Chancellor Honors Faculty for Research

Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg has honored 10 faculty members for outstanding contributions to teaching and research.

Honorees were recognized during the University of Pittsburgh’s 27th Honors Convocation Feb. 28 in the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh Music Hall.

Peter Safar, MD, Distinguished Professor of Resuscitation Medicine at Pitt, delivered the keynote address. Safar established one of the first Intensive Care Units in the country at UPMC Presbyterian and developed the first multidisciplinary critical care medicine fellowship training program. (Safar died Aug. 3 at age 79.)

Research Awards

The following faculty received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award, which honors faculty members who have an outstanding and continuing record of research and scholarly activity.

Three faculty members were honored in the Senior Scholar category. A synopsis of the notification letters the chancellor wrote to the five recipients follows.

Isabel L. Beck, a professor in the University’s Department of Learning and Instruction, is being recognized for her many contributions to the study of reading instruction. Her method successfully combines “a theoretical approach based on the cognitive theory of reading with experiences and awareness of classroom instruction.”

Beck is a recipient of the National Reading Conference’s Oscar S. Causey Award and the International Reading Association’s William S. Gray Award. She also is a member of that association’s Reading Hall of Fame.

Jeffrey H. Schwartz, a professor in Pitt’s Department of Anthropology, is being honored as “an imaginative and highly original thinker whose work is innovative and inspiring—appropriate descriptors for one of the world’s leading experts on human and nonhuman primate evolution.”

Schwartz, one of the few scientists since the turn of the 20th century to have discovered a new genus of living primate, is the author of The Human Fossil Record (Wiley-Liss, 2002), “the single-most important reference on the human fossil record.”

Craig S. Wilcox, a professor in Pitt’s Department of Chemistry, is being recognized for his influential work in the fields of physical organic chemistry, molecular recognition, and combinatorial chemistry.

Wilcox introduced the molecule Troger’s base, one of just a few molecules identified as being a general motif of molecular recognition. His work on “preciptons” promises to “change the way certain kinds of molecules are synthesized and separated and has great potential for accelerating the process of drug discovery in the pharmaceutical industry.”

Two faculty members were honored in the Junior Scholar category.

Kay M. Brummond, a professor in Pitt’s Department of Chemistry, is being recognized for her development of novel synthetic methods, one of which is considered “one of the most visible synthetic achievements in the last few years.”

Brummond, whose research focuses on organometallic processes and their application to the synthesis of biologically relevant molecules, is the inventor of a new variation of the Pauson-Khand reaction, which she used to create the complex natural product hydroxymethylacylfulvene.

Jeffrey Lawrence, associate professor in Pitt’s Department of Biological Sciences, is being honored for his contributions in the area of microbial genome evolution. He has established “an exciting and thriving laboratory environment at the University,” which has captured the attention of research associates and graduate and undergraduate students.

Lawrence, who enjoys an international reputation for his work, takes bioinformatics and computational approaches to understanding genome evolution, which he has used to determine the frequencies and mechanisms by which horizontal gene exchange operates in bacterial evolution.

Research award honorees each received a $2,000 cash prize and a $3,000 grant to support their research. • CDG