Milestones

Appointed
At its October meeting, the Board of Regents approved the appointment of Richard S. Eisenstein to the Elmer Martin Billings and Jean Hood Billings-Bascom Professorship in Nutrition.

Honored
Stephen Born, chair of urban and regional planning, received Trout Unlimited’s first annual Ray Mortensen Award for Outstanding Volunteer Leadership. Among other volunteer positions, Born chairs TU’s National Resource Board, which influences TU’s national conservation agenda.

Ann Burgess, director of the Biology Core Curriculum, and Fred Fenster, professor of art, have received the 1999 Alliant Energy/Wisconsin Power and Light Underkofler Awards for Teaching Excellence. Burgess tries to involve students in the process of science and the complexities of real problems so “students can integrate ideas into their own intellectual frameworks.” Organization in his studio is key, according to Fenster, a master artist and artisan who has guided hundreds of students through metalworking for nearly 40 years at UW–Madison.

The chemistry department and the Theoretical Chemistry Institute awarded the Joseph O. Hirschfelder Prize in Theoretical Chemistry to Joshua Jortner, a physical chemist from Tel Aviv University in Israel. The author of more than 600 scientific papers, Jortner has worked on core areas of theoretical chemistry including spectroscopy, relaxation and energy transfer in isolated molecules, among others. The award carries a $10,000 stipend. Jortner will spend a week on UW–Madison’s campus starting Monday, Nov. 1. He will give three lectures for students, staff and faculty: “On Dynamics – From Large Molecules to Biomolecules,” 4 p.m. Monday, Nov. 1, in room 1361 Chemistry; “Size Effects in Molecular Clusters,” 11 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 2, room B371 Chemistry; and “Charge Transfer in Chemistry and Biophysics,” 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 3, in room 8335 Chemistry.

Ken Ebbe, director of systems engineering in the Division of Information Technology, was elected in August to the board of directors of SHARE Inc., a leading independent user group of IBM hardware, software, and technology.

Bernard C. Easterday, dean and professor emeritus of veterinary medicine, received a Distinguished Alumni Award from his alma mater, Michigan State University, in September. He served as the first dean of the UW School of Veterinary Medicine from 1979 to 1994. Known for his pioneering research in animal and bird influenza viruses, Easterday is compiling a history of the school.

Charles Luce, retired chief executive officer of Consolidated Edison and a 1941 graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School, received the School’s 1999 Distinguished Service Award in a ceremony this month. A native of Platteville, he served as undersecretary of the Department of the Interior from 1966 to 1967, before joining ConEd in New York. Luce is the 56th person to receive the Distinguished Service Award, recognizing an “outstanding contribution to the legal profession in practice, government service or on the UW Law faculty.”

William Sugden, professor of oncology, has received an American Cancer Society Research Professorship award. The five-year award, which is renewable for another five years, carries a $400,000 grant, which will help support his research group’s efforts in studying the contributions of Epstein-Barr Virus to certain human cancers.