Three MIT faculty members have received Guggenheim Fellowships for 2005: Drazen Prelec, a professor in the Sloan School of Management; Madhu Sudan, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; and Santosh Srinivas Vempala, an associate professor of mathematics. The three are among 186 artists, scholars and scientists selected for this year's awards out of more than 3,000 applicants to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. A total of $7,112,000 will be awarded to this year's fellows. Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.
The Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California has announced that Charles M. Vest, former president of MIT, will present the Clark Kerr Lectures on the role of higher education in society. The lecture series was established in 2001 in honor of Clark Kerr, chief architect of California's master plan for higher education, who died in 2003.
In two programs at Berkeley and one at U.C. Santa Barbara, Vest will talk about the dynamics of federal science and technology policymaking, and the role of three distinct constituents: the public, government and industry. CSHE Director Judson King said that Vest "possesses unique insight, due to his combined public and private university backgrounds, and is an articulate and highly effective spokesperson for higher education."
MIT is this year's co-recipient of the American Chemical Society's Division of Chemical Health and Safety 2005 College/University Award. This award was established by the American Chemical Society to recognize a college or university that has an outstanding and comprehensive laboratory health and safety program (undergraduate study only). Sharing the award with MIT is the University of Nevada at Reno. This is the second time that MIT has received this award. In 1991, MIT's Department of Chemistry was the award recipient. This August, Lou Diberardinis, director of the Environment, Health and Safety Office, will accept the award on behalf of the Institute at the American Chemical Society meeting in Washington, D.C.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on April 13, 2005 (download PDF).
