Editor’s Note: The information for this story includes excerpts from citations provided by the Office of University Development.

Thirty-six University of Michigan faculty members will be honored at the annual Faculty Awards Dinner for their notable contributions in the areas of teaching, service and scholarship. The private dinner will be Oct. 30 at the Rackham Graduate School.

Here’s a look at the awards and the recipients:

University Diversity and Social Transformation Professorships

The University Diversity and Social Transformation Professorships, which honor senior faculty whose work has promoted the university’s goals around diversity, equity and inclusion, is new this year. Recipients will hold their initial appointments for five years and receive an annual stipend of $20,000. They also will receive special faculty fellow status at the National Center for Institutional Diversity and will spend at least one semester as a faculty fellow-in-residence. The recipients are Ketra Armstrong, Audrey Bennett, Susan Dynarski, Omolola Eniola-Adefeso, Stephanie Fryberg, Marita Inglehart, Carla O’Connor, Denise Sekaquaptewa and David Wooten.

Ketra Armstrong

Associate dean for graduate affairs and professor of sport management, School of Kinesiology; professor of women’s studies, LSA; faculty athletic representative, Office of the President

Armstrong holds a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Education degree from Mississippi State University. She has a Ph.D. in sport management from The Ohio State University. She was director of the sport management graduate program at California State University, Long Beach, and an Ohio State faculty member prior to joining U-M’s faculty in 2011.

Armstrong is nationally recognized for her work on race, gender and the social psychology of sport and leisure consumption. Her research focuses primarily on sport opportunities, and experiences and behaviors of women and consumers of African descent.

As an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, Armstrong teaches courses on race relations, gender, and leadership and diversity. She developed the open online course, “Free Speech in Sport Teach Out,” and co-produced and narrated the DVD series “Title IX: Implications for Women in Sport and Education.”

Armstrong is a research fellow in the National Academy of Kinesiology and the North American Society for Sport Management. She is U-M’s faculty representative to the National Collegiate Athletic Association and serves on the Provost’s Academic Affairs Advisory Committee. She created the School of Kinesiology’s Diversity and Inclusion Network to engage and empower students to be DEI leaders.

Armstrong is a past president of the National Association for Girls and Women in Sport. She has received U-M’s Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award and the Honorary Guiding Woman in Sport Award from the Society of Health and Physical Educators.

Audrey G. Bennett

Professor of art and design, Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design

Bennett was a professor of graphics and the graduate program director in the Department of Communication and Media at Rensselaer Polytechnic University before joining U-M’s faculty in 2018. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Dartmouth College and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University.

A graphic design scholar, Bennett studies cross-cultural and transdisciplinary design that makes use of images that permeate global culture and impact the way we think and behave. Her insights into cross-cultural forms of visual communication are important to reimagining design as a technology for social change. She wrote the 2012 book, “Engendering Interaction with Images.”

Bennett works to ensure cultural diversity within the science, technology, engineering, art and math fields. Her new course called “Generative Play” builds on the recent Seeing Heritage Algorithms exhibition at the Stamps Gallery. She is an Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program mentor and serves on U-M’s Diversity Scholars Network.

Additionally, Bennett is a member of the College Art Association board and the CAA’s vice president for diversity and inclusion. She also serves on the editorial boards of “New Design Ideas,”“Image & Text” and the “Communication Design: Interdisciplinary and Graphic Design Research” journal, and reviews grants for the National Science Foundation. She has received a National Council of Arts Administrators fellowship and was an Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Scholar at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Susan Dynarski

Professor of public policy, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy; professor of education, School of Education; and professor of economics, LSA

Dynarski earned Bachelor of Arts and Master’s of Public Policy degrees from Harvard University. She has a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and taught at Harvard prior to joining U-M’s faculty in 2008. She co-directs the University’s Education Policy Initiative and Michigan Education Data Center.

Dynarski is an economist known for her commitment to accessible and equitable education. Through U-M’s High Achieving Involved Leader (HAIL) program, she demonstrated that high-achieving, low-income students who received a commitment of financial aid were more than twice as likely to apply and enroll in a top-tier university. Her findings led to the creation of U-M’s Go Blue Guarantee.

Dynarski has testified before Congress about student debt and financial aid. She recommended changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid form that made it easier to use and allowed it to better serve students from diverse backgrounds.

Additionally, Dynarski designs and teaches a variety of courses, including the “Causal Inference in Education Policy Research” series. She founded and is co-leader of the Causal Inference in Higher Education Research Seminar, editor of “Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis,” and is a past president of the Association for Education Finance and Policy. Dynarski has been recognized with a Spencer Foundation Award and the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators Robert P. Huff Golden Quill Award.

Omolola Eniola-Adefeso

Vice chair for graduate studies, Department of Chemical Engineering, and professor of chemical engineering, biomedical engineering and macromolecular science and engineering, College of Engineering. 

Eniola-Adefeso earned a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. She also has a Master of Science in Engineering and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. She did postdoctoral research at the Baylor College of Medicine prior to joining U-M’s faculty in 2006.

Eniola-Adefeso is an expert in the science and technology of the migration of human cells in the immune system. She is renowned for her research contributions advancing vascular-targeting drug delivery.

As the Department of Chemical Engineering Graduate Committee chair, she helped recruit the most diverse first-year Ph.D. class in the department’s history.

Eniola-Adefeso won the Provost’s Teaching Innovation Prize for an influential pedagogical initiative that involved chemical engineering students designing experiments for use in K-12 classrooms. Additionally, she developed a model peer-mentoring program that matches high-performing, upper-level graduate students with a diverse group of first-year Ph.D. students.

Nationally, she co-chairs the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering Committee for Underrepresented Minorities and the Minority Faculty Forum. She is a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Societal Impact Operating Council and serves on the planning committee for the Big Ten Women’s Workshop for junior women faculty.

Eniola-Adefeso has been recognized with the CoE’s Raymond J. and Monica E. Schultz Outreach and Diversity Award, the Center for the Education of Women’s Carol Hollenshead Award for Excellence in Promoting Equity and Social Change, the Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award and the Rackham Faculty Recognition Award.

Stephanie Fryberg

Professor of psychology, LSA

Fryberg earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College and Master of Arts and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University. She taught at the University of Arizona and the University of Washington prior to joining U-M’s faculty in 2019.

