July 10, 2008
Etc. Campus news & notes
SHE’S GOLDEN: Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the UW’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences and its NSF Science of Learning Center, was awarded the Acoustical Society of America’s Gold Medal, its highest award. The medal was presented July 2 in Paris, France, at Acoustics’08 Paris, an international meeting that combines the society and two other major European conferences on acoustics.
Kuhl, a professor of Speech and Hearing Sciences and the Virginia and Prentice Bloedel Professor at the UW, is internationally recognized for her research on early language development and her studies that reveal how young children learn. She pioneered the development of safe and noninvasive whole brain neuroimaging techniques that measure the effects of early experience on the brain. Kuhl’s work has implications for “critical periods” in development, for bilingual education, and for developmental disabilities involving language.
The Acoustical Society of America is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics.
BETTER BALANCE: Kate Quinn, project director of Balance at UW, housed within the College of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded the 2008 Society of Women Engineers Work-Life Balance Award. This award, which is sponsored by Honeywell International Inc., “celebrates an individual who has worked to create programs that help women engineers and other employees balance the commitments of career, life and family.”
Quinn was recognized for her many efforts on the UW campus, such as spearheading the UW’s successful participation in the competition for a $250,000 ACE-Sloan Flexible Faculty Career Award. With the Faculty Council on Women in Academia and the Work-Life in Pediatrics group, she has worked to improve the work-life environment for UW faculty. She has also been active with the UW’s ADVANCE program to improve the advancement of women faculty in science, engineering, and mathematics. She will receive this award at the annual Society of Women Engineers conference in Baltimore in November.
ONLINE EXCELLENCE: Akira Horita, UW professor of pharmacology and psychiatry, has received the 2008 R1edu Award for Distinguished Faculty Contributions to Online Learning. The award recognizes his work in effectively integrating cutting-edge research into a highly interactive online certificate program, Advanced Research in Addiction and the Brain, administered by UW Educational Outreach. Presented annually, the R1edu Award acknowledges innovative and stellar work of faculty in online learning at member institutions of the R1edu Consortium, an organization of more than 30 top U.S. research universities.
Developed with grant funds from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the UW certificate program in Advanced Research in Addiction and the Brain is designed for chemical dependency professionals, K-12 educators, nurses, counselors, social workers, educators in the prison system, members of the judiciary, and lawmakers who deal with issues of substance abuse. It gleans relevant information from current research in the field and translates and modifies it to provide participants with a working knowledge of the neurobiological basis of addiction and the ability to implement approaches from addiction research in their areas of practice.
Do you know someone who deserves kudos for an outstanding achievement, award, appointment or book publication? If so, send that person’s name, title and achievement to uweek@u.washington.edu.
