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Awards & honors

Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, has bestowed an honorary doctorate, the Doctor Scientiarum Honoris Causa, on Dr. Robert Langer, the Germeshausen Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering. In a letter to Professor Langer, Professor Ze-hev Tadmor, president of Technion, wrote that the honor was given "in recognition of your outstanding contributions to the development of revolutionary new principles and materials for controlled drug delivery and tissue engineering; for your wisdom to translate novel scientific concepts into therapeutic modalities for better health care to benefit mankind, and for your remarkable ability to spark in younger scientists the curiosity to search for novel ideas and to transmit to them your love of research."
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The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History has chosen Dr. Seymour Papert, Professor of Education and Media Technology, as this year's NEC Leadership Award for Education. It is one of five annual Smithsonian awards that recognize achievement in the application of information technology in society.

In addition to receiving his award, Professor Papert will also have his recollections and reflections preserved for national posterity. The Smithsonian conducts in-depth video history interviews with its award winners, archives them, and uses segments in educational publications and presentations as well as publishing transcripts on the Web.
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Dr. Alexander Slocum, the Alex and Brit d'Arbeloff Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, will receive the SME Frederick W. Taylor Research Medal in May. The award from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers recognizes "significant published research leading to a better understanding of materials, facilities, principles, operations and their application to improve manufacturing processes."

Professor Slocum has published numerous articles on the design of precision machine tool components from modular low-cost hydrostatic bearings to damped structures to kinematic couplings, and he is the author of the text Precision Machine Design.
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Dr. Carl C. Ton, a postdoctoral associate in the Center for Cancer Research, is one of 131 young researchers selected to receive grants from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and depression (NARSAD). NARSAD is the largest publicly supported, nongovernmental funder of psychiatric research in the country. Dr. Ton will use his grant ($30,000 a year for two years) to apply genetic mapping and positional cloning to study of a gene on chromosome 8 which confers susceptibility to schizophrenia.

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on April 9, 1997.

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