A health-monitoring invention designed by senior engineering students has won the University’s Charles and Janet Forbes Entrepreneurial Award this year. The award comes with a prize of $3,600. The winners are James Bai, Sarah Hotaling, Huy Le, and Nathan Ross, who were supervised by Nick Kuzma, assistant professor of biomedical engineering. Their design, the “sAMY Monitor,” is a small device that can track a patient’s daily stress levels while being simple and noninvasive enough that it doesn’t add to that stress.
Jean Barr, professor of piano accompanying and chamber music at the Eastman School, has received the Music Teachers National Association Achievement Award. The award is the organization’s highest honor and recognizes individuals who have made significant and lasting contributions to the music teaching profession. The first keyboard artist in the United States to receive a doctoral degree in accompanying, Barr is considered by many to be a pioneer in her field. She has taught and lectured throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.
Eric Caine
Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive sciences, has been selected as a finalist for the 2008 New York Academy of Sciences’ Blavatnik Award for her research, which was recognized as “outstanding with regards to its scientific potential, innovation, and broad impact.” As a finalist, Bavelier will receive $10,000, and three of the nine finalists will be named winners of the award at the New York Academy of Sciences’ annual Science & the City Gala on November 17. The award winners will be presented with an additional $15,000.
Edith Lord, professor of microbiology and immunology and of oncology, has been named the school’s senior associate dean for graduate education. A faculty member for 30 years, Lord will direct the School of Medicine and Dentistry’s Ph.D., postdoctoral, and master’s degree programs.
Sharon Martinez, director of Medical Center Web services, has received the 2008 IT Woman of the Year Award from the Association for Women in Computing–Upstate New York Chapter. Since her appointment in 2000, Martinez has directed the development of StrongHealth.com, an online system for managing patient information. She most recently oversaw the merger of StrongHealth.com with URMC.edu.
Arthur Moss, professor of medicine, has won the highest honor of the Rochester Academy of Medicine, the Albert David Kaiser Medal. Moss received the award on May 13 at the academy’s annual meeting. The medal was presented to Moss for his decades of distinguished service and contributions to the medical community as a clinician, teacher, researcher, and leader. Since his first publication in 1960, Moss has published over 500 scientific papers, books, chapters, and editorials, many on cardiac arrhythmias, electrical malfunctions that can throw the heartbeat out of rhythm and stop it in the worst cases. Moss’s team recently won a four-year, $2.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to continue its study of Long QT syndrome, one cause of fatal arrhythmias. With the latest award, the team will have received continuous NIH funding for 23 years, one of the longest, continuous, investigator-initiated research projects at the University.
Ronald Paprocki, senior vice president for administration and finance at the University, was selected as the 2008 Financial Executive of the Year for large nonprofit organizations in the Rochester area. The annual awards, which were announced May 15 at a luncheon ceremony at the Hyatt Regency, are presented by Rochester Business Journal and the local chapter of Financial Executives International. During his 39-year career at the University, Paprocki has led many budget, planning, and administrative operations, and is currently the University’s chief operations officer. He also has a history of expertise in planning, institutional performance measurement, and delivery of cost effective support services.
The winners of the 2008 Creative Excellence Award Contest were recently announced. The Staff Award goes to Peter Sullivan, a senior social worker and coordinator of the Group Therapy Service in the Department of Psychiatry, for his short story “Remembering Sensation in the Feet When Walking.” Colleen Fogarty, assistant professor of family medicine, receives the Faculty Award for her essay “Caring for a Farm-Worker Couple with an Anencephalic Fetus.” Brynn Champney ’10, who is conducting field work in Rwanda this summer, won the Student Award for her poem “A WIC Clinic Waiting Room.” Read the winning entries online at www.urmc.rochester.edu/smd/MedHum/awa.cfm#creative.
