People, Papers, Presentations

Alex Byrd, assistant professor of history, has been awarded two highly competitive fellowships for next year: an ACLS/Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Junior faculty and the Huntington Library Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. Additionally, Byrd has accepted a residency at the Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton for next year.

Jane Chance, professor of English, and Mark Kuras, a Jungian analyst and clinical psychologist, led a daylong seminar titled “The Lord of the Rings: The Quest for Meaning in Our Postmodern World” at the C.G. Jung Foundation, New York City, April 6.

Jason F. Hafner, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, has been awarded one of the 2002 Beckman Young Investigator Awards by The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation. The award is intended to provide research support to the most promising young faculty members in the chemical and life sciences. The award recipients represent 15 institutions across the nation, including California Institute of Technology, Duke, Harvard, UCLA, Columbia, Northwestern and UC–Berkeley.

Randy Hulet, the Fayez Sarofim Professor of Physics and Astronomy, has been awarded an honorary doctorate from Utrecht U. in the Netherlands. During the ceremony at which the honorary doctorate was given to Hulet, his long relation to and close collaboration with Utrecht U. was noted, including: “Truly remarkable about the work of Randy Hulet is that he succeeds with only a relatively small group of collaborators to make very important contributions to the competitive field of atomic quantum gases, in which various large groups around the world are active.”

Pierre Jalbert, assistant professor of composition and theory, Shepherd School of Music, has been awarded a three-week residency with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra by The Composer & the American Symphony Orchestra League as part of its 2002-2003 Music Alive Residencies. Throughout the residency, the length of which has not yet been determined, Jalbert will go to Los Angeles three times a year for performances, rehearsals, school visits, etc. Typically, the residencies run for about three years; Jalbert will write a piece for the orchestra each year.

Thomas Killian, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, has been selected to receive a Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan foundation. The new Sloan Research Fellows were selected from among hundreds of highly qualified scientists in the early stages of their careers on the basis of their exceptional promise to contribute to the advancement of knowledge. Killian, along with 103 other fellows, was chosen from more than 400 nominations.

John Margrave, the E.D. Butcher Professor of Chemistry, has been named an American Institute of Chemists (AIC) 2002 Chemical Pioneer Award winner. Each of the winners of this award “has had a major impact on advances in the chemical sciences, the chemical industry or the chemical profession.” Margrave was cited for his research on fluorine chemistry and the high temperature properties of liquid metals, among other things.

Susan Wood, professor of English, has received the 2002 Best Book of Poetry Award from the Texas Institute of Letters (TIL) for her book of poetry “Asunder” (Penguin 2001). She was presented with the $5,000 award at the TIL awards ceremony in Austin March 23.

Stephen Zeff, the Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Accounting and professor of managerial studies, Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, gave a lecture for the Rotary Club of Houston March 21 with Michael H. Granof, the Ernst & Young Distinguished Centennial Professor of Accounting, UT–Austin, titled “Accounting and Auditing After Enron: Where Do We Go From Here?”

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