2016-2017 Awards

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH, Professor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts and Science and Law in the School of Law, was named one of the leading 100 visionaries of our time by the Albert Einstein Legacy Project. He was also made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

NED BLOCK, Silver Professor of Philosophy, Psychology, and Neural Science, received the SINe medal from the Italian Society for Neuroethics.

KATHLEEN GERSON, Professor of Sociology and Collegiate Professor, received the Distinguished Scholar Award, the American Sociological Association section's highest honor.

JESSICA GREEN, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Science, received the 2017 Emerging Young Scholar Award from the American Political Science Association.

Two NYU faculty received Tony Award nominations:

• SUSAN HILFERTY, Arts Professor and Chair of the Department of Design for Stage & Film at Tisch School of the Arts, was nominated for Best Costume Design of a Play for Present Laughter.
• LUCAS HNATH, Adjunct Instructor of Dramatic Writing at Tisch, was nominated for Best Play for A Doll's House, Part 2.

EERO SIMONCELLI, Silver Professor of Neural Science, was awarded the Minerva Foundation's 2016 Golden Brain Award, for his seminal contributions to the field of visual neuroscience. In December, he won the IEEE Sustained Impact Paper Award for "Image Quality Assessment: From Error Visibility to Structural Similarity," on which he was a co-author.

JENNY XIE, Language Lecturer in the Expository Writing Program, won the 2017 Walt Whitman Award, the nation’s most valuable first-book prize for a poet.

RICHARD SIEBURTH, Professor of French and Comparative Literature, has won an Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

JENNIFER HILL, Professor of Applied Statistics & Data Science at the Center for Data Science, and MARC SCOTT, Professor of Applied Statistics at Steinhardt, were awarded the Miller Prize, given by the American Political Science Association, for their co-authored paper, "Bias Amplification and Bias Unmasking."

KATHLEEN ZIOL-GUEST, Research Associate Professor at Steinhardt, was selected to the Jacobs Foundation Marbach Castle Residence Program for August 2017, a competitive fellowship program for researchers in child and youth development.

MAJA DJUKIC, Assistant Professor in the Rory Meyers College of Nursing, is the recipient of an educational change award for 2017 from the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation. Djukic is the first ever Macy Faculty Scholars Program Award recipient from NYU Meyers. 

TOM SUGRUE, Professor of History and Social & Cultural Analysis was elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

JUSTIN WARNER, Language Lecturer in the Expository Writing Program, was awarded the HBMG Foundation Playwrights Residency. 

DAVID OSHINSKY, Professor of History and Medicine, was awarded a New York City Book Award for his book, Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine & Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital. 

Two faculty members at NYU were awarded "Genius" Grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation:

• SUBHASH KHOT, Silver Professor of Computer Science in the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
• JULIA WOLFE, Music Associate Professor of Music Composition in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development
  

PAUL ROMER, University Professor and Professor of Economics, was appointed Chief Economist of the World Bank.

KURT BECKER, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Vice Dean for Research, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship in the Tandon School of Engineering, has been named to the Board of Directors of the National Academy of Inventors.

PAMELA NEWKIRK, Professor at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, was awarded the Hurston Wright Legacy Award in non-fiction for her book Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga.

FAYE GINSBURG, David B. Kriser Professor of Anthropology, was awarded the Distinguished Service Award 2016 for her work on the Margaret Mead Film Festival.

STEPHEN SCHIFFER, Silver Professor of Philosophy, has had a festschrift published in his honor, titled Meanings and Other Things.

MICHAEL STREVENS, Professor of Philosophy and Bioethics, has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. KIRSTEN JOHNSON, adjunct faculty at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, was also named a Guggenheim Fellow.

LEIF WEATHERBY, Assistant Professor of German), was invited as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow.

CHARLES SEIFE, Professor of Journalism, was named a finalist for a 2017 Mirror Award for his article How to Spin the Science News. 

ROBERT J.C. YOUNG, Silver Professor of English and Dean of Arts & Humanities at NYU Abu Dhabi, received the South Asian Literacy Association's Distinguished Achievement Award for Outstanding Scholarship.

ALEXANDRA ZIDOVSKA, Assistant Professor of Physics, received a 2016 Whitehead Fellowship and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

ZEB TORTORICI, Assistant Professor of Spanish & Portuguese, received a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies.

JOEL SPENCER, Silver Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics, and Visiting Professor JEAN TAYLOR, both in the Courant Institute of Mathematics, were named 2017 Fellows for the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

CHIARA MARCHELLI, Senior Language Lecturer of Italian has been nominated for the Premio Strega, the top literary book prize in Italy for her novel Le notti blu (Blue Nights).

MARK SANDERS, Professor of Comparative Literature, has been nominated for the Alan Paton Award for nonfiction from The Sunday Times for his book Learning Zulu: A Secret History of Language in South Africa, in association with Porcupine Ridge.

EMILY APTER, Professor of French and Comparative Literature, was inducted President of the American Comparative Literature Association.  

MIKE O'NEIL, Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the Courant Institute and Tandon, has won the 2017 Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research in the U.S. Department of the Navy.

