Pitt Chronicle

Swanson School Sweep: Lifetime Achievement Award for Holder, $5,000 George Washington Prize for Gordon



Two of Pitt’s most visible engineers—one an established authority, the other an up-and-coming graduate student—were among the region’s foremost engineers recognized by the Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsylvania (ESWP) during its 124th Annual Banquet Feb. 20 at Heinz Field.

Gerald D. Holder, the U. S. Steel Dean of Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, received the ESWP’s signature 2008 William Metcalf Award for lifetime achievement in engineering. Pitt engineering graduate student and 2007 Barry M. Goldwater Scholar Benjamin Gordon received the inaugural George Washington Prize, a $5,000 award to be presented annually to a promising Pitt engineering senior to help further that student’s engineering education.

Slash-and-burn agriculture in Vietnam, switching to more energy-efficient light bulbs in the United States—both of these impact the climate and contribute to a patchwork quilt that constitutes the global picture. To address the situation, the University of Pittsburgh is hosting “Beyond Global Warming,” an international conference encompassing presentations by those in the sciences and the arts, on Feb. 28.

James F. Holland, a leading authority on medical oncology and cancer biology who is investigating a viral cause of human breast cancer, will deliver the 2008 Bernard Fisher Lecture at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine on Feb. 27.

When many children his age were playing with toy tractors, William Simmons was driving real ones on his grandfather’s farm in rural South Carolina. His grandfather was one of the largest Black landowners in Charleston County, S.C., and he farmed semicommercially from the 1940s through the ‘60s.

Today, Simmons is a University of Pittsburgh visiting clinical associate professor and an attending anesthesiologist at UPMC Shadyside. He received a bachelor’s degree in biology from Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., and a medical degree from the Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minn. He also was among the first Black chief residents in Georgetown University Hospital’s pediatric residency program.