Award Winners

Marcy-James-Bonbright Scholars Embrace Their Futures

Nine Weinberg seniors gathered with their parents and Dean Linzer last fall to receive Marcy, James, and Bonbright awards for achieving the highest averages in their fields during their junior year. At the time, some were certain of their career paths; some were not. As they prepare to graduate, most plans have firmed up. Here’s a snapshot before they take off.

• Greg Cvetanovich, a biological sciences and chemistry major, will attend Harvard Medical School in the joint Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program.
• Matthew Franklin Gill will head to the University of California, San Diego, to study for a PhD in mathematics. Matthew, a math and physics major, also participated in Weinberg’s comprehensive Integrated Science Program.
• Sarah Hoffman finished her degree in December and has been working as a legal assistant in a law firm in Chicago. She plans to pursue English literature at the graduate level.
• A double major in psychology and Asian and Middle Eastern
  Studies, Sara Khorshid had a concentration in Arabic. She will work in the systems department at McMaster-Carr, the large industrial supplier, in Elmhurst, Illinois.
• Michael Kozminski majored in economics and biological sciences. He will pursue his interest in genetics toward an MD at the University of Michigan Medical School.
• Ang Li was born in China and came to the U.S. at age 13. He plans to be a physician but a Fulbright scholarship will take him first to Spain, where he will study molecular biology.
• The foreign-policy area of the nonprofit sector intrigues Alexandra Paige Miller, who majored in anthropology and classics and did independent research at the intersection of politics and inequality.
• Geoff Tresley fell in love with the financial world through economics classes and a Chicago internship with a hedge-fund manager. He has chosen to work for Morgan Stanley in New York as an investment-banking analyst.
• English major Denise Yasinow has been hired by the French government to teach high school English in Amiens, France. She also plans to attend law school.

Students

Weinberg junior Amber North is one of only 20 students nationwide to win the competitive Beinecke scholarship this year. The $32,000 award is for students planning to attend graduate school in the arts, humanities, or social sciences. She also was named one of Glamour magazine’s Top Ten College Women. Last summer, Amber won a Freeman-Asia Award to support her study abroad in Vietnam.  Amber is a Philosophy and International Studies double major. She also is an accomplished singer-songwriter, with two CDs to her credit.

Three of four Northwestern nominees have won the prestigious Goldwater scholarship. They are Weinberg students Yonatan Kahn (dual-degree student, Music and Physics), James Kath (Integrated Science Program and Physics), and Suraj Pradhan (Integrated Science Program and Biological Sciences). 

This year, Northwestern has produced a record-breaking 24 Fulbright winners. Names of these and other student award winners will be officially announced in the fall.

Faculty

Two Northwestern faculty members have been awarded the 2005 National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest award for lifetime achievement in scientific research.

They are Tobin J. Marks, Vladimir N. Ipatieff Research Professor of Chemistry in Weinberg College and professor of materials science and engineering and Jan D. Achenbach, Walter P. Murphy Professor and Distinguished McCormick School Professor of the Departments of Mechanical Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics. Marks is a leader in the development of single-site olefin polymerization catalysis as well as in the study of new materials having remarkable electrical, mechanical, interfacial and photonic properties. He designed a co-catalyst that led to what is now a standard process for producing better polyolefins, the versatile and inexpensive plastics found in many household items.

Political philosopher Charles Taylor has won the world’s largest annual monetary award, the $1.5 million Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities. Taylor, Board of Trustees Professor of Law and Philosophy, has argued for more than 50 years that world problems like violence and prejudice will be solved only by considering their spiritual dimensions as well as their secular dimensions.

Robert Lamb, John Evans Professor of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Cell Biology, has been named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is an authority on the influenza virus.

Barbara J. Newman is the second recipient of the Dorothy Ann and Clarence L. Ver Steeg Distinguished Research Fellowship, the University’s first endowed award for excellence in research by a faculty member. Newman, professor of English, religion and classics and John Evans Professor of the Latin Language and Literature, is a scholar of medieval religion and comparative literature.

A Guggenheim Fellowship has been awarded to psychology professor Sandra R. Waxman. She and fellow psychologist Douglas Medin (featured in Crosscurrents, spring ’06) work with linguistics experts and anthropologists to study how language and culture affect the acquisition of knowledge about the natural world, especially in young children.