Arts and entertainment  |  Health and medicine  |  Honors and awards  |  UW and the community  |  UW Notebook

February 10, 2020

Faculty/staff honors: Awards in architecture education, biomaterials research; nursing, cloud computing fellowships; and drama leader named among most Seattle’s most influential

Recent honors to University of Washington faculty and staff members include awards for architectural education and biomaterials research, fellowships in nursing and cloud computing, a professor named among Seattle’s most influential people and a big news year for “a burgeoning band of embodied carbon busters.”

Kate Simonen, Vikram Prakash honored by Association for Collegiate Schools of Architecture

Kate Simonen and Vikramaditya Prakash, faculty members in the Department of Architecture, have both received 2020 Architectural Education Awards from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.

The awards honor architectural educators across a dozen categories for “exemplary work in areas such as building design, community collaborations, scholarship and service.”

Prakash, professor of architecture, received a Distinguished Professor Award, recognizing “a positive, stimulating and nurturing” influence on students, inspiring them to contribute to the advancement of architecture.

Simonen, associate professor of architecture, received the TAD Research Contribution Award, for the best article — “Benchmarking the Embodied Carbon of Buildings” — from the association’s Technology | Architecture + Design Journal. Simonen’s co-authors are graduate research assistant Barbara Rodriguez Droguett and Swiss researcher Catherine De Wolf. Simonen is founding director of the UW-based Carbon Leadership Forum. Learn more on the College of Built Environments website.

Top newsmaker: Simonen also was named one of the top 25 newsmakers of 2019 by Engineering News Record. “It has been a banner year for Kate Simonen and her burgeoning band of embodied carbon busters bent on reducing the negative environmental impacts of building production,” the editors write. The top newsmakers will be celebrated April 2 at an event in New York.

***

Seattle Times names Valerie Curtis-Newton among most influential people of the decade

The Seattle Times has named Valerie Curtis-Newton, UW professor of drama, as one of “13 people who made an impact on the Seattle area in the past decade.”

A professor of directing and acting, Curtis-Newton is head of directing for the School of Drama, and also heads the Seattle-based Hansberry Project, dedicated to exploring African American life, history and culture.

Calling Curtis-Newton “a titan in the Seattle cultural scene,” the Times writes: “She got there not by being flashy (though she’s certainly capable of inspiring a crowd) but by doing the hard work in the trenches, with the community and inside arts organizations large and small, doggedly insisting on two things: artistic excellence and increasingly incorporating a Black lens into the collective view of what theater is and can be.”

***

Alison Gray, professor of oceanography, receives first Microsoft Investigator Fellowship

Alison Gray, UW assistant professor of oceanography, has been named recipient of an inaugural Microsoft Investigator Fellowship. The awards are given to empower researchers of all disciplines who plan to make an impact with research and teaching using the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform. Each fellowship provides $100,000 a year for two years and various training and community events.

Gray studies the circulation of the ocean and its impact on the physics and chemistry of the climate system. Her research seeks to improve understanding of the interactions between ocean circulation and global biogeochemical cycles.

Microsoft chose 15 fellowships among over 290 proposals received. Learn more on the College of the Environment website or the original Microsoft news release.

***

Donna Berry, Jennifer Sonney chosen for School of Nursing faculty endowed fellowships

School of Nursing faculty members Donna Berry and Jennifer Sonney have been chosen the inaugural recipients of two endowed faculty fellowship awards.

Berry will receive the Health Informatics Endowed Faculty Fellowship in Nursing, established by Marjorie V. Batey. Berry will work to implement evidence-based practices in acute care and ambulatory settings by integrating health informatics technologies into clinical processes.

Sonney, an assistant professor of nursing, will receive the Endowed Faculty Fellowship in Symptom Science, which is supported by two endowments; one was established by Batey in the name of Elizabeth C. Giblin; the other is in the names of Lucia S. and Herbert L. Pruzan. Sonney will work to improve the health of children with asthma by reducing symptoms and establishing lifelong self-management skills.

Learn more from an article on the School of Nursing website.

***

Four UW bioengineers receive Society for Biomaterials 2020 awards

David Castner, Buddy Ratner and Lara Gamble will receive the 2020 Technology Innovation and Development Award from the Society for Biomaterials, which promotes advances in biomaterials sciences research and development. Cole DeForest will receive the society’s 2020 Young Investigators Award. The awards were announced Jan. 6.

The Technology Innovation and Development Award recognizes an individual or team’s successful application of basic and applied biomaterials research in development of a new medical product or technology that significantly benefits medical or surgical patients.

The three faculty members were honored for leadership of the UW-based National ESCA and Surface Analysis Center for Biomedical Problems, which was started by Ratner and is co-directed by Castner and Gamble.

Gamble is a research associate professor of bioengineering, Castner a professor emeritus of chemical engineering and of bioengineering, and Ratner a professor of bioengineering and chemical engineering.

The Young Investigators Award recognizes an individual demonstrating outstanding achievements in biomaterials research. DeForest is assistant professor of chemical engineering and of bioengineering.

All four are affiliates of the UW Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute.

Tag(s): Alison Gray • Barbara Rodriguez Droguett • Buddy Ratner • Carbon Leadership Forum • College of Built Environments • College of Engineering • College of the Environment • David Castner • Department of Bioengineering • Department of Chemical Engineering • Donna Berry • Jennifer Sonney • Kate Simonen • Lara Gamble • Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute • School of Drama • School of Medicine • School of Nursing • School of Oceanography • Valerie Curtis-Newton • Vikram Prakash

---