Marla Berry, assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition, was the 1998 Nutrition Emphasis Week Visiting Professor at the University of Missouri. She recently received a grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for her project, "Mechanism of Selenocysteine Incorporation."

Robin Blatt, adjunct lecturer on maternal and child health, delivered a keynote address at the International Symposium on Genetic Testing in Europe, held in Vienna in October. Her presentation and paper will be published in an upcoming issue of The Journal of BioLaw & Business, of which she is the founding editor.

Joseph D. Brain, Cecil K. and Philip Drinker Professor of Environmental Physiology and chair of the Department of Environmental Health, was appointed director of the Parker B. Francis Pulmonary Fellowship Award Program by the Francis Families Foundation.

Richard Cash, senior lecturer in the Department of Population and International Health, received a $647,285 grant from the NIH to teach short-term courses in research ethics.

Allen Crocker, associate professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health, coauthored the third edition of Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics.

Johanna Dwyer, adjunct professor of maternal and child nutrition, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine last year. She is a member of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Committee and editor of Nutrition Today.

Arnold Epstein, John H. Foster Professor of Health Policy and Management and chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management, was appointed president-elect of the Association of Health Services Research.

Beatriz González-Flecha, assistant professor of molecular biology and environmental health, was awarded the Parker B. Francis Fellowship in Pulmonary Research from the Francis Families Foundation last July.

Steven Gortmaker, senior lecturer on sociology in the Department of Health and Social Behavior, received a $2,941,002, five-year grant from the CDC to fund the Prevention Research Center’s study, "Nutrition and Physical Activity in Children and Youth." His community partners are the City of Boston and the Boston Public Schools.

Sofia Gruskin, lecturer in the Department of Population and International Health and acting director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, coedited Health and Human Rights, A Reader, published by Routledge in February.

David Hemenway, professor of health policy and director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, received grants totaling $1,350,000 from the Joyce Foundation and George Soros’s Open Society Institute for the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. He is also coordinating the Firearm Injury Reporting Center.

Charles J. Homer, assistant professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health, received the 1998 Lynn Haynie Mentorship Award from the division of general pediatrics at Children’s Hospital in Boston and was appointed to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. He also received a grant from Merck & Co. for his research project, "Fostering the Appropriate Diagnosis of Asthma in Young Children."

Howard Hu, associate professor of occupational medicine in the Department of Environmental Health, was awarded the Dannon Prize for Nutritional Research last November.

Nancy Krieger, associate professor of health and social behavior, received a grant from the March of Dimes to investigate societal factors, stress hormones, and preterm birth.

Lucian Leape, adjunct professor of health policy, recently received the Robert Wood Johnson Investigator Award in Health Policy Research.

Mei-Ling Ting Lee, assistant professor in the Department of Biostatistics, is the founding editor and editor in chief of the international journal, Lifetime Data Analysis, which publishes exclusively on the subject of time-to-event data. The journal has published four complete volumes and is abstracted and/or indexed in Index Medicus and on MEDLINE.

Richard Levins, John Rock Professor of Population Sciences, was awarded the Robert H. Ebert lectureship from the Kansas Health Foundation last June and the Twentieth Century Distinguished Service Award for outstanding contributions to the development of statistical ecology, environmental statistics and ecological assessment, and risk assessment. He was the keynote speaker for the New Mexico Public Health Association meeting in April 1999.

John B. Little, James Stevens Simmons Professor of Radiobiology, was awarded the Henry S. Kaplan Distinguished Scientist Award in January by the International Association for Radiation Research. He also received a grant of $787,000 this past November from the U.S. Department of Energy for his study, "Effects of Low Dose Alpha Irradiation in Human Cells: The Role of Induced Genes and the Bystander Effect." In addition, the John B. Little Center for Radiation Sciences and Environmental Health opened this past fall.

Marie C. McCormick, Sumner and Esther Feldberg Professor of Maternal and Child Health and chair of the Department of Maternal and Child Health, coauthored Reducing the Odds: Preventing Perinatal Transmission of HIV in the United States, published by National Academy Press in 1998. She chaired the Institute of Medicine committee that produced the report. McCormick also started the Martha May Eliot Fund, an endowed fund for student support.

Donald Milton, associate professor of occupational and environmental health, received grants from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health for the following studies: a cooperative agreement to identify the incidence of occupational asthma; an intervention study to prevent indoor environmental quality— related absence among office workers; and a study of health and the microbiology of machining fluid. Milton also received a grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for a community-based study of adult-onset asthma.

Eli Newberger, lecturer on maternal and child health, has written The Men They Will Become: The Nature and Nurture of Male Character, to be published this summer by Perseus Books.

Joan Y. Reede, assistant professor in the Depart-ment of Maternal and Child Health, recently received the Edmond Steele Commitment to Excellence Award from the Mattapan Community Health Center; Harvard Medical School’s Dean’s Award for the Support and Advancement of Diversity; and the Greater Boston ymca Black Achievers Award. She was also awarded a grant from the National Center for Research Resources for "Project Success," a minority initiative for K—12 teachers and high school students, and the Commonwealth Fund/Harvard University Fellowship in Minority Health Policy. At the medical school, Reede was appointed associate dean of faculty development and diversity, faculty director for community outreach programs, and president of the biomedical sciences career program.

Louise Ryan, professor of biostatistics, received a grant from the NIH for the Initiative for Minority Student Development.

Meir Stampfer, professor of epidemiology and nutrition, was appointed to the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Committee. He is now the chair of the NIH’s epidemiology and disease control study section.

Norma Swenson, lecturer on maternal and child health, announced the publication of Our Bodies, Ourselves in Chinese at a press conference in Beijing last June. She has coauthored several articles in upcoming publications: "Murray Enkin: Celebration and Tribute" in Birth and "The Global Women’s Health Movement" in The International Women’s Studies Encyclopedia.

Richard Verrier, associate professor in the Depart-ment of Environmental Health, was jointly awarded U.S. patents for "Sleep-Related Cardiovascular Risk: New Home-Based Monitoring Technology for Improved Diagnosis and Therapy" and for "Method and Apparatus for Using Physiologic Stress in Assessing Myocardial Electrical Stability."

Dyann Wirth, professor of tropical public health, received the following grants: $10,000 from Exxon for a database to coordinate information on malarial science and drug discovery world-wide; and $50,000 from Mallinckrodt and $500,000 from the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation to support the Harvard Malaria Initiative. Wirth was also appointed president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

Dieter A. Wolf, assistant professor of toxicology, received a Kresge Center Pilot Award of $11,635 for his study, "Is Human CDC18 an Oncogene?" in December.

Ronghui Lily Xu, assistant professor of biostatistics, received the D. Byar Young Investigator Award from the American Statistical Association in August 1998.