June 14, 2021
Faculty/staff honors: Humanitarian award, early career research support, literary journal guest editor
Recent honors and achievements for University of Washington faculty include an award for humanitarian contributions to computer science, early career research recognition and support, and the guest-editing of a new anthology of Black American literature.
Allen School’s Richard Anderson receives humanitarian award from Association of Computer Machinery
Richard Anderson
Richard Anderson, professor in the UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, has received the 2020 ACM Eugene L. Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions Within Computer Science and Informatics from the Association for Computer Machinery.
The award, given every two years, recognizes an individual or group who has made a significant contribution through computing technology. Anderson’s award, which comes with a prize of $5,000, recognizes “contributions that bridge the fields of computer science, education and global health.”
Anderson co-directs the Information and Communication Technology for Development Lab, which studies how technology can be used to improve the lives of populations in low-income regions. “With his students and collaborators,” the association noted, “Anderson developed a range of innovative applications in health, education, the internet, and financial services, benefiting underserved communities around the globe.”
Eugene Leighton Lawler (1933-1994), for whom the award is named, was a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.
Read more about the award on the Allen School blog.
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UW chemistry professor Dianne Xiao receives award from DOE Early Career Research Program
Dianne Xiao
Dianne Xiao, UW assistant professor of chemistry, has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science to receive funding from its 2021 Early Career Research Program.
The Early Career Research Program, now in its 12th year, program supports “exceptional researchers during the crucial early years, when many scientists do their most formative work.”
The program provides university-based researchers with about $150,000 a year for five years, to cover summer salary and expenses. Eighty-three scientists were selected nationwide, including 32 from the DOE’s national laboratories and 51 from U.S. universities. The awards were announced on May 27.
Xiao’s research abstract, listed under the Basic Energy Sciences category, is titled “New Synthetic Approaches Towards Atomically Precise π–d Conjugated Materials.”
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Charles Johnson guest-edits anthology of Black American literature, parts with archive
Charles Johnson
Charles Johnson, UW professor emeritus of English, has guest-edited and contributed to a special edition of Chicago Quarterly Review, “An Anthology of Black American Literature.”
The Chicago Quarterly Review is a nonprofit, independent journal, established in 1994 that publishes short stories, poems, translations and essays by emerging and established writers.
An essayist, screenwriter and professional cartoonist as well as author, Johnson won the National Book Award for his novel “Middle Passage.”
Johnson wrote the introduction and contributed a story to the anthology — the journal’s volume #33 — called “Night Shift,” which he penned for the 2020 Bedtime Story fundraiser for Humanities Washington. The volume contains work by more than two dozen Black writers. An earlier special edition of the journal was dedicated to South Asian American writers, and an upcoming issue will focus on Native American literature.
Also, Washington University in St. Louis announced in May that it has acquired the Charles Johnson Papers, an archival collection of materials related to Johnson’s work as an author and illustrator. “Spanning nearly six decades, the collection brings together manuscripts, drafts, correspondence, artwork and ephemera, and serves as a testament to Johnson’s wide-ranging career as a public intellectual.”
Tag(s): Charles Johnson • Department of Chemistry • Department of English • Dianne Xiao • Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering • Richard Anderson
