��������� Rebecca Reichert, a graduate student in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, is one of 12 inaugural George J. Mitchell Scholars. Named in honor of Sen. Mitchell's contribution to the Northern Ireland peace process, the scholarships are awarded to individuals from ages 18-30 who have shown academic distinction, commitment to service and potential for leadership. The scholarships, administered by the US-Ireland Alliance and initially funded by a $3 million endowment from the Irish government, allow recipients to pursue one year of postgraduate study at institutions of higher learning in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
��������� Professor John W. Dower has won another award for his book, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (The New Press, 1999). Dr. Dower, the Elting E. Morison Professor of History, received the John K. Fairbanks prize, given annually for an outstanding book in the history of China proper, Vietnam, Chinese Central Asia, Mongolia, Korea or Japan since the year 1800 by the American Historical Association. His award citation called the book "extraordinarily rich and far-reaching, combining imaginative and careful research... both a brilliant cultural history and an insightful political history of postwar Japan." Embracing Defeat also won the National Book Award (MIT Tech Talk, November 24, 1999).
��������� Elsevier Science announced in its October 1999 issue of Spectrochimica Acta that Professor Jeffrey I. Steinfeld of chemistry received the Sir Harold Thompson Memorial Award. The honor, given for the most significant contribution to spectroscopy each year, recognized an article co-authored by Professor Steinfeld, "Energy Transfer and Inelastic Collisons in Ozone," published in the journal's volume 54.
��������� At this month's national conference for the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, the MIT chapter of SHPEwas selected as the National Chapter of the Year for 1998-99 after earlier winning the organization's regional award. Past awards for the chapter include the National Leadership Development Award and first place in technical paper presentation (both 1997-98).
��������� Paulina S. Kuo, a senior in physics, has been selected to receive the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society's J. Keith Brimacombe Presidential Scholarship for 2000, the organization's most prestigious student award.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on February 16, 2000.