A member of Washington state’s Tulalip Tribes, Fryberg is an expert on how social representation ofrace, culture and social class influence the development of self, psychological well-being and educational attainment. Her investigation of the influence of the Indian warrior and princess images and other negative representations showed that such images can damage the self-esteem and aspiration of Native American students.

Fryberg and her colleagues designed a curriculum that builds culturally inclusive classrooms. Students at the six schools where the curriculum is being tested have demonstrated increases in belonging, motivation and academic proficiency.

Fryberg has testified about the impact of racial stereotypes before the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. She also works with the nonprofit IllumiNative to supplant negative Native American narratives that are based on myths and stereotypes with a more accurate one that reflects contemporary Native experiences.

Fryberg, co-author of “The Truly Diverse Faculty: New Dialogues in American Higher Education” (2014), is a member of the Stanford Multicultural Alumni Hall of Fame president of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. She has received the University of Arizona Five Star Faculty Award and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Distinguished Service to the Field Award.

Marita R. Inglehart

Professor of dentistry, School of Dentistry; adjunct professor of psychology, LSA

Inglehart holds two doctorate degrees in psychology and education from the University of Mannheim in Germany. She joined U-M in 1984 and has taught behavioral science courses at the School of Dentistry since 1990.

Inglehart has improved dental care with her scholarship focused on diversity, equity and inclusion in dental education. As a founding member of the dental school’s Multicultural Affairs Committee, she has championed the Student National Dental Association, women and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in dentistry and higher education.

Inglehart is a member of U-M’s Inclusive Teaching Committee and Interprofessional Education initiative. She has participated in the dental school’s Taskforce on Special Needs Patients, the Senate Advisory Committee for University Affairs Committee for a Multicultural University, and the Michigan Oral Health Taskforce subcommittee on child abuse, domestic violence and elder abuse. She has authored two books and edited three.

Inglehart is an Association for Psychological Science fellow and associate editor of the Journal of Dental Education. She serves on the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research – Secondary Data Analysis Review Board. She has received two Best New Program in Dental Education Awards from the ADEA and has been recognized with the Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award and Distinguished Diversity Leaders Award, the Spectrum Center’s Honorary Lavender Degree and the dental school’s Ida Gray Award.

Carla O’Connor

Arthur F. Thurnau Professor; professor of education, School of Education; director of Wolverine Pathways

O’Connor earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Wesleyan University and Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago before joining U-M’s faculty in 1996.

She is nationally known for her research on race, identity and educational resilience. She studies how racial identities are constructed within societal and organizational contexts and influence the school experiences of children and adults. Her research on resiliency among low-income and black students has made her a sought-after contributor to scholarly discussions on education and social justice.  

O’Connor served as the education school’s associate dean for academic affairs from 2012-16. She is a founding member of LSA’s Center for the Study of Black Youth in Context. She directs Wolverine Pathways, an academic success program that involves students, families and schools in Detroit, Southfield and Ypsilanti.

O’Connor is a member of the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies executive board and has served on numerous U-M committees, including the Provost’s Faculty Committee on Education for a Diverse Democracy and the DEI Climate Survey Faculty Advisory Group.

She is a member of the Educational Testing Service Committee on Equity in Student and Teacher Assessment and has served on the editorial boards of Educational Researcher and American Educational Research Journal. She has been recognized with a Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award and Faculty Career Development Award.

Denise Sekaquaptewa

Professor of psychology, LSA; faculty associate, Research Center for Group Dynamics, Institute for Social Research

Sekaquaptewa earned an associate’s degree from Phoenix Community College, a Bachelor of Arts degree from Arizona State University and Master of Arts and Ph.D. degrees from The Ohio State University. She has been a U-M faculty member since 1997.

Sekaquaptewa is an expert on how stereotyping and prejudice can impact the academic and workplace climate. Early in her career, she studied how being severely underrepresented in terms of gender or race can harm a person’s academic performance. She has documented factors that contribute to this solo status effect for members of minority groups. Additionally, she has demonstrated that stereotyping and implicit bias negatively impact women in science and engineering.

Sekaquaptewa has served on the U-M Committee on Strategies and Tactics for Recruiting to Improve Diversity and Excellence, or STRIDE, which seeks to enhance recruitment of women and minorities to faculty positions. She has also worked with Graduate Horizons, a boot camp for Native American graduate school applicants.

A fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science, Sekaquaptewa serves on national committees that address diversity in science for the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.

She has received the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues Distinguished Service Award and U-M’s Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award and Sarah Goddard Power Award.

David Wooten

Alfred L. Edwards Collegiate Professor and professor of marketing, Stephen M. Ross School of Business

Wooten earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Georgia State University and Master of Business Administration and Ph.D. degrees from the Stephen M. Ross School of Business. Prior to joining U-M’s faculty in 1998, he taught at the Columbia Business School and the University of Florida Warrington College of Business.

Wooten is an expert on access, retention and climate issues in the educational pipeline. He recently served at Cornell University as associate dean and chief diversity officer at the S.C. Johnson College of Business, co-chair of the Presidential Task Force on Campus Climate and professor of marketing at the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management.

Wooten directed the Ross Leadership, Education, and Development Summer Business Institute from 1999 to 2008. Today, he leads the Preparation Initiative, a learning community for first-year U-M students looking to transfer to Ross.

He served on the Provost’s Committee on DEI and was the lead for U-M’s DEI strategic plan. Additionally, he chaired the Ross School Diversity and Inclusion Committee. He is a past president of the Marketing Ethnic Faculty Association and chaired the Society for Consumer Psychology Ethnic Minority Affairs Committee.

Wooten has twice received the Black Celebratory Cornerstone Award from U-M students. He has also received the Leonard F. Sain Esteemed Alumni Award, Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award, the CGSM Sterling H. Schoen Achievement Award and the American Marketing Association Williams-Qualls-Spratlen Multicultural Mentoring Award of Excellence.

Distinguished Faculty Achievement Awards

The Distinguished Faculty Achievement Awards honor senior faculty who consistently have demonstrated outstanding achievements in the areas of scholarly research or creative endeavors, teaching and mentoring of students and junior colleagues, service and other activities. Up to five awards of $2,500 are made each year. The recipients are Carol Rossier Bradford, Anita Gonzalez, H.V. Jagadish, Elizaveta Levina and Kon-Well Wang.

Carol Rossier Bradford

Professor of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery, and executive vice dean for Academic Affairs, Medical School

Bradford earned Bachelor of Science, Master of Science and Doctor of Medicine degrees from U-M. She joined U-M’s faculty in 1992. Since 2016, she has served as executive vice dean for academic affairs and chief academic officer at Michigan Medicine.

