Awards & More

Issue Date: 
March 24, 2014

James P. Cassaro, headJames P. Cassaro of Pitt’s Theodore M. Finney Music Library, received the Music Library Association Citation at the association’s recent conference in Atlanta. The award honors lifetime achievement and service to music librarianship. Cassaro also heads up the Frick Fine Arts Library at Pitt and has a secondary appointment as an assistant professor in the Department of Music. A scholar with expertise in 17th century French music, Cassaro has written a number of monographs and articles on subjects ranging from Italian opera to music cataloguing and its future.

Freddie Fu received the Elizabeth Winston Lanier Award for his career contribution to knee-reconstruction surgery and advances in patient care. The honor, given by the Kappa Delta Sorority and the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation, was presented March 12 at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons in New Orleans. The award is considered the Nobel Prize of orthopaedic research and was given to Fu for his work and research on anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL, reconstruction. Fu is the David Silver Professor and Chair of the University of Pittsburgh Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and founder of the UPMC Center for Sports Medicine.

Shanti Gamper-Rabindran, a professor in Pitt’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA), has been selected for the inaugural Bley Stein Visiting Professorship at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, a leading institute in environmental studies and research in the Middle East. Gamper-Rabindran, who also holds a secondary appointment in Pitt’s Department of Economics, is among the lead faculty members spearheading GSPIA’s graduate degrees in the environment and energy and in development and the environment. Arava is located on Kibbutz Ketura in the Arava desert of southern Israel.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Magee-Womens Research Institute have been awarded the Cozzarelli Prize in the biomedical sciences for a July 2013 paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Their research showed that placental cells may have a unique ability to prevent viruses from crossing from an expectant mother to her growing baby—and that the placental cells can transfer that trait to other kinds of cells. Senior authors Yoel Sadovsky and Carolyn Coyne and their research team will be honored at an April 27 ceremony in Washington, D.C., during the National Academy of Sciences Annual Meeting. The annual award is named for the late Nicholas R. Cozzarelli, editor-in-chief of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Sadovsky is the Elsie Hilliard Hillman Chair of Women’s Health Research, professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive medicine, and the Magee-Womens Research Institute director. Coyne is a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Pitt and a Magee-Womens Research Institute member.