Nanotechnology Now - Press Release: Prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships awarded to four U of M faculty members

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Abstract:
Four University of Minnesota faculty members -- three from the College of Liberal Arts (CLA) and one from the Institute of Technology -- have received 2007 Guggenheim Fellowships in the 83rd annual U.S. and Canadian competition sponsored by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. This is the most Guggenheim Fellowships awarded to university faculty since 1982.

Prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships awarded to four U of M faculty members

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL, MN | Posted on April 6th, 2007

"I warmly congratulate each of the four faculty members who received 2007 Guggenheim Fellowships," said Provost Thomas Sullivan. "This sharp increase in Guggenheim Fellowships is a clear demonstration of how we are receiving ever greater national recognition for the achievements of our extraordinary faculty. The breadth of disciplines represented is yet another reminder of the university's academic strengths across a number of fields. This year's recipients join a highly distinguished group of University of Minnesota faculty to have been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship."

The 2007 Guggenheim fellows from the university's College of Liberal Arts are Daphne Berdahl, professor in Anthropology; Hisham Bizri, assistant professor in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature; and David Treuer, associate professor in English. The Guggenheim fellow from the Institute of Technology is Peter McMurray, professor of mechanical engineering. The four received funding based on distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.

"This is an extraordinary accomplishment for these three outstanding College of Liberal Arts faculty members," said Steven Rosenstone. "Their creative work, their research, and their teaching are extraordinary, and the college is immensely proud of them. They are perfect examples of the wonderful faculty we have in CLA people who, every day, teach and mentor our students."

Daphne Berdahl is associate professor in the departments of Anthropology and Global Studies in CLA. She is author of "Where the World Ended: Re-Unification and Identity in the German Borderland" and co-editor of "Altering States: Ethnographies of Transition in East Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union." She is currently completing her second book on the politics of memory in the former German Democratic Republic. In addition, she is working on a project focusing on the relationship between mass consumption, globalization and changing practices of citizenship in post-Berlin Wall Germany.

Hisham Bizri is a practicing filmmaker from Lebanon and an assistant professor in CLA's Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature. Professor Bizri is founding director of the U of M Institute for Advanced Study Film Collective and in 2006 presented a first-of-its-kind symposium on film and culture in the Arab world. He is also the co-founder of the Arab Institute of Film in Amman, Jordan. Bizri's films have been shown internationally including the Louvre, Cairo Opera House, Biennale des Cinema Arabes (Paris), Milan Film Festival (Italy), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris), Harvard Film Archives (Cambridge), Museum of Modern Art (New York) and Cinematheque Francaise (Paris).

David Treuer is an associate professor in CLA's Department of English. He teaches Native American literature, the modernist novel, Nabokov and Proust, and he is the translator or many Ojibwe stories and texts. He is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Canada, a Pushcart Prize, the 1996 Minnesota Book Award and was a finalist for the Pen West prize in 1999. He has held a Bush Artists Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Humanities Documenting Endangered Languages Fellowship and a U of M McKnight Land-Grant Professorship.

Treuer is Ojibwe from Leech Lake Reservation in Northern Minnesota. His latest novel, "The Translation of Dr Apelles," was named a "Best Book of 2006" by the Washington Post, Minneapolis Star Tribune, City Pages and Time Out.

Peter McMurry is a professor in the Institute of Technology's Department of Mechanical Engineering where he also currently serves as department head. His Guggenheim Fellowship will support his research on new particle formation and growth rates in the atmosphere. The formation of new particles by photochemical processes affects particle concentrations. Because particles serve as seeds for the formation of cloud droplets, new particle formation also affects cloud cover and therefore needs to be understood by global climate modelers.

McMurry will spend fall semester at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., where he will work collaboratively with other researchers to measure for the first time the complete spectrum of nanoparticles in a nucleating system, from condensable molecules to molecular clusters and larger nanoparticles. These measurements will enable researchers to identify the species that participate in atmospheric new particle formation as well as the rates of reactions that lead to nanoparticle formation and growth.

McMurry will spend spring semester at the University of Helsinki where researchers will merge data collected around the globe on atmospheric new particle formation and growth.

"Professor McMurry is recognized as one of the world's leading researchers on aerosol science," said Institute of Technology Dean Steven Crouch. "We are pleased that this new honor will provide additional opportunities for him continue his important work."

The 2007 fellowship winners include 189 artists, scholars and scientists selected from nearly 2,800 applicants for awards totaling $7.6 million. Decisions are based on recommendations from hundreds of expert advisors and are approved by the Guggenheim Foundation's board of trustees. What distinguishes the Guggenheim Fellowship program from all others is the wide range in interest, age, geography and institution of those it selects as it considers applications in 78 different fields, from the natural sciences to the creative arts. The new Fellows include writers, playwrights, painters, sculptors, photographers, film makers, choreographers, physical and biological scientists, social scientists, and scholars in the humanities. A list of current and past U of M Guggenheim recipients is available at: http://www.academic.umn.edu/provost/awards/national_intl/Guggenheim.html.

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Mr. and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died April 26, 1922. The organization awards Guggenheim Fellowships to professionals who have demonstrated exceptional ability by publishing a significant body of work in the fields of natural sciences, social sciences, humanities and the creative arts, excluding the performing arts.

High resolution images of the professors are available at:

http://www1.umn.edu/urelate/newsservice/downloads/treuer-lg.jpg

http://www1.umn.edu/urelate/newsservice/downloads/berdahl-lg.jpg

http://www1.umn.edu/urelate/newsservice/downloads/bizri-lg.jpg

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About University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota is one of the most comprehensive public universities in the United States and ranks among the most prestigious. It is both the state land-grant university, with a strong tradition of education and public service, and the state's primary research university, with faculty of national and international reputation.

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Contacts:
Daniel Wolter
University News Service
(612) 625-8510

Sue Banovetz
College of Liberal Arts
(612) 624-1359

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