Bradford is an internationally recognized head and neck surgeon and cancer researcher. She pioneered the use of sentinel lymph node biopsy to stage melanoma of the head and neck, developed therapies to combat cancers resistant to traditional treatments, and was among the first people to explore the role of the human papilloma virus in head and neck squamous cell cancer. She is the American Head and Neck Society’s first woman president.

As otolaryngology department chair from 2009-16, Bradford recruited women and people of color to the faculty and residency programs. She received the Medical School’s Community Service Award in 2010.

Nationally, Bradford is president-elect of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. She has served as president of the Society of University Otolaryngologists and on the editorial boards of Laryngoscope Investigative Otolaryngology, the Journal of the American Medical Association: Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, and Head and Neck.

A member of the National Academy of Medicine and Collegium Oto-Rhino-Laryngologicum Amicitiae Sacrum, Bradford has been recognized with the Castle Connolly Physician of the Year Award and the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Distinguished Service Award. She also is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, the American Head and Neck Society, the Triological Society and the American Laryngological Association.

Anita Gonzalez

Associate dean for faculty affairs, professor of theatre and drama, and chair of the Department of Dance, School of Music, Theatre & Dance

Gonzalez received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Florida State University, a Master of Arts degree from American University and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She taught at Connecticut College, Florida State and the State University of New York, New Paltz before joining U-M’s faculty in 2013.

Gonzalez is an acclaimed scholar, choreographer, director and writer known for her expertise in a range of theatrical disciplines. She is head of U-M’s Global Theatre and Ethnic Studies minor. Her research and publications span various topics including ethnic performance, 19th-century theater, maritime performance and how performance reveals histories and identities in the Americas and transnational contexts.

Gonzalez has authored “Afro-Mexico: Dancing Between Myth and Reality” (2010) and “Jarocho’s Soul” (2005), and co-edited “Black Performance Theory” (2013). She is a founder of the Urban Bush Women dance company and has staged more than 50 productions for venues such as Public Broadcasting Service television, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Puerto Rican Traveling Theater and New York Live Arts.

Gonzalez is a member of the National Theatre Conference and the League of Professional Theatre Women, and an associate member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. She edits Bloomsbury Publishing’s “Dance in Dialogue” series, is the Dramatists Guild of America’s regional representative and serves on the U-M Press executive committee.

She has been honored with several Fulbright Senior Scholar Awards. She has also received National Center for Institutional Diversity Award for Storytelling as Pipeline: Native American Rural Communities and U-M’s Shirley Verrett and Faculty Recognition awards.

H.V. Jagadish

Bernard A. Galler Collegiate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and professor of electrical engineering and computer science, College of Engineering; director of the Michigan Institute for Data Science

Jagadish earned a Ph.D. from Stanford University, worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories, and taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign prior to joining U-M in 1999.

Jagadish co-founded the Michigan Institute for Data Science. He is renowned for his contributions to the storage and management of information, particularly large data sets from multiple sources. As part of his pioneering work on multidimensional data, he developed new representation techniques and indexing schemes to store and retrieve non-conventional data sets. He holds 37 patents.

Additionally, Jagadish developed a course that examines the multiple computing technologies that comprise the World Wide Web. He also created Data Sciences Ethics, an open online course that addresses issues of privacy and control of consumer information and big data.

Jagadish served on the board of the Computing Research Association for nine years and was founding editor of Proceedings of Very Large Data Bases. He has served as senior scientific director of the National Institutes of Health National Center for Integrative Biomedical Informatics.

A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Association for Computing Machinery, Jagadish has been recognized with the ACM SIGMOD (Special Interest Group on Management Data) Contributions Award and the College of Engineering David E. Liddle Research Excellence Award and Herbert Kopf Service Excellence Award.

Elizaveta Levina

Vijay Nair Collegiate Professor of Statistics, professor of statistics, LSA

Levina studied mathematics as an undergraduate at St. Petersburg State University in Russia. She has a Master of Science in mathematics from the University of Utah and a Ph.D. in statistics from the University of California, Berkeley. She joined U-M’s Statistics Department in 2002 and is affiliated with the Michigan Institute for Data Science and the Center for the Study of Complex Systems.

Levina is internationally recognized for her contributions to contemporary statistical theory, methods and applications. She develops tools and theory to extract useful signals from high-dimensional data sources, especially network data.

As chair of the Statistics Graduate Curriculum Task Force and Ph.D. program director for the past seven years, Levina has worked to enhance diversity in her department. She created a Ph.D. Student Council in Statistics to provide student input to the department. She also obtained a National Science Foundation Research Training Grant that has enabled the department to vertically integrate education and mentoring for undergraduates through postdoctoral students.

Levina has served on the LSA ADVANCE advisory board and the Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship Committee. She is an Institute of Mathematical Statistics council member, co-chair of the IMS Task Force on Data Science and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Statistical Association and the Annals of Statistics. Levina is also a fellow of the American Statistical Association and a recipient of the association’s Noether Young Scholar Award. She is also an IMS fellow and 2019 IMS Medallion Lecturer.

Kon-Well Wang

Stephen P. Timoshenko Collegiate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and professor of mechanical engineering, College of Engineering

Wang earned his Ph.D. degree at the University of California, Berkeley. He worked at General Motors Research Laboratories and Pennsylvania State University before joining U-M as department chair in 2008.

Wang is a renowned scholar in the emerging field of structural dynamics. He was chair of U-M’s Department of Mechanical Engineering from 2008-18 and currently directs the National Science Foundation Division of Engineering Education and Centers.

Wang pioneered a new class of adaptive structures with piezoelectric circuit networks and was the first to exploit the ultra-large surface area of carbon nanotube inclusions to achieve lightweight high damping composites. Inspired by plant cell, skeletal muscle and origami designs, he and his team continue to create new structures that are revolutionizing the automobile and aerospace industries. He holds a dozen patents and invention disclosures.

Wang has been recognized with the Penn State Engineering Society Outstanding Teaching Award and the Society of Automotive Engineers Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award. Nationally, he has chaired multiple American Society of Mechanical Engineers committees and was a chief editor for the Journal of Vibration & Acoustics.

A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the ASME and the Institute of Physics, Wang has been recognized with the highest honors in his field, including the ASME J.P. Den Hartog Award, the ASME Adaptive Structures and Materials Systems Prize, and the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers Smart Structures and Materials Lifetime Achievement Award. He has also received College of Engineering Stephen S. Attwood Award.

