People

Awards & Honors

William Mieler, professor and vice chair of ophthalmology and visual science, was elected president of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology.

The association has more than 12,000 members in 80 countries.

Mieler’s election was announced at the association’s annual meeting in Seattle last month. He will serve for one year as president-elect, then as president for the following year.

Mieler is an expert in treating diseases of the eye, particularly of the macula, retina and vitreous. His primary research interests are pharmacology, imaging, and tumors of the eye. He conducts national clinical trials in the treatment of macular diseases.

Mieler has served on the American Board of Ophthalmology as its director, vice-chair and chair, and as president of the Macula Society, which this year awarded him the J. Donald Gass Medal for his contributions to the study of macular diseases.

Mieler has more than 315 peer-reviewed articles and 65 book chapters. He has edited or co-edited five textbooks and serves on the editorial board of more than 10 journals.

He is the ARVO retina section trustee and has served the American Board of Medical Specialties on a number of committees.

Mieler joined the UIC faculty in 2008. He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Wisconsin. He completed a residency at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami and fellowships at the Eye Institute at the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Wills Eye Hospital at Thomas Jefferson University.

 

Jochen Arndt, doctoral candidate in history, received the Distinguished Writing award from the Army Historical Foundation. Arndt was recognized for outstanding writing on U.S. Army history in an academic journal for his article, “The True Napoleon of the West: General Winfield Scott’s Mexico City Campaign and the Origins of the U.S. Army’s Combined-Arms Combat Division,” published in the July 2012 edition of the Journal of Military History.

 

Molly Doane, assistant professor of anthropology, received the Latin American Studies Association’s 2012 LASA Mexico Book Award for Stealing Shining Rivers: Agrarian Conflict, Market Logic, and Conservation in a Mexican Forest. The prize honors the best book on Mexico in the social sciences published in 2012.

 

Sharon Mastracci, associate professor and interim head of public administration, received the Best Book Award from the Association of Management’s Public Nonprofit Division for Emotional Labor and Crisis Response: Working on the Razor’s Edge.

Mastracci and co-authors Mary E. Guy and Meredith A. Newman analyzed the work of hotline workers, emergency medical technicians, triage nurses, and agency spokespersons who deal with the public immediately after crises. The award will be presented at the association’s Aug. 11 business meeting in Orlando.

 

Jeanne Galatzer-Levy, associate director in the news bureau, Office of Public Affairs, will receive the Victoria J. Mastrobuono Award for Women’s Health at the annual conference of the National Organization for Women in Chicago July 5-7.

Galatzer-Levy will be honored as a former member of the Jane Collective, which helped Chicago women obtain abortion services from 1969 to 1973.

 

Barbara Ransby, director of gender and women’s studies, director of the Social Justice Initiative and professor of African-American studies and history, and Lynette Jackson, interim associate provost and executive director of the Office of International Affairs and associate professor of gender and women’s studies and African-American studies, were invited to participate in the Nobel Women’s Initiative’s fourth biennial conference, “Moving Beyond Militarism & War: Women-driven Solutions for a Nonviolent World.”

The conference, hosted in Belfast, Northern Ireland, included activists and academics whose work focuses on ending militarism and war with nonviolent strategies for peace. The event brought together, for the first time, all six laureates of the Nobel Women’s Initiative.

 

Exhibits

Comic art by Jimenez Lai, assistant professor of architecture, was exhibited at the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo, also called CAKE, June 15 and 16 at the Center on Halsted, Chicago.

Lai is the author of Citizens of No Place: An Architectural Graphic Novel (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012).

 

Presentations

Dick Simpson, professor of political science, was a panelist for the Chicago Public Library’s “Breaking New Ground: Harold Washington and the 1983 Election,” an April 15 program commemorating the 30th anniversary of Washington’s historic mayoral victory.

 

Matthew Liotine, clinical associate professor of information and decision sciences, was a speaker and panelist at the Federal Emergency Management Agency Regional Homeland Security Higher Education Workshop Chicago May 17.

He gave a presentation on “Building a Stronger Knowledge Infrastructure: The Strategic Value of Higher Education Research in Regional Resiliency Operations.”

 

Steve Schlickman, executive director of the Urban Transportation Center, spoke on a panel addressing the future of bus rapid transit in Chicago with officials from the Chicago Transit Authority, the Active Transportation Alliance, and Chicago Bus Rapid Transit at the Chicago Cultural Center May 29.

 

Scholarships

Four UIC students were awarded $2,500 2013-2014 Avery Brundage Scholarships for excellence in academics and athletics.

The winners, their college and majors are:

• Marina Kravtsova, Applied Health Sciences, triathlons

• Lukasz Adamcyzk, Liberal Arts and Sciences, gymnastics

• Gardner Yost, bioengineering, rowing

• Matthew Zaluckyj, Liberal Arts and Sciences, cross-country.

 

Jessica Wilson, an M.D.-Ph.D. student in pharmacology, was named a Paul D. Doolen Graduate Scholar for the Study of Aging for 2013-2014. She will receive $3,500 to continue her studies in gerontology.

Wilson’s neuroscience research focuses on the relationship between aging, neurodegenerative disease and the neuronal plasticity that buffers these processes. Her current research focuses on Alzheimer’s disease.

She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Arizona State University.