Awards, appointments and honors

“The House of Broken Angels,” the latest novel from Luis Urrea, UIC professor of English and LAS distinguished professor, is featured in The New York Times’ list of 100 most notable books of 2018.

Awards

Itzel Lizama-Chamu won the outstanding poster presentation in microbiology award for her poster at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students. She won the award for presenting her research on “Chemical Communication of a Natural Cheese Rind Fungus with Pseudomonas vs. E. coli.” 

Her poster, with collaborators Jessica L. Cleary and Laura M. Sanchez, also won Best Poster at the UIC College of Pharmacy Undergraduate Research Symposium.

Jocelyn Garcia won the first-place prize for Undergraduate Research In Quantitative Biology at the Quantitative Approaches in Biology conference at Northwestern University. She took home the first-place prize of $1,000 for her work on the Quantitative Analysis of Notch Signaling-Mediated Olfactory Neurogenesis.

Olga Herrera, who holds a courtesy faculty appointment in Latin American and Latino studies, won the 2018 SECAC Award for Excellence in Scholarly Research and Publication for her 2017 book, “American Interventions and Modern Art in South America.” The award is given for outstanding research shown in a book, article or series of articles published within the last two years. Herrera, who is director of the Inter-University Program for Latino Research’s Washington, D.C., office, was presented the award during the group’s 74th conference held in Birmingham, Alabama. SECAC, formerly the Southeastern College Art Conference, is a nonprofit organization that promotes the study and practice of the visual arts in higher education on a national basis.

Appointments

Angela Ellison was named senior director of the UI Health Office of Community Engagement and Neighborhood Health Partnerships (OCEAN-HP) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She assumed the responsibilities of interim senior director after the passing of her predecessor, Cynthia Barnes-Boyd, in the fall of 2017.  She previously was associate director of community engagement for the office.

Joseph Strickland, associate director and senior researcher at the Jane Addams Center for Social Policy and Research, has been selected to serve on the Restorative Justice and Safe Communities Committee for Governor-elect JB Pritzker.

Honors

“The House of Broken Angels,” the latest novel from Luis Urrea, UIC professor of English and LAS distinguished professor, is featured in The New York Times’ list of 100 most notable books of 2018 and Time magazine’s 8 Must-Read Books You Might Have Missed in 2018.