Distinguished Faculty Governance Award

The Distinguished Faculty Governance Award was established by the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs in 1986. The award recognizes distinguished service to faculty governance over several years, with an emphasis on universitywide service. Winners receive $1,500. The Alumni Association funds the award. The recipient is Deborah Goldberg.  

Deborah Goldberg

Arthur F. Thurnau Professor Emerita, Margaret B. Davis Distinguished University Professor Emerita of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and professor emerita of ecology and evolutionary biology, LSA

Goldberg earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Barnard College and a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. She conducted research at the Michigan State University Kellogg Biological Station before joining U-M’s faculty in 1983.

A world-class ecologist, Goldberg was founding chair of U-M’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from 2003-13. She has improved outcomes for women in science and enhanced science, technology, engineering and mathematics education at U-M. In 2010, she launched the Michigan Biology Academy Scholars program.

Goldberg directs the Authentic Research Connections program and has served on LSA’s Next Prof Planning Committee. She has also served on several university committees, including the Office of the Provost’s Blue Ribbon Panel on the Intersection Between Political Thought/Ideology and A Faculty Member’s Responsibility to Students, and on the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies executive board.

Additionally, Goldberg has served on the Program in the Environment advisory board and the Graham Sustainability Institute executive committee. She founded the Distinguished Faculty Fellows in Sustainability and co-chaired the Sustainability and Environmental Academic Programs Committee.

Goldberg has received U-M’s Distinguished Diversity Leaders Team Award, the Sarah Goddard Power Award, and the Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Ecological Society of America.

Distinguished University Professorships

Distinguished University Professorships were created in 1947 to recognize senior faculty for exceptional scholarly or creative achievement, national and international reputation, and superior records of teaching, mentoring and service. Faculty selected for the recognition, in consultation with the dean of the school or college in which he or she holds an appointment, name the professorship after a person of distinction in his or her field of interest. Each professorship carries an annual salary supplement of $5,000 and an annual research stipend of $5,000. The duration of the appointment is unlimited. Newly appointed Distinguished University Professors are expected to deliver an inaugural lecture. The recipients are John Ayanian, Paul Courant, Judith Irvine, Earl Lewis, Anna Suk-Fong Lok and Scott Page.

John Ayanian

Alice Hamilton Distinguished University Professor of Medicine and Healthcare Policy, Alice Hamilton Collegiate Professor of Medicine and professor of internal medicine, Medical School; professor of health management and policy, School of Public Health; professor of public policy, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

Ayanian earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Duke University, a Doctor of Medicine from Harvard Medical School and a Master of Public Policy degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He served on the Harvard Medical School faculty from 1992 to 2012, when he joined U-M as the inaugural director of the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.

Ayanian’s commitment to research and improving patients’ access to quality care has helped reduce gender, racial, ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in health care in the United States. He revealed gender differences in the treatment of heart disease and racial disparities in access to kidney transplants. His teams also have demonstrated how insurance coverage is associated with improved survival for women with breast cancer and improvements in access to care and health outcomes.

Ayanian chairs U-M’s Precision Health Initiative faculty advisory committee. He serves on the Perspectives advisory board of the New England Journal of Medicine and on the National Clinician Scholars Program National Program Board. He has been elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians and the National Academy of Medicine.

Additionally, he is a Master of the American College of Physicians and has been recognized with the Society of General Internal Medicine John M. Eisenberg National Award for Career Achievement in Research and the AcademyHealth Distinguished Investigator Award. 

Paul N. Courant

Edward M. Gramlich Distinguished University Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Harold T. Shapiro Collegiate Professor of Public Policy and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor; professor of public policy, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy; professor of economics, LSA; professor of information, School of Information; and faculty associate, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, Institute for Social Research.

Courant earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Swarthmore College and a Master of Science and a Ph.D. from Princeton University. He joined U-M’s faculty in 1973.

Courant has held several leadership positions at U-M, including director of the Institute of Public Policy Studies (now the Ford School), chair of the Department of Economics, associate provost for academic and budgetary affairs, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, and university librarian and dean of libraries.

Courant is a leading policy economist who is nationally recognized for his research in urban economics and public finance. He was among the first to recognize how university libraries could use digital technologies to benefit global research and scholarly communication. His vision and leadership led to a partnership with Google to digitize library collections, resulting in the Google Books corpus and the HathiTrust Digital Library.

A founding member of the HathiTrust and Digital Public Library of America boards, Courant has also served on the staff of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, the Task Force for A Long-Term Economic Strategy for Michigan, and the National Science Foundation Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access. He has received four LSA Excellence in Education Awards, and was a Michigan Society of Fellows senior fellow.

Judith T. Irvine

Edward Sapir Distinguished University Professor of Linguistic Anthropology, and professor of anthropology, LSA

Irvine has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University, studied at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. She was a Brandeis University faculty member from 1972-99, when she joined U-M’s faculty.

Irvine is a linguistic anthropologist and an internationally recognized leader in anthropological theory and analysis. Famous for her research on the relationship between language and other social forms, she redefined key conceptual frameworks in linguistic anthropology, such as formality in language use and ideology of language.

She has conducted research among the Wolof people of Senegal and Wolof speakers in the U.S., as well as with isiZulu speakers in Soweto, South Africa. She has published 79 articles and co-authored “Signs of Difference: Language and Ideology in Social Life” (2019), which demonstrates how semiotic processes affect the structuring of everyday life through language.

Among her various leadership roles, Irvine chaired U-M’s anthropology department and was an associate director of the African Studies Center. She is a past president of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, edited the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology,and served on the American Anthropological Association executive board. She also reconstructed Edward Sapir’s unpublished lectures into the book, “The Psychology of Culture” (1993).

She has received several fellowships and accolades, including election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

Earl Lewis

Thomas C. Holt Distinguished University Professor of History, Afroamerican and African Studies and Public Policy, professor of history, and Afroamerican and African studies, LSA; and professor of public policy, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

Lewis has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota. He has Master of Arts and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Minnesota. He taught at Minnesota and the University of California, Berkeley, prior to joining U-M, where he served on the faculty and as a senior administrator from 1989 to 2004. He was provost of Emory University from 2004-12 and president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation from 2013-18, when he returned to U-M. 

