Chancellor’s Annual Awards Honor Faculty for Teaching, Research, Public Service

This story originally appeared in the University Times.

The annual Chancellor’s Distinguished Awards to faculty for teaching, research and public service were announced last week.

Recipients all received letters from Chancellor Patrick Gallagher and will be awarded a $2,000 cash prize and a grant of $3,000 to support the recipient’s teaching, research or public service activities.

As pandemic conditions permit, the award recipients will be recognized at a reception later in the term.

Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award

In his letter to the teaching award winners, Chancellor Gallagher said: “As is evident from your positive evaluations, your students and colleagues appreciate your commitment to teaching and creating an engaging learning environment inside and outside the classroom.”

Chris Bonneau: professor of political science, Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, was cited for his leadership of the Pitt Prison Education Project, and a commitment to graduate education through a newly designed dissertation overview workshop for third-year students.

Zsuzsa Horvath: associate professor of dental public health, School of Dental Medicine, was honored for development of “the visionary and innovative Academic Career Track Area of Concentration program and your knowledge of evidence-based, interactive teaching methodologies.”

Barry M. Mitnick: professor of business administration and public and international affairs, Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business, was cited for his course Market Manipulations: Crises, Bubbles, Robber Barons and Corporate Saints, a 2019 Ideas Worth Teaching Award honoree. “In addition, you channeled your passion for teaching business ethics into creating the student-led Pitt Business Review.”

Lori Delale-O’Connor: assistant professor, Department of Educational Foundations, Organizations and Policy, School of Education, was honored for her commitment to advancing equity and justice and engaging students in content and activities that center on race and power.

Lisa Borghesi: associate professor of immunology, School of Medicine, was honored for her leadership of the Immunology in Health and Disease course, whose evaluations have improved in every metric. “In addition, you approached the COVID-19 pandemic as a learning opportunity for your students by developing lectures with vaccine experts and senior clinicians who were directly involved in coronavirus clinical trials and testing.”

Chancellor’s Distinguished Public Service Award

This award underscores the high priority that the University of Pittsburgh places on utilizing our faculty’s expertise to address social problems through public service, the chancellor’s letter said. “Each of the awardees’ efforts stand as an inspiring example of contributions that far exceed the traditional duties expected of a faculty member.”

Doris Rubio: professor of medicine, biomedical informatics, biostatistics, nursing, and clinical and translational science, School of Medicine, was recognized for diversifying the workforce and supporting junior investigators; launching and overseeing the Career Education and Enhancement for Health Care Diversity program; partnering with 20 institutions to reach a broad group of minority faculty through the Leading Emerging and Diverse Scholars to success program and developing an alumni network and a newsletter for former LEADS participants.

Paul Harper: clinical assistant professor of business administration, Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business, was cited for working to improve racial justice by advancing inclusive innovation, in particular by encouraging Black entrepreneurship; serving on Pittsburgh’s Equal Opportunity Review Commission and on the board of the Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority of Pittsburgh; and developing a partnership with the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh to advance local economic development projects and investment in Israeli startup companies.

Timothy Holler: associate professor of criminal justice, Pitt–Greensburg, was recognized for collaborating extensively with community partners in Westmoreland County to advance restorative justice and improve re-entry of adult offenders into society; directing the Community Arts and Reintegration Project; serving on the Westmoreland County Re-entry Committee, Criminal Justice Advisory Board and Pennsylvania Reentry Council; and supporting the Blackburn Center’s work to prevent violence.

Margaret Rosenzweig: distinguished service professor of nursing, School of Nursing, was honored for serving as a visionary leader in addressing racial disparities in the cancer experience; establishing and directing the MBC Program of Care; creating a longitudinal metastatic breast cancer registry to improve care for patients; volunteering as a “Big Sister”; and recruiting local high school students to pursue nursing as a career.

Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award

Senior Scholars

This award honors faculty members who have an outstanding record of research and academic activity.

Lise Vesterlund, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Economics, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. “The selection committee was impressed by how your work on gender and competition is transforming not only experimental and behavioral economics but also the workplace. As your peers wrote, ‘Her research on causes and consequences of gender discrimination is amongst the best in all of the social sciences,’ and ‘Lise is one of the most outstanding economists of her generation in the area of public, behavioral, and experimental economics.’ ”

Heng Huang, John A. Jurenko Endowed Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Swanson School of Engineering. “The selection committee was impressed by your exceptional contributions to machine learning, artificial intelligence and biomedical data science, which have made an impact on a national and international scale and have a wide range of industrial applications. As your peers wrote, ‘Dr. Huang’s accomplishments are among the most significant contributions to the fields of machine learning, bioinformatics, and neuroinformatics in recent years.’  They added, “Dr. Huang is a truly gifted and unique outstanding researcher with extraordinary skills and abilities in the research of data mining and machine learning.”

Robert Friedlander, Walter E. Dandy Professor and Chair, Department of Neurological Surgery, School of Medicine. “The selection committee was impressed by your passionate commitment to building foundational knowledge in your field and identifying solutions for clinical problems.  As your peers wrote, ‘Dr. Friedlander is an exceptional representative of a super-achiever in the quadruple mission of academic medicine, that is being a superb clinician, scientist, teach-mentor, and leader,’ and ‘Bob is a giant in his field.’ ”

Junior Scholars

This category honors faculty members who have demonstrated great potential by virtue of the quality of their early contributions.

Heath Cabot, associate professor of anthropology, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. “The selection committee was impressed by how you channeled your ethnographic work with migrants, policymakers, nongovernmental organizations, lawyers and refugees into a monograph that now serves as the foundation for work on solidarity. As your peers wrote, ‘Dr. Cabot is one of the most active and important young voices in anthropology today, with an impressive body of work on asylum, solidarity, and crisis that is also informed by a thoughtful program of advocacy and activism.’ They added, ‘She has no weaknesses: she is a brilliant writer, a brilliant ethnographer, a brilliant editor, a brilliant theorist and analyst, and a brilliant communicator.’ ”

Michael Hatridge, assistant professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. “The selection committee was impressed by your contributions to our knowledge of how to control quantum systems. As your peers wrote, ‘Professor Hatridge is a rising star in quantum information science who has made as great an impact on the development of quantum computing and quantum superconducting devices as any young scientist in the field.’ They added, ‘Michael is an exceptionally talented young experimentalist whose research is advancing the state of the art in a number of areas related to solid state quantum information processing.’ ”

Rebecca Price, associate professor of psychiatry and psychology, School of Medicine. “The selection committee was impressed by the breadth and depth of your work to design targeted interventions for affective psychological disorders. As your peers wrote, ‘In clinical neuroscience she is among the most outstanding scholars anywhere in the world,’ and ‘... the indisputable fact that Dr. Price’s early career research has exerted a profoundly important influence on our discipline.’ ”