Emory faculty and staff are frequently recognized for their work locally, nationally and internationally. The following is a sampling of recent accolades, including fellowships and national awards for leadership and excellence.

Honors highlighted in this column:

• Anderson selected as fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
• Baumgart receives emerging leader award 
• Mentor-mentee research award goes to Bruner and Bai
• Global health arts prize is awarded to Chakraborty
• NASPA honors Dos and Clark of Campus Life
• Fleischer chosen as a Scialog conference Fellow
• Kancherla wins award for extensive birth defects work
• Klibanoff’s “Buried Truths” podcast selected as finalist for ABA award
• McDonald named interim chair of Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
• Shantha selected for leadership development program
• Weissman honored with Sloan Fellowship

Anderson selected as fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies, is one of five distinguished scholars being inducted as Fellows of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (AAPSS) in 2021. The AAPSS inducts a new cohort of Fellows each year, in recognition of contributions that advance science and deepen public understanding of human behavior and social dynamics.

Anderson’s work focuses on public policy, particularly on how domestic and international policies intersect through the issues of race, justice, and equality in the U.S. Her research examines how policy is made and unmade, and how racial inequality and racism affect policy processes and outcomes.

Baumgart receives emerging leader award 

Joel Baumgart, assistant vice provost for faculty support and recognition, was awarded the MacVittie Emerging Leader Award by the American Association of University Administrators. 

Named for Robert W. MacVittie, first president of the association, the award is made to an individual who is currently engaged in a higher education administrative position below the level of vice president and who has completed no more than five years of service at the current level of appointment and who, by virtue of demonstrated professional accomplishment, is thought to have outstanding potential for higher education leadership.

Mentor-mentee research award goes to Bruner and Bai

The NINR-ONS-NCI Symptom Science Symposia recently awarded Deborah Watkins Bruner and Jinbing Bai the mentor-mentee research award. Bruner is the senior vice president for research at Emory and Bai is an assistant professor of cancer symptom and omics science at Emory School of Nursing. The award is conferred by a collaborative that comprises the National Institute of Nursing Research, the Oncology Nursing Society and the National Cancer Institute.

The award acknowledges mentors who serve as an exemplary role model and resource to their mentee in developing a program of oncology nursing research and the mentee for applying knowledge in developing an innovative and clinically relevant program of research. 

Bai and his team, under the mentorship of Bruner, are conducting microbiome studies and its link to psychoneurological symptoms such as pain, fatigue and anxiety in children treated with chemotherapy and adults treated with chemo/radiotherapy. Their work is providing innovative evidence to design targeted interventions to decrease such symptoms among cancer patients. 

Global health arts prize is awarded to Chakraborty

Saikat Chakraborty, visiting assistant professor of chemistry at Oxford College, is the 2020 awardee of the Emory University Warren Westerberg Global Health and the Arts prize. His environmental photo essay described the potential effects of climate change through a fictional photo essay based on scientific findings and similar events that are happening around the world.

The prize is given by Emory Global Health Institute and recognizes a member or members of the Emory community who have effectively used art to inspire, initiate or support action to address a global health challenge. View Chakraborty's winning submission online here.

NASPA honors Dos and Clark of Campus Life

The National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) has recognized two Emory staff members for their work.

NASPA Region III has selected David E. Clark, associate vice president of Campus Life and University Services, as the 2021 winner of the AVP/Senior Level Student Affairs Professional Award. This prestigious honor signifies that fellow student affairs colleagues highly value Clark’s contributions to the profession, his institution and NASPA Region III. 

DeLa Dos, director of social justice education, and the Social Justice Education Framework Program have received the 2021 NASPA Excellence Gold Award in the Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice Category, as well as the Grand Bronze Award Overall for the 2021 NASPA Excellence Awards. 

NASPA is the largest and most prestigious professional association for those who work in the student affairs field, supporting a diverse network of 15,000 professionals and 1,200 institutions across the globe. 