Lewis is a noted scholar of African-American and urban history and advocate for racial and gender equity, social justice and inclusion. He has explored the complex ways in which African Americans have defined their place in American society, politics and culture. He contributed significantly to U-M’s defense of affirmative action as essential to the university’s ability to educate all its students in two 2003 U.S. Supreme Court cases.

Lewis is the founding director of the U-M Center for Social Solutions.

He is also a past president of the Organization of American Historians, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Society of American Historians. He has received U-M’s Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award and Faculty Recognition Award and 11 honorary degrees.

Anna Suk-Fong Lok

Dame Sheila Sherlock Distinguished University Professor of Hepatology and Internal Medicine, Alice Lohrman Andrews Research Professor of Hepatology, and professor of internal medicine, Medical School

Lok earned a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery degree and a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Hong Kong. She completed her medical training at Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong and Royal Free Hospital in London. She served on the Tulane University faculty from 1992-95, when she joined U-M.

A renowned hepatologist, Lok is assistant dean for clinical research at the Medical School and directs Michigan Medicine’s hepatology program. She has revolutionized the treatment of chronic hepatitis B and C and significantly advanced liver cancer research.

Among other breakthroughs, she led a proof-of-concept trial demonstrating that a combination of oral antiviral drugs could cure hepatitis C. She also developed a simple, inexpensive method to predict liver disease in patients with hepatitis C. The World Health Organization uses the tool to stage liver disease in resource-limited countries. Additionally, she created the Lok index, a predictive model for cirrhosis in hepatitis patients.

Lok, a past president of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, has been recognized with the Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research Distinguished Mentor Award. She is an American Medical Association Women Physicians Section Inspirational Physicians Recognition Program honoree and a member of the Association of American Physicians.

She has received the AASLD Distinguished Service Award, the American Liver Foundation Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award, the American Gastroenterological Association Beaumont Prize and the European Association for the Study of the Liver International Recognition Award.

Scott Page

John Seely Brown Distinguished University Professor of Complexity, Social Science and Management, Williamson Family Professor of Business Administration, and professor of management and organizations, Stephen M. Ross School of Business; and professor of political science, economics and complex systems, LSA

Page joined the U-M faculty in 2000. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from U-M, a Master of Arts degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Master of Arts degree and a Ph.D. from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Page is a mathematical social theorist who uses innovative mathematical and agent-based models to explore how people, teams and organizations solve hard problems. He has demonstrated how schools, businesses and governments facing complex choices and challenges benefit from cognitive diversity.

He published six books, including “The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies” (2007) and “The Model Thinker: What You Need to Know to Make Data Work for You” (2018).

Page created the undergraduate course Introduction to Modeling in the Social Sciences and the open online course Model Thinking. He directs the Santa Fe Institute Complex Systems Summer School. He also advises major corporations, nonprofits and government agencies.

Page chaired the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs Committee for a Multicultural University and was associate editor of the Journal of Public Economic Theory and Advances in Complex Systems. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Michigan Society of Fellows. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a U-M Faculty Achievement Award.

Collegiate Research Professorship Award

The Collegiate Research Professorship Award honors exceptional scholarly achievement and impact on advancing knowledge in science, engineering, health, education, the arts, the humanities or other academic field of study. Research full professors with at least a 60 percent appointment are eligible. The award includes a stipend of $2,000 per year over five years. The recipient is Gábor Tóth.

Gábor Tóth

Research professor, Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, College of Engineering

Tóth earned a Master of Science at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and a Ph.D. at Princeton University. He conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands and Eötvös prior to joining the U-M faculty in 2001, where he is affiliated with the Center for Space Environment Modeling and the Center for Radiative Shock Hydrodynamics.

Tóth’s new and improved algorithms have revolutionized the field of computational plasma physics. He designs and uses efficient models, often in combination with experiments, observations and space missions, to study laboratory, space and astrophysical systems.

He also models and forecasts space weather, and led the development of the Space Weather Modeling Framework. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Weather Prediction Center bases its forecasts of incoming electromagnetic effects from the solar atmosphere on Tóth’s algorithms and models. He recently modeled for the first time the magnetospheres of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, Mercury, Mars and Earth with realistic magnetic reconnection.

Tóth has served on National Aeronautics and Space Administration and National Science Foundation review panels. Recently elected to the Academy of Europe, he also has been recognized with a Research Faculty Achievement Award and two College of Engineering Team Excellence Awards. He has received several group achievement awards, including an R&D 100 Award that “R&D Magazine” presented to the Los Alamos National Laboratory and U-M.

Faculty Recognition Awards

The Faculty Recognition Awards are intended for mid-career faculty who have demonstrated remarkable contributions to the university through achievements in scholarly research or creative endeavors; excellence as a teacher, adviser and mentor; and distinguished participation in service activities of the university and elsewhere. Eligible candidates include full professors with no more than four years in rank, and tenured associate professors. Five awards of $2,000 each are made. The recipients are Mark Cohen, Ethan Kross, Yeidy Rivero, Betsey Stevenson and Dimitrios Zekkos.

Mark Steven Cohen

Professor of surgery and pharmacology, Medical School

Cohen, a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, earned Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Medicine degrees at Washington University School of Medicine. A U-M faculty member since 2012, he has been associate chair in surgery for innovation and entrepreneurship and now is vice chair for clinical operations, directing the Michigan Surgical Innovation Prize Fund. 

Cohen designs novel drugs and drug delivery systems to treat locally advanced cancers. His research is focused on developing new anticancer drugs that inhibit heat-shock protein 90, as well as novel nanoparticle drug delivery systems to improve how drugs get to tumor cells to treat advanced cancers more safely. He published the first textbook on surgical innovation, “Success in Academic Surgery: Innovation and Entrepreneurship”(2019).

Clinically, Cohen is a leader in endocrine surgery and advanced melanomas. He developed and heads one of the nation’s largest multidisciplinary programs in locally advanced limb melanomas. He has held leadership roles in several surgery and innovation societies, including as national program chair for the American Association for Endocrine Surgeons.

He co-founded four companies related to pharmaceuticals, devices and digital health applications. Recently, with Michigan Medicine colleague Steven Buchman, he developed a hyaluronic acid–deferoxamine biomaterial device that can accelerate bone healing.

Cohen is the director of the  Medical School’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship Path of Excellence. He also created the monthly MI-Pitch-Club, bringing together more than 300 engineering, medical and business students and faculty to network and pitch new medical ideas and innovations. 

