Awards and Recognition

Bianet Castellanos has been named the next director of the University’s Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), effective Sept. 26. Castellanos will provide leadership for the IAS as a systemwide academic center advancing multidisciplinary scholarship and teaching collaborations, aligned with commitments of MPact 2025. Castellanos is professor and chair of American studies at the University of Minnesota and Distinguished University Teaching Professor and Scholar of the College of Liberal Arts. She brings broad scholarly and administrative experience advancing interdisciplinary scholarship, teaching, and engagement with diverse communities. Jennifer Gunn plans to step down as IAS director this fall after eight years to return full-time to her tenured faculty position in the Medical School’s Program in the History of Medicine. 

The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota has announced Eve Lackritz as its new deputy director. Lackritz is a medical epidemiologist and board-certified pediatrician with over 30 years of experience in domestic and global public health. Lackritz has extensive experience with infectious diseases, emerging pathogens, and emergency response. She previously worked for 23 years at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two years as the Zika lead at the World Health Organization, and five years with the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth at Seattle Children’s. Most recently, Lackritz worked as hospital director with Doctors Without Borders in the Rohingya refugee camp and as clinical director of the Rosebud Indian Health Service Hospital in Rosebud, SD.

The University of Minnesota Medical School has named Greta Bauer as the incoming director of the Institute for Sexual and Gender Health (ISGH). Over the past 50 years, ISGH has been on the forefront of every major development in sexuality and gender health research and education as well as assisting and saving the lives of countless patients. Bauer has a personal connection to ISGH, having served as a research coordinator when the Institute was the Program in Human Sexuality. A long-time champion of sexual and gender health, Bauer brings nearly two decades of experience to this directorship. She is a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics within the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at Western University in Canada and holds a Sex and Gender Science Chair from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. She will begin on Nov. 15, succeeding Eli Coleman, who has served as director for over three decades.

Department of Art (College of Liberal Arts) Professor Diane Willow has been selected as the Imagine Fund 2022-24 Arts, Design, and Humanities (ADH) Chair. Willow’s project, ArTeS as a Catalyst for Creative Interdependence, emerged from a collaborative group of faculty in the arts, humanities, design, and computer science who see ArTeS (Art+Technology+Science) as an opportunity to co-generate a context in which creativity, equity, justice, and culture inform research and pedagogy at the nexus of art, technology, and science. The Imagine Fund ADH Chair Award is an initiative of the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost awarding $100,000 over a two-year term to create a collaborative program of activities for the University community and the community at large. The Imagine Fund chairs are recognized for providing exceptional opportunities in terms of ideas, innovation, collaboration, interdisciplinary exchange, and public engagement.

Congratulations to the recipients of the 2022-23 MnDRIVE Neuromodulation Fellowships, as well as the MnDRIVE Neuromodulation Therapy Commercialization Fellowship, and the MnDRIVE Neuromodulation in Medicine Fellowship. MnDRIVE trains the next generation of scientists and clinicians, and brings new and improved therapies to Minnesotans suffering from brain conditions and nervous systems disorders/deficits. The initiative will expand University partnerships with industries to bring neuromodulation innovations to market, which benefits patients and advances the state’s economy. 

Tadd Johnson is featured in a Minnesota Public Radio story about Johnson being the first Native American appointed to University of Minnesota Board of Regents; Charisse Pickron was interviewed for the MPR story, “How Babies Start to Learn About Race”; Mark Bergen is interviewed in a KMSP-TV story about where grocery prices are increasing the most in the Twin Cities; David Odde is quoted in a Newsweek story about how and where cancer cells thrive in the body; Michael Osterholm is interviewed about the new COVID variant and whether we should be worried at Minnesota Public Radio; Carolyn Bramante is quoted in the Star Tribune story, “U of M COVID-19 study finds benefit from metformin, not ivermectin”; Peter Neff is quoted in the Washington Post story “Second glacier avalanche in a week shows dangers of a warming climate”; Lori Carrell is quoted in a KSTP-TV story “As colleges experiment with 3-year degrees, U of M Rochester leads the charge”; Alan Branhagen is quoted in a New York Times story about why some of your annuals should be native plants.

The Office of the Vice President for Research has announced the recipients of its 2022 Research Infrastructure Investment Program awards. More that $2 million in total funds was awarded to support critical facilities and research support services across the U of M. Seven projects received funding, including a portable photosynthesis system, a 3D motion tracking system, and a mass spectrometer to support NIH-funded projects affiliated with the Epigenetics Consortium.

The Kavli Foundation and the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research announced recently that professor Harry T. Orr is one of four winners of the 2022 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, which honors scientists for breakthroughs in astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience. Orr was honored for his pioneering genetic research on the neurodegenerative disease spinocerebellar ataxia type 1 (SCA1), a collaborative effort with Baylor College of Medicine’s Huda Zoghbi, also a 2022 Kavli Prize winner. Orr holds the James Schindler and Bob Allison Ataxia Chair in Translational Research in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at the University of Minnesota and is director of the Institute for Translational Neuroscience. Learn more about the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience.

University of Minnesota Associate Professor of English Douglas Kearney has won the 2022 Griffin International Poetry Prize for his 2021 poetry collection Sho (Wave Books). Kearney will receive C$65,000 in prize money. One of the most generous international poetry prizes in the world, the Griffin Poetry Prize is presented by The Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry. The objective of the prize is to raise the profile of poets and poetry in Canada and internationally for works written in, or translated into, English. Kearney is a writer of poetry, nonfiction, and libretto, and a current McKnight Presidential Fellow. He received the 2022 Minnesota Book Award for Poetry for Sho, which also was a finalist for the 2022 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the 2021 National Book Award for Poetry. 

Associate Professor Bonnie Keeler has been named to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Board of Scientific Counselors (BOSC). She recently began a three-year term serving on its social and community science subcommittee. Keeler is following in the footsteps of her mentor Deborah Swackhamer, former professor at the Humphrey School and well-known environmental scientist who chaired the BOSC from 2015 to 2017. Swackhamer passed away last year.