Deidra Williams, lecturer I in the School of Nursing, was named to the Crain’s Detroit Business 2024 class of 40 Under 40, highlighting people younger than 40 who make significant impacts on their community. Williams is a nurse midwife and director of women’s health at DMC Sinai-Grace Hospital, working to reduce Detroit’s maternal mortality rate for Black women. She led the hospital’s effort to secure grants from the state of Michigan and the United Way for new initiatives to save women’s lives.
Myles Durkee, assistant professor of psychology in LSA, has been named the next James S. Jackson Emerging Scholar by the Program for Research on Black Americans at the Institute for Social Research. Durkee is a PRBA affiliate whose research examines the dynamics of code-switching, cultural invalidations and racial discrimination to determine how these experiences influence important psychosocial outcomes such as mental health, identity development and academic achievement.
The U-M Department of Astronomy has earned a Bronze Award from the Physics and Astronomy SEA Change Committee for its work to create a more inclusive, diverse and supportive astronomy department. U-M is the first astronomy department and first doctoral-granting department to be awarded a P/A SEA Change Bronze Award.
Dragan Huterer, professor of physics in LSA, is the winner of the 2025 Chambliss Astronomical Writing Award for his book “A Course in Cosmology: From Theory to Practice.” The award is presented by the American Astronomical Society for astronomy writing for an academic audience, specifically textbooks at either the upper-division undergraduate or graduate level. The society said Huterer’s book is an approachable overview of the relevant techniques currently used by both observational and theoretical cosmologists.
Minh Nguyen was awarded Third Prize for the 2025 Buchalter Cosmology Prize for research performed in the physics department and the Leinweber Center for Theoretical Physics. The prize was created to support the development of new theories, observations or methods that can help illuminate the puzzle of cosmic expansion from first principles. Nguyen has since moved on to his next postdoctoral appointment at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe in Tokyo.
James S. Milne, professor emeritus of mathematics, will receive the American Mathematical Society’s 2025 Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition for his “extensive corpus of excellent expository works” on his website, jmilne.org/math/. The prize is awarded annually for a book or substantial survey or expository research paper. Milne’s website, which he has been developing since 1996, now contains more than 2,000 pages of notes, as well as other expository articles. “These have educated a generation of arithmetic geometers,” according to the prize citation.
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