Ethan F. Kross

Professor of psychology, LSA; faculty associate, Research Center for Group Dynamics, Institute for Social Research

Kross earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania and Master of Arts and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University, where he also completed a one-year postdoctoral fellowship prior to joining U-M’s faculty in 2008.

Kross, a social psychologist, is renowned for combining rigorous methodologies to probe psychological mechanisms underlying emotion regulation, including factors that enable people to regulate impulses and emotions that undermine goals and compromise their health. Among other discoveries, Kross has demonstrated that ruminating exacerbates negative emotions while self-distancing strategies, such as describing negative events in the third person, allow people to adaptively reframe events.

Kross has received LSA’s John Dewey Award, Class of 1923 Memorial Teaching Award, and Individual Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education. He is involved in a nationwide effort to introduce the science of self-control and learning into high school curricula. 

Nationally, Kross is a founding adviser of the Psychology of Technology Institute. He previously served as the associate editor of the Journal of Personality and SocialPsychology and on the National Science Foundation Social Psychology Panel.

He is a fellow of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology, the Society of Experimental Social Psychology and the Association for Psychological Science. He has received the APS Janet Taylor Spence Award and U-M’s inaugural John A. Swets Memorial Award for Excellence in Collaborative Psychological Science Research.

Yeidy M. Rivero

Professor of film, television and media, chair of the Department of Film, Television and Media, and professor of American culture, LSA

Rivero earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Puerto Rico, a Master of Arts degree from Stony Brook University and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. She was an Indiana University faculty member prior to joining U-M in 2009.

Rivero is a media historian and internationally acclaimed scholar of television studies, race and media, and global media. She helped build the subfield of Latin American and Latina/o television studies through smart mobilization of interdisciplinary methods and focus on understudied regions of the world. 

Her first book, “Tuning Out Blackness: Race and Nation in the History of Puerto Rican Television” (2005), is the first scholarly study of post-World War II television and race in Puerto Rico. Her second book, “Broadcasting Modernity: Cuban Commercial Television, 1950-1960” (2015), winner of the 2016 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Katherine Singer Kovacs Book Award, showcases television’s importance to Cuban cultural identity formation and how the medium functions during times of radical political and social transformation. She is working on a new book about Cold War radio programming sponsored by the U.S. State Department and targeted to Latin American audiences.

Rivero oversaw a name change of the department she chairs from Screen Arts and Cultures to Film, Television and Media, making its focus more publicly legible. In addition, she worked with faculty to make the curricular requirements for the major more flexible.

Nationally, Rivero serves on the advisory boards of Communication, Culture, & Critique and Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas. She previously was a member of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies executive council and associate editor of the Journal of Communication.

Betsey Stevenson

Associate professor of public policy, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy; and associate professor of economics, LSA

Stevenson, a U-M faculty member since 2012, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Wellesley College and Master of Arts and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University.

As chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor from 2010-11, Stevenson helped shape post-Great Recession policies. From 2013-15, she advised President Barack Obama on social and economic policy issues as a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. 

Stevenson is renowned for her research on income and happiness and how public policies shape economic forces. She has shown that people with higher incomes report greater happiness, those who live in richer countries are happier on average than those in poorer countries, and levels of happiness rise in countries as economic conditions improve. She also has shown that it takes fewer dollars to boost the well-being of people who start with less income.

Stevenson discovered, identified and worked to rectify errors in U.S. Census Bureau public use files that resulted in the bureau correcting and re-releasing the data. She also worked with the government to develop fiduciary protections for savers seeking financial advice.

Stevenson’s public service extends from the Ford School’s executive and undergraduate program committees to the American Economic Association executive committee. She is a research fellow at the Ifo Institute for Economic Research and the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London. 

Dimitrios Zekkos

Associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, College of Engineering; associate professor of earth and environmental sciences, LSA

Zekkos joined U-M’s faculty in 2008. He earned a joint Bachelor of Science and Master of Engineering degree from the University of Patras, Greece, and Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.

A geotechnical engineer, Zekkos is an expert on characterizing earth materials subjected to environmental conditions and stressors, such as earthquakes and climate change.

He has advanced the resiliency and sustainability of landfill design and operations by characterizing the properties of solid waste materials. He has also developed procedures to enhance landfill stability, optimize energy harvesting and reduce greenhouse gas emissions through methane capture.

Additionally, he used drones to help archaeologists uncover the secrets of the ancient city of Olynthus, Greece, and satellite stereo imagery and UAVs to map damage from natural disasters around the world.

Zekkos has received the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program Outstanding Research Mentor Award and the Chi Epsilon Excellence in Teaching Award for the Great Lakes District. He has served on President Mark Schlissel’s Committee on Landfill Waste Reduction.  

Zekkos edits the International Journal of Geoengineering Case Histories of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, and chairs the ISSMGE Innovation and Development Committee and the American Society of Civil Engineers Geoenvironmental Engineering Technical Committee. He has been recognized with the Shamsher Prakash Foundation Research Award and the ASCE Arthur Casagrande Professional Development Award, Thomas A. Middlebrooks Award and Collingwood Prize.

Jackie Lawson Memorial Faculty Governance Award

The Jackie Lawson Memorial Faculty Governance Award recognizes people who have made a significant contribution to faculty governance service that reaches beyond the local campus confines of Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint. The recipient receives $1,500. The award honors Jackie Lawson, a professor of English and communications at UM-Dearborn from 1985 to 2000. Lawson was deeply committed to faculty governance and strengthening the relationships among the university’s three campuses. The recipient is Sarah Lippert.

Sarah Lippert

Associate professor of art history, College of Arts and Sciences, UM-Flint. She was a member of the UM-Flint faculty from 2011 until her death on April 24, 2019, from a pulmonary embolism. She was 43.

Lippert, a scholar of late 18th through late 19th century French and British art history, earned Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from the University of Western Ontario, and a Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University. 

Lippert is remembered for her dedication to UM-Flint, its students and faculty governance. Elected to the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs in spring 2018, she was the first UM-Flint faculty member to serve on the Senate Assembly’s executive committee.

Her contributions to faculty governance were extensive, varied and distinguished. She served on UM-Flint’s major governance bodies, including the Faculty Council, and chaired Flint’s Curriculum Coordination Committee, the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee for Budget and Strategic Planning and the Governance Task Force. She also chaired the SACUA Tri-Campus Task Force and the Senate Assembly Tri-Campus Committee.

