of California, Davis Chancellor Receives Lifetime Mentoring Award
Gary S. May, chancellor of the University of California, Davis, has received the 2021 Lifetime Mentor Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The award honors researchers who have positively impacted a department or institution over the course of 25 years.
Kiki Petrosino of the University of Virginia Wins the 2021 Rilke Prize
Professor Petrosino was honored for her poetry collection that weaves together a variety of poetic forms – villanelles, a heroic crown and erasure – to explore her Black heritage and larger societal issues with the legacy of slavery and race relations in America.
Esther Ngumbi Honored for Work to Enhance Public Engagement With Science
Esther Ngumbi, an assistant professor of entomology at the University of Illinois, is the 2021 recipient of the Mani L. Bhaumik Award for Public Engagement with Science, an annual award given out by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Previous winners have included Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Princeton University’s Keith Wailoo Will Share the $1 Million David Dan Prize
Keith Wailoo is the Henry Putnam University Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He is being honored for his historical scholarship focused on race, science, and health equity; on the social implications of medical innovation; and on the politics of disease.
Shirley Ann Jackson Wins Award From the American Association of Physics Teachers
Dr. Jackson was chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 1995 to 1999. She then left government service to take over as the 18th president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1999. She was the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in any discipline from MIT.
Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates Jr. Honored by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Professor Gates received the Don M. Randel Award for Humanistic Studies from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The award has been given out only seven times since it was established in 1975.
Antoinette Landor of the University of Missouri Honored for Mentoring Undergraduate Researchers
Antoinette Landor, associate professor in the department of human development and family science in the College of Human Environmental Sciences at the University of Missouri, was recently named the 2020 Undergraduate Research Mentor by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.
Creighton University Chemistry Scholar Honored by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation
Kayode Oshin, associate professor of chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, has been named a Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, an award honoring young faculty in the chemical sciences. He will receive a $75,000 award to help fund his research.
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe Wins the Joanne Simpson Medal From the American Geophysical Union
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe holds the Falasco Chair in Earth Sciences and Geology and is associate dean of the graduate division at the University of California, Merced. The main focus of her research is to understand the effect of changing environmental conditions on vital soil processes.
John Dabiri to Receive the 2020 Alan T. Waterman Award From the National Science...
Waterman awardees each receive $1 million over five years for research in their chosen field of science. Dabiri says the funding will allow him to pursue research into some of the ways climate change challenges and threatens modern life.
Cornell’s Derrick Spires Wins First Book Award From the Modern Language Association
In the book, Dr. Spires, an associate professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, examines the parallel development of early Black print culture and legal and cultural understandings of U.S. citizenship between 1787 and 1861.
Sabrina Cherry of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington Wins Peace Corps Award
The Franklin H. Williams Award recognizes ethnically diverse Peace Corps volunteers who have returned from their assignments and have demonstrated a lifelong commitment to civic engagement, service, diversity, inclusion, and world peace.
Robert Bullard of Texas Southern University Honored by the United Nations
Dr. Bullard received the 2020 Champions of the Earth Lifetime Achievement award from the United Nations Environment Programme. Dr. Bullard was honored for his commitment and service to environmental justice.
The American Society of Criminology Honors Book by Berkeley Professor Nikki Jones
Nikki Jones, a professor of African American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, has won the 2020 Michael J. Hindelang Award from the American Society of Criminology. The award recognizes a book published within the past three years that makes the most outstanding contribution to research in criminology.
Louisiana State’s Tina Harris Honored by the National Communication Association
Tina M. Harris, who holds the Douglas L. Manship Sr.-Dori Maynard Race, Media, and Cultural Literacy Endowed Chair at the Manship School of Mass Communication, won the Francine Merritt Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Lives of Women in Communication.
Berkeley’s Nikki Jones Honored by the Western Society of Criminology
Nikki Jones, a professor of African American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, has been awarded the 2020 W.E.B. DuBois Award from the Western Society of Criminology for her work in raising awareness for racial and ethic issues in criminology and criminal justice.
Danielle Phillips-Cunningham Honored by the National Women’s Studies Association
Danielle Phillips-Cunningham, an associate professor of multicultural women's and gender studies at Texas Woman's University, is the recipient of a 2020 National Women's Studies Association's Sara A. Whaley Book Prize.
Emery Brown Awarded the Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience
Emery N. Brown is the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and Computational Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also serves as the Warren M. Zapol Professor at Harvard Medical School and is a practicing anesthesiologist.
Professor Claude Steele Honored for a Lifetime of Work in Social Psychology
The Legacy Award from the Society of Personality and Social Psychology honors figures whose career contributions have shaped the field. Dr. Steele, a professor emeritus at Stanford University, is perhaps best known for his work on the underperformance of minority students due to stereotype threat.
Oklahoma State University Bestows Additional Honors on Its First Black Student
In 1949, Nancy Randolph Davis became the first African-American student to enroll at what was then Oklahoma A&M College. Initially, she was required to sit in the hallway outside a classroom because of the color of her skin.
Yale University’s Hazel Carby Wins Book Award From the British Academy
Hazel V. Carby is the Charles C. & Dorathea S. Dilley Professor Emerita of African American Studies & American Studies at Yale University. The daughter of a White Welsh mother and a Black Jamaican father, Dr. Carby taught at Yale for 30 years before retiring from teaching at the end of the 2018-19 academic year.
Princeton University’s Deana Lawson Is the First Photographer to Win the Hugo Boss Prize
Sponsored by the German fashion house Hugo Boss and presented by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the prize has been awarded biannually since 1996 and was established to “embrace today’s most innovative and critically relevant cultural currents.” The prize is considered among the most prestigious awards within the contemporary art world.
Jeanne Craig Sinkford Wins the Highest Award Given by the American College of Dentists
Dr. Sinkford was appointed associate dean at the Howard University College of Dentistry in 1967. In 1975, she broke the gender barrier when she was appointed dean of Howard University College of Dentistry, the first woman to lead a U.S. dental school. She served as dean from 1975 to 1991.
Anderson Sunda-Meya Wins the Excellence in Physics Education Award
Anderson Sunda-Meya, the Norwood Endowed Professor of Physics and associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at Xavier University in New Orleans, has been awarded the 2021 Excellence in Physics Education Award from the American Physical Society.
University of Chicago’s Eve Ewing Honored at the Iowa City Book Festival
Eve Ewing is an assistant professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. The Paul Engle Prize honors writers who demonstrate a pioneering spirit in the world of literature and a commitment to engaging with the issues of the day.
