Awards

11 September 2002 |

Richard Atkinson
At its annual meeting last month in Chicago, the American Psychological Association presented UC President Richard Atkinson with its 2002 Award for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology. The honor recognizes Atkinson’s contributions “as a scientist, scholar, national policy maker, educational leader, and visionary administrative architect who has strengthened international scientific and educational enterprises.”

Atkinson’s research has dealt with problems of memory and cognition. His theory of human memory has been influential in shaping research in the field. It has helped to clarify the relationship between brain structures and psychological phenomena, explain the effects of drugs on memory, and formulate techniques that optimize the learning process.

UC president since 1995, Atkinson was chancellor of UC San Diego for 15 years and director of the National Science Foundation. He was a longtime member of the psychology department at Stanford University and served for three years on the UCLA faculty.

Neil Bartlett, Alexander Pines
The United Kingdom’s Royal Society, the world’s oldest scientific academy, has honored two Berkeley chemistry professors for their work.

Professor Emeritus Neil Bartlett has won the Davy Medal, given each year for an important recent discovery in any branch of chemistry worldwide. Bartlett, who was inducted into the Society in 1973, is being recognized for his research “exploring the highest oxidation limits of the less oxidizable elements, primarily using elemental fluorine.”

He will receive the medal in November at the Society’s Anni-versary Day meeting. Bartlett joined the Berkeley faculty in 1969 and retired in 1993.

Alexander Pines, the Glenn T. Seaborg Professor of Chemistry, was elected a Foreign Member of the society, an honor awarded annually to only six individuals worldwide. Pines was recognized for his pioneering contributions to the development of nuclear magnetic-resonance spectroscopy. New fellows and foreign members were officially inducted at a Royal Society ceremony in London in July.

Robert Bea
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Robert Bea has been elected to the Offshore Energy Center’s Hall of Fame as a “technology pioneer.” Bea was honored for his career contributions to the design of marine structures. This is his second election to the center’s Hall of Fame; the first was in 1998.

Edmund Campion, Cindy Cox, Olly Wilson
Three Berkeley music faculty — Edmund Campion, Cindy Cox, and Olly Wilson — will receive cash awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

The awards are made annually to music writers “whose works have a unique prestige value for which adequate compensation would not otherwise be received, and to compensate those writers whose works are performed substantially in media not surveyed by ASCAP.”

The society is the world’s largest performing rights organization, with over 140,000 composers, authors and publishers in the United States, representing music of every variety and style.

John Canny, Mike Jordan
Two electrical engineering and computer sciences professors, John Canny and Mike Jordan, were honored at a recent conference of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence.

Jordan was elected an Association Fellow for contributions to reasoning under uncertainty, machine learning, and human motor control. Canny received the association’s Classic Paper Award, given to the most influential paper from its third national conference, held in 1983. He was honored for contributions to the fields of robotics and machine perception.

Leonard Duhl
The Pan American Health and Education Foundation, a U.S.-based non-profit partner of the Pan American Health Organization, has named Leonard Duhl the winner of its Abraham Horwitz Award for Inter-American Health.

A professor of public health and city planning, Duhl was selected for his pioneering work related to healthy cities and healthy communities. Considered to be the intellectual father of the “healthy city” concept, he has radically changed thinking about urban health, having written about the concept of sick cities as early as 1952. He also is a pioneer in associating urban design with mental health.

The Abraham Horwitz Award honors those whose lifetime careers in medicine or public health have impacted the lives and health of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean. Duhl will accept the award at a Pan American Health Organization conference on Sept. 25 in Washington, D.C.

Graduate Division web team
Berkeley’s Graduate Division website (www.grad.berkeley.edu) has received an Award of Excellence from the University & College Designers Association in its 2002 design competition. The award will be presented Sept. 14 in Chicago at the organization’s annual conference and design show.

The web team includes Lisa Harrington, director of graduate communications and events; web administrator Arnold Yip; web developer Patrick McMahon; and former senior writer Elizabeth Babalis.