As president of the Flint chapter of the American Association of University Professors, Lippert organized and led workshops on standards and best practices of faculty governance and facilitated an AAUP review of governance at Flint. She became a knowledgeable resource on faculty governance and worked to make sure UM-Flint’s values and practices mirrored those of the larger university.

In resolutions passed following her death, SACUA noted that Lippert envisioned a university guided by principled interactions between U-M stakeholders. She displayed personal courage, civility and grace in pursuit of her goal: To make Michigan a better place. 

James S. Jackson Distinguished Career Award for Diversity Scholarship

The James S. Jackson Distinguished Career Award for Diversity Scholarship is given biennially to a senior faculty member who has made significant contributions to understanding diversity, equity and inclusion while addressing disparities in contemporary society. One award is made, with an honorarium of $10,000. Recipients deliver the Distinguished Diversity Scholar lecture/performance to the campus and the wider community. The recipient is Patricia Gurin.

Patricia Gurin

Nancy Cantor Distinguished University Professor Emerita of Psychology and Women’s Studies, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor Emerita, professor emerita of psychology and women’s studies, and professor emerita in service, curriculum support, LSA

Gurin earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Northwestern University, a Master of Social Work from the University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D. from U-M. She has been a U-M faculty member since 1966. Although retired from active status since 2002, she still teaches courses on intergroup relations and serves as research director of U-M’s Program on Intergroup Relations.

Gurin is known for her research on race, social identities and intergroup relations, and her commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. In the 1970s, she helped create U-M’s Program for Research on Black Americans. The intergroup dialogue curriculum that she helped create is used in more than 100 higher education institutions. Additionally, her research on the educational value of diversity was crucial to U-M’s defense of affirmative action before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Gurin also developed a community-building course for undergraduate residence hall staff and co-facilitated the Faculty Dialogues Institute for educators in the social sciences and humanities. She served as inaugural director of U-M’s National Center for Institutional Diversity.

Gurin chairs the American Institutes for Research board. She has received several accolades, including the American Psychological Foundation Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement in Psychology in the Public Interest, the American Psychological Association Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues Lifetime Achievement Award and the Michigan Association of Governing Boards’ Distinguished Faculty Award. She also is a recipient of the Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award and a member of the Michigan Society of Fellows.

Regents’ Award for Distinguished Public Service

The Regents’ Award for Distinguished Public Service recognizes public service activities that relate closely to teaching and research, and reflect professional and academic expertise. A $1,000 stipend is awarded. The recipient is Brant Fries.

Brant Fries

Professor emeritus of health management and policy, School of Public Health; and research professor emeritus, Institute of Gerontology

A U-M faculty member since 1985, Fries earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University and Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University. He did postdoctoral work at Columbia’s Center for Community Health Systems.

Fries is an expert on long-term care and quantitative modeling of health care systems. He has developed multiple measures to accurately describe characteristics of vulnerable individuals, including the elderly and those with mental or physical deficits. He co-designed the National Nursing Home Resident Assessment Instrument, which changed nursing home practices in the U.S. and is now the global standard for high-quality care. 

Fries was also the lead developer of Resource Utilization Groups, the first case mix system for classifying nursing home residents that uses clinical attributes of residents to model per diem costs. He is the founding president of interRAI, a voluntary research collaborative with 115 members from 36 nations that works to improve the quality of life of vulnerable people.

Fries is on the Institute of Gerontology executive committee and U-M’s Geriatrics Center Research operating committee, and has served on the editorial boards of The Gerontologist and Medical Care. He was the chief of health systems research at the Ann Arbor Veterans Administration Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center.

Fries received the Impact Accelerator Award from the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation and an honorary doctorate from the University of Waterloo, Ontario.

Research Faculty Achievement Awards

The Research Faculty Achievement Awards honor people who hold at least a 60 percent appointment at the rank of research associate professor, research scientist or associate research scientist. Selection criteria include exceptional scholarly achievements, as evidenced by significant contributions to an academic field of study over time, a specific outstanding discovery or the development of innovative technology or practice. There is a $1,500 stipend. The recipients are Mihaela Banu and Michael Schubnell.

Mihaela Banu

Research associate professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering

A U-M faculty member since 2013, Banu has three engineering degrees — a Bachelor of Science, Master of Science and a Ph.D. — from the Dunarea de Jos University of Galati, Romania.

Banu manages the technology portfolio at Lightweight Innovations for Tomorrow, a manufacturing facility in Detroit operated by the American Lightweight Materials Manufacturing Innovation Institute. She is internationally recognized for her contributions to green technology and sustainable manufacturing, including a process to extract and use bamboo fibers to reinforce thermoplastic and thermoset composites, reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

In a capstone design project, she and undergraduate researchers worked with the Ghana Bamboo Bike Initiative to manufacture the first bamboo fiber-reinforced composite bicycle frame. As a member of U-M’s Global CO₂ Initiative, Banu explores the use of fiber-based composite materials and concrete to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

She has also worked with the School of Dentistry on titanium structures for intelligent dental impacts. A co-founder of Optimal Materials LLC, she holds 14 patents.

Banu serves on CoE’s Leaders and Honors Selection Committee and the Center for Entrepreneurship Faculty Committee. She evaluates and monitors the European Commission’s steel and coal program and intelligent factories, and has served as a panelist for the National Science Foundation and the Romanian Agency for Scientific Research.

Among other honors, Banu received the College of Engineering 2017 Kenneth M. Reese Outstanding Research Scientist Award.

Michael Schubnell

Research scientist, Department of Physics, LSA

Schubnell, who earned a Ph.D. in physics at the University of Wuppertal, Germany, joined U-M as a research fellow in 1990.

An astrophysicist and pioneering researcher of dark matter, Schubnell is investigating basic questions about the universe with his work on infrared, optical and other astronomical instruments. His latest project, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, a survey of 35 million galaxies up to 11 billion light years away, promises to provide the most accurate 3-D map of the universe to date.

Schubnell developed infrared detectors that are crucial to the Supernova/Acceleration Probe and other scientific missions, including the European Space Agency Euclid and National Aeronautical and Space Administration Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope. He has investigated cosmic ray antiprotons and electrons with balloon-borne payloads.

He also helped develop the DESI focal plane, which is composed of 5,000 fiber robots and was built at U-M. He will continue to contribute as DESI’s focal plane scientist and a lead observer when DESI is deployed at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. DESI is expected to generate large amounts of new data about dark energy and possibly new information about the neutrino mass.