Fleischer chosen as a Scialog conference Fellow

Candace Fleischer, an assistant professor in Emory School of Medicine’s Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, is among 55 Fellows selected for Scialog: Advancing Bioimaging, a new initiative from Research Corporation for Science Advancement. 

Scialog is short for “science + dialog.” Created in 2010 by RCSA, the Scialog format creates communities of early-career scholars selected from multiple disciplines and institutions across the U.S. and Canada. Conference participants form multidisciplinary teams to design research projects, which they pitch to a committee of leading scientists who have facilitated discussions throughout the meeting. The committee then recommends seed funding to catalyze the most promising of those team projects, based primarily on the potential for high-impact results.

Kancherla wins award for extensive birth defects work

Vijaya Kancherla, research assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Rollins School of Public Health, recently won the 2021 F. Clarke Fraser New Investigator Award from the Society for Birth Defects Research and Prevention (SBDRP, previously Teratology Society) for her vast body of work on birth defects epidemiology.

This award honors F. Clarke Fraser, one of the founding members of the SBDRP for his many contributions to the field of developmental toxicology. During the awards ceremony this summer, Kancherla will give a presentation related to her research, which will serve as a demonstration to pre- and postdoctoral students of the development of an independent career in birth defects research. Read more here.

Klibanoff’s “Buried Truths” podcast selected as finalist for ABA award

“Buried Truths,” a podcast led by Hank Klibanoff and produced by Atlanta NPR station WABE, has been named a finalist in the radio category for the 2021 Silver Gavel Awards for Media and the Arts. The awards are presented by the American Bar Association and recognize outstanding work that fosters the American public’s understanding of law and the legal system.

Klibanoff is professor of practice in English and creative writing. The podcast is based on the work of students participating in Emory’s Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project, an undergraduate class led by Klibanoff. Season three of the podcast, which has been nominated for the award, focused on the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed a 25-year-old Black man who was pursued by three armed white men near the coastal city of Brunswick.

The winners will be announced on May 20. 

McDonald named interim chair of Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

William M. McDonald has accepted the position to serve as interim chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences within Emory’s School of Medicine. McDonald is professor and the JB Fuqua Chair for Late-Life Depression and also serves as vice-chair of psychiatry education.     

McDonald graduated from Duke University Medical School and was a member of the Duke faculty before joining Emory in 1993. In 1999, with a gift from the JB Fuqua Foundation, he led the establishment of the Fuqua Center for Late-Life Depression where he currently serves as director. The Fuqua Center mission is to provide education and improve community access in the treatment of geriatric depression.

McDonald’s clinical work and research has focused on understanding the neuroanatomy, clinical features and treatment of mood disorders such as mania and depression, particularly when these disorders occur late in life.

Shantha selected for leadership development program

Emory Eye Center uveitis and medical retina specialist Jessica Shantha has been selected to participate in the 2020-2021 Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) Women’s Leadership Development Program.

The program prepares women to serve in leadership roles within ARVO and their clinical or academic institutions. It is designed to provide emerging leaders with a highly interactive, year-long learning experience focused on leadership skill development, facilitating leadership opportunities, and networking within ARVO.

Shantha joined Emory Eye Center in 2017. Her academic and clinical interests include infectious and non-infectious uveitis, emerging pathogen discovery and addressing clinical and research gaps within uveitis and retinal disease. Read more.

Weissman honored with Sloan Fellowship

Emory College physicist Daniel Weissman, who specializes in building mathematical models to better understand the rapid evolution of pathogens, has been named a 2021 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow.

The prestigious fellowship honors Weissman as among the most promising researchers working today. He plans to use the two-year award to amplify his latest effort, to examine antibiotic resistance by building a model from a massive database of genomes from Staphylococcus aureus, an opportunistically pathogenic skin bacterium.

The Sloan Research Fellowships are open to scholars in eight fields – chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, neuroscience, ocean sciences and physics – who have a record of distinguished performance and a unique potential to make substantial contributions to their field. Read more.