Awards and Recognition

Carolyn Bramante has been awarded the 2021 Outstanding Trainee: Early Career Development Award from the Association for Clinical and Translational Science. The award honors those who have made outstanding contributions to science that impacts global health. This award is in recognition of Bramante’s early dedication to research and her potential to change health policy. 

University of Minnesota President Joan Gabel was named the new university vice chair for the Council on Competitiveness, a national nonprofit organization committed to increasing the United States' economic competitiveness in the global marketplace and bringing high-value economic activity into the United States. The nonpartisan Council welcomes CEOs, university presidents, labor leaders and national lab directors among its membership.
 

Jennifer Linde is featured and Rachel Widome is quoted in the Mpls St. Paul Magazine story, "How This Minnesotan Became a Jeopardy Champion"; Keith Mayes writes in the Washington Post, "The Chauvin trial shows how much work it takes to win justice for Black people"; Katie Pekel and Peter Demerath are quoted in the Christian Science Monitor story, “In a roiled Minneapolis, schools are testing new model for safety”; Danielle Kilgo was quoted in the Washington Post story, “Why the Adam Toledo video is causing some news organizations to draw a line”; Keith Mayes and Michelle Phelps are quoted in a Minnesota Daily story about U of M virtual teach-in discussions on race, policing, and the criminal justice system; Jon Lee is quoted in Hometown Life about what Derek Chauvin's guilty verdict means for three other officers charged in George Floyd's death; Michael Osterholm is quoted in a Bring Me The News story about the pandemic's future; Craig Hedberg is quoted in an NBC Today story about a produce saver that keeps fruits and veggies fresh for weeks; Tim Schacker is quoted in a Los Angeles Times story about the spread of COVID-19 variants; Marti DeLiema is quoted in the New York Times story, “MacKenzie Scott Gave Away Billions. The Scam Artists Followed”; Michelle Sherman is quoted in a Washington Post story about how the Afghanistan troop pullout may spur mixed emotions for veterans, families; Pamela Lutsey is quoted in a New York Times story about a study finding that too little sleep in middle age may increase dementia risk; Maria Ponomarenko is quoted in a Vice story about what to do if a police officer pulls you over. 

Professor Michael Tonry has been awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. The highly competitive, annual national fellowship was awarded to 184 American and Canadian scholars, writers, and artists selected from among nearly 3,000 applicants. Tonry plans to research and write on the influence of frontier values on the American justice system. He is the McKnight Presidential Professor of Criminal Law and Policy, director of the Institute on Crime and Public Policy at Minnesota Law, and a scientific member of Germany’s Max Planck Society. Previously he was professor of law and public policy and director of the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University. He has been president of the American and European Societies of Criminology.

The 2021 recipients of the University of Minnesota Outstanding Community Service Award have been announced. Administered by the Office for Public Engagement (OPE), the awards recognize faculty, staff, students, and University-affiliated community partners who, by devoting their time, talents, and expertise to serve the public good, have made significant, demonstrable, and direct contributions to society's well-being.

• Tasoulla Hadjiyanni, College of Design, professor of interior design 
• Melanie Johnson, College of Liberal Arts, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr program office advisor
• Serena Xiong, Urban Research and Outreach-Engagement research assistant
• Michael Chaney, Project Sweetie Pie founder. 

The Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) has named Forrest Fleischman from the Department of Forest Resources as the 2021-22 Fesler-Lampert Chair in Urban and Regional Affairs with the research proposal, Urban Environmental Policy Advocacy: How Citizens Shape Cities’ Environmental Policy Agenda in the Twin Cities. 

Additionally, three Faculty Interactive Research Program proposals were funded:

• Samuel David (Department of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education and Human Development) Tailoring a Multilingual Literacy Intervention for Minnesota Students from Less Commonly Spoken Language Backgrounds
• Melissa Koenig (Institute of Child Development, College of Education and Human Development) Understanding and Measuring Students’ Trust in their Teachers
• Soumya Sen (Information and Decision Sciences Department, Carlson School of Management) Using Data Analytics to Improve Substance Abuse and Addiction Treatment in Minnesota

Read more about these CURA award recipients. 

From her “amazing approach” to providing interlibrary loan services during the pandemic, to her work with her colleagues in the Big Ten Academic Alliance, to presenting at international conferences, Melissa Eighmy Brown has made a mark in her field. For these accomplishments, she recently received the Virginia Boucher Distinguished ILL Librarian Award, sponsored by OCLC, a global library cooperative.

Megan Gunnar, Institute of Child Development, has received a 2021 American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions. The award recognizes senior scientists for distinguished theoretical or empirical contributions to basic research in psychology.

Samuel Myers Jr. writes in the New York Times that Minnesota is one of the best places to live in America, unless you're Black; Myron Orfield is quoted in a National Public Radio story about Brooklyn Center, Minnesota’s most diverse city; Jane Kirtley is quoted in a KSTP story about the early release of body camera video; Tim Schacker is quoted in the WebMD story, “J&J Pause Escalates Worries About Vaccine Hesitancy”; Emilie Snell-Rood is quoted in a National Geographic story about ants that can shrink and regrow their brains; Vivian Fang is quoted in a Star Tribune story about non-fungible tokens; Emily Jordan Jensen is quoted in a Business Insider story about must have qualities for healthy relationships; Phyllis Moen and Kate Schaefers write in Stanford Social Innovation Review how it is important to move Universities from age-segregated institutions to age-integrated ones; Aaron Sojourner is quoted in a New York Times story about high unemployment with businesses struggling to fill jobs; Emily Vraga is quoted in a MinnPost about debunking false information; Joachim Savelsberg is quoted in the Los Angeles Times about maintaining a memorial at the scene of George Floyd's death.

The W.S. Cooper Award recognizes outstanding contributions to ecology in new discoveries, teaching, sustainability, diversity, and lifelong commitment to the profession. The award honors the authors of an outstanding publication in the field of geobotany, physiographic ecology, plant succession, or the distribution of plants along environmental gradients. Rachel C. Putnam, College of Biological Sciences, and Peter B. Reich, College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, were recognized for their 2017 Ecological Monographs paper. The paper reports the findings of a large-scale field experiment spanning the distribution of an ecologically important tree species in North America across a large climatic gradient. The field experiments, observations, and modeling exercises give insight into drivers of current species’ distributions and forecasts for shifts under contemporary climate change. One particularly notable contribution is the authors’ integration of biotic interactions, environmental conditions and local adaptation into their study across the entire latitudinal distribution of sugar maple.