Additionally, Schubnell co-discovered the first detected TeV gamma rays from the Markarian 421 galaxy.

Schubnell has trained and supervised dozens of U-M students through Research Experiences for Undergraduates and the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program. He also co-organizes U-M’s High-Energy Physics/Astrophysics Seminar and served on the University Senate Research Policies Committee from 2011-14. 

Research Faculty Recognition Award

The Research Faculty Recognition Award honors people who hold at least a 60 percent appointment at the rank of research assistant professor or assistant research scientist. Selection criteria include exceptional scholarly achievements, as evidenced by publications or other scholarly activities in any academic field of study. There is a $1,000 stipend. The recipient is Jihyoun Jeon.

Jihyoun Jeon

Assistant research scientist, Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health

Jeon received Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in mathematics from Ewha Womans University in South Korea, and a Master of Science in statistics and Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of Washington. She worked at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center prior to joining U-M’s faculty in 2015.

An epidemiologist and cancer prevention expert, Jeon uses biologically based mathematical models and statistical methods to evaluate risk factors for various cancers and identify cancer prevention strategies. Currently, she is working on modeling and designing individually tailored health strategies based on a person’s risk profile in terms of genetic variants, lifestyle and environmental factors.

Jeon has developed risk prediction models for colorectal cancer that incorporate genetic variants along with environmental risk factors and lifestyle factors. She has demonstrated that optimal starting ages for screening could differ by a span of as many as 12 years for men and 14 for women, depending on individuals’ level of risk.

Jeon is a core member of several large national consortia, including the Lung Cancer Group of the National Cancer Center’s consortium Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network, and the Genetics and Epidemiology of Colorectal Cancer Consortium.

Jeon is a member of U-M’s Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation and Rogel Cancer Center’s Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention Program, the Michigan Institute for Computational Discovery and Engineering, and the Society for Mathematical Biology.

University Librarian Achievement Award

The University Librarian Achievement Award recognizes exceptional distinction reflected in active and innovative career achievements in library, archival or curatorial services. There is a $1,500 stipend. The recipient is Pamela MacKintosh.

Pamela MacKintosh

Librarian, Library Learning and Teaching – Connected Scholarship, University Library

MacKintosh earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in business administration and an M. Libr. from the University of Washington, Seattle.

As coordinator of Ask a Librarian and the Shapiro Undergraduate Library Collections, MacKintosh is a leader in developing, testing and implementing new services that take advantage of emerging electronic formats and improve access and delivery of information.

She developed new fee-based information products and services as head of U-M’s Michigan Information Transfer Source and assistant head of Cooperative Access Services from 1991 to 2000. As the library’s subject specialist in economics from 2009-15, she excelled in supporting research and teaching needs through consulting and managing the economics collection.

MacKintosh is responsible for all operational aspects of the Hatcher Library Ask a Librarian reference desk service, including staffing, training and scheduling. She played a key role in redesigning the library’s electronic course reserves system, a contribution that was recognized with the University Library Streamliners Award. More recently, she worked on a pilot project for downloadable e-audio books. She initiated and chairs the U-M Library Undergraduate Research Award committee.

MacKintosh has served on several committees, including the Librarians’ Forum, and is on the Discovery and Access Advisory Group and the University Library’s General Reference and Popular Press Electronic Resources Team. She is a member and past-convener of the American Library Association Undergraduate Librarians Discussion Group.

University Librarian Recognition Award

The University Librarian Recognition Award recognizes active and innovative early career achievement in library, archival or curatorial services. They are presented to librarians, archivists or curators who have no more than eight years’ practice in his or her profession. The award is $1,000. The recipient is Jungwon Yang.

Jungwon Yang

Senior associate librarian, Library Research – Social Science and Stephen S. Clark Library, University Library

Yang earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master of Arts degree in political science from Ewha Womans University in Korea, a Master of Arts in political science from the University of Pittsburgh, and an MSI from the U-M School of Information. Prior to joining U-M’s faculty in 2012, she taught at the University of Pittsburgh and Eastern Michigan University.

Yang, an international government information and public policy librarian, is an expert on data resources and data literacy. She is responsible for collections at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, Stephen S. Clark Library and the Consulting for Statistics, Computing and Analytics Research library. She has made significant contributions to U-M’s Nam Center for Korean Studies and Asia Library.

She also negotiated access to the Korea Social Science Data Archive, an important addition to the library’s growing collection of statistics and public opinion data sets. U-M was the first institution outside Korea to gain access to the archive.

Additionally, she is a lead organizer of the Clark Library’s International Data Workshop series.

Yang is active in the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions and has published articles in the International Association for Social Science Information Services & Technology Quarterly. She is a member of the University Library Discovery Access Advisory Group and has served on the University Library Public Access Resources Committee and Library Diversity Council. 

University Press Book Award

The University Press Book Award is presented to members of the university teaching and research staff, including emeritus members, whose books have added the greatest distinction to the Press List. Selections are made from books published within a span of two calendar years. The stipend is $1,500. The recipient is Reginald Jackson.

Reginald Jackson

Associate professor of Asian languages and cultures, LSA

Jackson earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Amherst College and a Ph.D. from Princeton University. He taught at Yale University and the University of Chicago before joining U-M’s faculty in 2015. 

In “Textures of Mourning: Calligraphy, Mortality, and ‘The Tale of Genji Scrolls’” (2018), Jackson examined the literary and visual portrayals of death and its aftermath in “The Tale of Genji”and two adaptations, “The Illustrated Handscrolls of the Tale of Genji” and the “Resurrected Genji Scrolls.” “The Tale of Genji,” written during Japan’s Heian period (794–1185), has been called the world’s first novel.

Jackson’s “Textures of Mourning”is the first full-length manuscript in English to investigate these texts across several historical periods. Using images of original paintings and calligraphy, Jackson contextualized factual and fictional accounts of dying, decomposing, mourning and resurrecting. He also analyzed how the “Genji” texts delineate the relationship between mortality and reading at three historical tipping points.

Jackson teaches a range of courses, including Japanese Narrative Design Lab, a class on visual storytelling techniques in which students learn to analyze Japanese narratives and craft their own tales. He directs graduate studies at the Center for Japanese Studies and the accelerated master’s degree program in Transcultural Studies. He is also faculty adviser to the Japanese Studies Interdisciplinary Colloquium.

Jackson has received a Fulbright Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and an Institute for Research on Women and Gender seed grant to explore the relationship between slavery and performance in premodern Japan.

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