The Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands has awarded an
honorary doctorate to Professor Neville Hogan of mechanical engineering
and brain and cognitive sciences. Professor Hogan, who is also director
of the Newman Lab, will receive the honor at a ceremony at Delft in
January.
----------
David Epstein, professor emeritus and senior lecturer in the Music
and Theater Arts Section, was awarded the 1996 Deems Taylor Award for
his book, Shaping Time: Music, the Brain, and Performance, at a
presentation in New York City on December 9. The award, given annually
by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP),
recognizes books on music that have contributed significantly to the
understanding of music. Shaping Time was also cited by the library
journal Choice as "one of the outstanding academic books published in
1995."
"Shaping Time is. an important milestone in interdisciplinary
communication and is likely to stimulate vigorous research and
constructive criticism from both psychologists and music theorists. It
is richly rewarding as a source of musical insights," Music Perception
said in a lengthy review.
Dr. Epstein has begun a series of research projects with Nobel
laureate Gerald Edelman, director of the Neurosciences Institute in La
Jolla, CA, where Dr. Epstein has been a visiting fellow. As a performing
musician, Dr. Epstein's new CD with the New Orchestra of Boston of
Frederick Tillis's Festival Journey, a jazz concerto written for
percussionist Max Roach and Orchestra, received strong reviews in
Downbeat and the Boston Globe and he has been invited as guest conductor
in Israel and Hungary next spring.
----------
Two awards have recently been conferred on Germeshausen Professor of
Chemical and Biomedical Engineering Robert Langer. He received the
William Walker Award, the oldest and highest award of the American
Institute of Chemical Engineers, for contributions to chemical
engineering literature and specifically for the creation of new
biomaterials and discoveries in drug delivery and tissue engineering.
Professor Langer also received an honorary doctorate from the
Eidgenossische Technishe Hochschule in Zurich for his research on
creating and understanding materials with respect to drug delivery and
cell transplantation.
----------
Professor of Biology Eric S. Lander will be one of two scientists to
receive the University of Pittsburgh 1996-97 Dickson prize in Medicine
in honor of pioneering research and significant contributions to medical
science. Dr. Lander is director of the Whitehead/MIT Center for Genome
Research. He has pioneered the construction of genome maps, using those
tools to identify genes involved in susceptibility to cancer and
diabetes (type I and II). This year's co-winner is Dr. Edward Everett
Harlow Jr., scientific director at the Massachusetts General Hospital
Cancer Center and professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on December 18, 1996.
