Notables

“John-John,” a new aria by playwright Carter W. Lewis and composer Kamala Sankaram, debuted recently as part of “November 21, 1963: The Day Before,” a multidisciplinary event marking the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

Religion & Politics, the online news journal of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, won the Gerald A. Renner Enterprise Religion Report of the Year Award at the Religion Newswriters Association’s annual awards ceremony in Austin, Texas.

Christopher Gill, PhD, has received a four-year, $398,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to promote the improved safety of cyber-physical systems such as cars and planes.

Roberto Civitelli, MD, the Sydney M. and Stella H. Schoenberg Professor of Medicine, has been elected president of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR), the world’s leading scientific organization for bone health research.

Timothy J. Eberlein, MD, the William K. Bixby Professor of Surgery and chairman of the Department of Surgery at the School of Medicine, was inducted last month as an honorary fellow into the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, one of the world’s oldest organizations dedicated to advances in surgery.

Four staff members received the 2012-13 Arts & Sciences Outstanding Staff Award from Barbara S. Schaal, PhD, dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences and the Mary-Dell Chilton Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biology. Schaal also presented the Dean’s Award to Ann B. Prenatt, vice chancellor for human resources, for her support, service and commitment to Arts & Sciences.

Carey-Ann Burnham, PhD, assistant professor of pathology and immunology and of pediatrics, has been awarded the American Society for Microbiology/Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics Young Investigator Award.

The Brown School’s Rebecca Gernes has been chosen as the only student among eight academic partners selected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the 2013-14 school year. Gernes, a native of Des Moines, Ia., is studying the relationship between air pollution and asthma in East St. Louis, Ill., and its surrounding areas – including the city of St. Louis.

Carol Camp Yeakey, PhD, founding director of the interdisciplinary program in Urban Studies and of the Center on Urban Research and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis, is one of 23 scholars selected as 2013 fellows by the American Educational Research Association.

Fuzhong Zhang, PhD, assistant professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering, has received a Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense. He is the first faculty member at Washington University in St. Louis to receive the award, which recognizes an elite group of scientists early in their careers at research universities.