MELANIE SANCHEZ, Field Instructor at the Silver School of Social Work, has been given a Leadership Award by the Latino Social Work Coalition and Scholarship Fund.

JOEL SPENCER, Silver Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Courant Institute, has been named one of 28 new fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

VASANT DHAR, Professor of Information Systems at Stern and Director of Graduate Studies at the Center for Data Science, has been named to eFinancialCareers' list of the top 20 data scientists in banking and finance.

STEPHEN GROSS, Assistant Professor of History and European & Mediterranean Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Science, was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow and an Andrew W. Mellon New Directions Fellow. He will use his award to explore the history of Germany’s transition toward renewable energies.

Four NYU faculty have been awarded fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation:

• JAYEETA BASU, Assistant Professor in the Neuroscience Institute at the School of Medicine
• JOHANNES STROEBEL, Associate Professor at the Stern School of Business
• NICOLAS TRITSCH, Assistant Professor in the Neuroscience Institute at the School of Medicine
• DANIEL TURNER, Assistant Professor of Chemistry
  

ANNA DEAVERE SMITH, Professor of Art and Public Policy at the Tisch School of the Arts and an affiliated professor at the School of Law, was named this year’s winner of the George Polk Career Award in Journalism. She is the first recipient of the award who has not engaged in traditional journalism.

Six faculty were awarded NYU's 2016-2017 Distinguished Teaching Award:

• ELENA P. CUNNINGHAM, Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Basic Science and Craniofacial Biology, College of Dentistry
• BENARD P. DREYER, Professor, Director of Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics, Tisch Hospital; Director of Pediatrics, Bellevue Hospital Center, NYU School of Medicine
• GREGORY ERICKSON, Clinical Associate Professor, Gallatin School of Individualized Study
• JOHN J. GERSHMAN, Clinical Professor of Public Service, Co-Director of Capstone Program, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
• JOHN HALPIN, Professor of Chemistry, Faculty of Arts and Science
• HEIDI E. WHITE, Clinical Professor of Humanities, Liberal Studies

MELEKO MOKGOSI, Assistant Professor of Practice at the Gallatin School, received the 2017 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Fine Arts.

YANN LECUN, Silver Professor of Computer Science at the Courant Institute, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

ELZA ERKIP, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Tandon, has received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Women in Communications Engineering Award.

WAFAA BILAL, Associate Arts Professor at Tisch School of the Arts, has been named one of Foreign Policy magazine’s Leading 100 Global Thinkers of 2016 for his work as an advocate in international politics. 

XI CHEN, Assistant Professor of Information, Operations and Management Sciences at the Stern School, has been named to Forbes’ 2017 “30 Under 30 in Science” list, which recognizes leading change-makers and innovators across the US. 

MASA HOSAIN AZIZ, Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Program in International Relations, has received the 2017 Peace Award from the Institute of Peace and Development for her comic book The Global Kid.

FRANK LOMBARDI, Adjunct Professor of Civil and Urban Engineering at Tandon, has won the 2017 Moles Member Award for Outstanding Achievement in Construction.

ARUN SUNDARARAJAN, Professor of Information, Operations, and Management Sciences at Stern, won the 2017 Axiom Business Book Award in the "Economics" category for his book, The Sharing Economy.

JOHANNES STROEBEL, Associate Professor of Finance at Stern, has been awarded first place in the American Finance Association’s Brattle Group Prize, which recognizes the top corporate finance paper published in the Journal of Finance, for his paper “Asymmetric Information about Collateral Values.” 

YONG LIU, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Tandon, has been named a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.  

A study by Wagner’s SEWIN CHAN, Associate Professor of Public Policy, INGRID GOULD ELLEN, the Paulette Goddard Professor of Urban Policy and Planning, and SAMUEL DASTROP, Postdoctorate Fellow at the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, has been named Best Paper of 2016 by the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.  

MINAH JUNG, Assistant Professor of Marketing, has received the Society for Judgment and Decision Making’s Hillel Einhorn New Investigator Award for the best paper by a new researcher, for her co-authored study, “Anchoring in Payment: Evaluating a Judgmental Heuristic in Field Experimental Settings.”

MICHELE GERACI, Adjunct Professor of Finance at NYU Shanghai, has been awarded the title of Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy, one of Italy’s highest honors.

Tandon-based nonprofit Tech Kids Unlimited, founded by adjunct faculty member BETH ROSENBERG, won Google's RISE Award, which will fund an initiative to provide teens with autism spectrum disorder to undertake commissioned projects such as websites and apps for real clients. TKU includes faculty and students from Tisch, Steinhardt, and Tandon, and is part of NYU’s Ability Project.

Four NYU faculty members won or were nominated for 2017 Grammy Awards:

• JOHN SCOFIELD, adjunct instructor in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, won Best Instrumental Jazz Album for his album Country For Old Men and Best Improvised Jazz Solo for “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry."
• KEVIN KILLEN, adjunct professor at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at Tisch School of the Arts, won in the category of Best Engineered Album for his work on David Bowie’s final album, Blackstar.
• ALAN FERBER, adjunct instructor at Steinhardt, was nominated for Best Instrumental Composition for “Flow” off of his latest album Roots & Transitions.
• ALAN BROADBENT, adjunct instructor at Steinhardt, was nominated in the category of Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals for “I'm a Fool to Want You,” recorded by Kristin Chenoweth.

