Appointments, honors and activities

• Faculty and staff honors:

- Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth, professor of Human Development and Family Studies and director of the Military Family Research Institute (MFRI) at Purdue, has been appointed to serve on a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine committee that focuses on military families’ well-being. MacDermid Wadsworth, who received Purdue’s Morrill Award for outstanding career achievements with impact on society, researches the relationships between work conditions and family life, especially among military and veteran families. As a member of the Committee on the Well-Being of Military Families, MacDermid Wadsworth will work with colleagues across the nation to address what can be learned from positive experiences military families have, how the challenges presented by military life may affect children’s development, the mechanisms by which resilience can be fostered in military children and families and what is needed to strengthen the support system for military families. More information about MacDermid Wadsworth’s appointment can be found here.

- Wendy Kline, the Dema G. Seelye Chair in the History of Medicine, has received the Purdue Policy Research Institute’s 2018 Excellence in Research Award, which recognizes her research achievements and agenda for scholarship in the history of medicine.

- The Purdue chapter of Sigma Xi, the scientific research honor society for scientists and engineers, announced the winners of the Research Award and Mid-Career Research Award at its annual banquet on April 11. Stephen Konieczny, professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, received the Research Award, and Jennifer L. Freeman, associate professor in the School of Health Sciences, received the Mid-Career Research Award. The banquet also included a presentation by Shirley Rietdyk, professor in the Department of Health and Kinesiology, on “Falls Across the Adult Lifespan: Humans are Surprisingly Bad at Walking,” and winners of the Sigma Xi Poster Competition for graduate students and postdocs were featured.

• Notables:

                  - Greg Frederickson, professor emeritus in Purdue’s College of Science’s Department of Computer Science, has written his fourth book. “Ernest Irving Freese’s Geometric Transformations: The Man, the Manuscript, the Magnificent Dissections!” has been published by World Scientific. The book introduces Freese and his creations to math enthusiasts. Frederickson also includes more than 200 illustrations improving upon Freese’s work. Freese was an architect in Los Angeles who, before his death in 1957, completed a 200-page manuscript on geometric dissection. Frederickson has been a professor at Purdue since 1982. The 432-page book costs $38 in soft cover, and the e-book is $30. More information is available at https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/10460 or https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/gnf/book4.html.

Photo: https://www.purdue.edu/uns/images/2018/frederickson-book.jpg

• Alumni honors:

- Larry Cole, an alumnus of the Krannert School of Management, will be one of two honorary captains at the 2018 Boston Marathon. Cole was an active duty member of the Army for four years before receiving a master’s degree in 1964 and a doctoral degree in 1969 at Purdue University. During this year’s marathon, Cole will represent one of two military teams participating in the 100th commemorative relay recognizing America’s role in World War I. More information can be found at http://www.baa.org/races/boston-marathon/event-information/year-of-service/larry-cole.aspx.

- Purdue chemical engineering alumnus Jeff Lievense (Ph.D. '84) was selected to receive the prestigious Raphael Katzen Award by the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology. The award celebrates distinguished contributions in the commercialization of biotechnology to make fuels and chemicals from renewable resources. Lievense is Genomatica’s senior advisor to the CEO, bioengineering and technology, and received the Davidson School of Chemical Engineering Outstanding Chemical Engineer Award in 2014. More information is available at https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/04/03/1459266/0/en/Genomatica-s-Jeff-Lievense-Honored-with-Raphael-Katzen-Award.html.