JOSEPH LEDOUX, Professor of Neural Science, has won the William James Award, an annual book prize given by Division One of the American Psychological Association, for his work Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety. He shares the honor with Pitzer College Psychology Professor David Moore. LeDoux also was awarded the 2016 International Jean-Marie Delwart Foundation Prize.

JAMES MCBRIDE, Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, has been named one of 12 recipients of the 2015 National Humanities Medal. He was recognized for “humanizing the complexities of discussing race in America.”

GRÁINNE DE BÚRCA, the Florence Ellinwood Allen Professor of Law and faculty director of the Hauser Global Law School Program, has been named a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, the UK’s national body for the humanities and social sciences.  

BRYAN STEVENSON, Professor of Clinical Law at the School of Law, has won two recent awards: the National Civil Rights Museum’s Freedom Award and the American Bar Association’s Thurgood Marshall Award, which recognizes dedication to the advancement of civil rights, civil liberties, and human rights in the US. He was also elected to the American Law Institute in January. He was also named one of Fortune's World's Greatest Leaders.

Two members of the Silver School of Social Work community were recently honored by the Council on Social Work Education:

• TRUDY FESTINGER, Associate Dean for Research, received the Career Achievement in Child Welfare Award. 
• VICTORIA STANHOPE, Associate Professor of Social Work, was honored for her outstanding mentorship through the Council’s Mentor Recognition Program.

PEPE KARMEL, Associate Professor of Art History at FAS, has been named a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.

JULIA KOHN, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Public Service at Wagner, has been named one of “120 Under 40: The New Generation of Family Planning Leaders” by the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

JON FREEMAN, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at FAS, has received the International Social Cognition Network’s Early Career Award and a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Development CAREER Award.

CHARLES SEIFE, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, has won the “Most Beautiful” award from the Kantar Information Is Beautiful Awards, which celebrate excellence and beauty in data visualizations, infographics, and information art, with his co-author Peter Aldhous.  

JANET VAN CLEAVE, Assistant Professor at the Rory Meyers College of Nursing, received the 2017 NRS/Nursing Research Authorship Award.

SHERIL ANTONIO, Associate Arts Professor and Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives at Tisch, has been honored with the Award for Special Achievement in Educating New Filmmakers, given by the Caucus for Producers, Writers, & Directors.  

CLAUDE DESPLAN, Silver Professor of Biology, has been awarded the 2016 Prix Charles Léopold Mayer by the French Academy of Sciences and the Institut de France. The prize recognizes researchers who have performed outstanding work in the biological sciences, especially in the areas of cell or molecular biology.  

Three FAS professors were recently honored by the American Chemical Society (ACS):

• SUSE BROYDE, Professor of Biology, and NICHOLAS GEACINTOV, Professor of Chemistry, have received the ACS Division of Toxicology’s Founders’ Award. One of Broyde's articles was selected as an American Chemical Society Editors Choice and will be featured on the cover of the June issue of Chemical Research in Toxicology.
  
• LARA MAHAL, Associate Professor of Chemistry, has been named winner of the ACS Division of Carbohydrate Chemistry’s Horace S. Isbell Award.

J. MARTIN DAUGHTRY, Associate Professor of Music with affiliated appointments in the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies and at NYU Abu Dhabi, has received the Association of American Publishers’ PROSE Award for best volume in music and the performing arts. He also received the Alan Merriam Prize, regarded as the most prestigious award in the field of ethnomusicology, for his 2015 book, Listening to War: Sound, Music, Trauma, and Survival in Wartime Iraq.

PETER HENRY, Dean of the Stern School of Business and a native of Jamaica, has been named to the Carnegie Corporation’s 2016 list of “Great Immigrants: The Pride of America,” which recognizes naturalized citizens who have made notable contributions to the progress of American society.  

ROOZBEH KIANI, Assistant Professor of Neural Science and Psychology at the Center for Neural Science, is one of six recipients of the 2016 McKnight Scholar Awards, granted to young scientists who are in the early stages of establishing their own laboratories and research careers and who have demonstrated a commitment to neuroscience.  

KENJI YOSHINO, the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at the School of Law, has been honored by the American Bar Association with the 2016 Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts for his book Speak Now: Marriage Equality on Trial.

MARION NESTLE, the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition and Food Studies at Steinhardt, has won the James Beard Foundation’s Book Award for Writing and Literature for her book Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning). She also received the City and State Reports Corporate Social Responsibility CSR 100 award for food policy. 

ANTHONY BERTELLI, Professor of the Politics of Public Policy at Wagner, and J. ANDREW SINCLAIR, Clinical Assistant Professor of Public Service at Wagner, have received the Haldane Prize for the best article published in Public Administration in 2015, for “Media Attention and the Demise of Agency Independence: Evidence from a Mass Administrative Reorganization in Britain.”