People

Spotlight

Name: Marc Weiner.

Position: Project director for the Campus Life in America Student Survey in the Office of Population Research. Running the survey, which examines what college and university administrators can do to maximize the educational benefits of diversity. Collecting study data, including more than 10,000 student interviews so far. Coordinating the principal investigator team, made up of professors at Princeton and five other universities.

Quote: “Directing the CLASS Project has been fascinating. It has involved scores of scholars and administrators at Princeton and the other universities, and engaging with these folks has really made the work a personally enriching experience. The Office of Population Research has been a great help in getting this important effort up and running.”

Other interests: Research and writing on American party politics. Embarking on a home renovation with his partner, Patrick Simon, a 1990 graduate alumnus. Spending time with Hamlet and Rhepp, their two miniature schnauzers.

Briefs

Acting New Jersey Gov. Richard J. Codey has named President Emeritus Harold T. Shapiro the chair of a newly established ethics advisory panel on stem cell research.

Codey announced the appointment during a national symposium on the policy and economic implications of state-sponsored stem cell research held Friday, April 15, on campus. In his address, Codey outlined his vision for awarding and funding stem cell research grants. The ethics advisory panel is intended to ensure that state-funded research will comply with state guidelines.

Shapiro, who served as chair of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission from 1996 to 2001 under President Clinton, is now a professor of economics and public affairs at the University. He was president of Princeton from 1988 to 2001.

“States and Stem Cells: A Symposium on the Policy and Economic Implications of State-Sponsored Stem Cell Research” was sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and its Policy Research Institute for the Region, along with the New York Academy of Sciences.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has selected Vincent Poor to receive its 2005 James Mulligan Jr. Education Medal in honor of his leadership in engineering education.

Poor, who is Princeton’s George Van Ness Lothrop Professor in Engineering, will receive the award at the IEEE annual honors ceremony on June 18 in Chantilly, Va. IEEE cited Poor for his “inspired teaching, a classic textbook, innovative curricular development and research.”

Poor’s undergraduate course, “The Wireless Revolution,” is one of the most popular classes at Princeton and has become a model for connecting political, economic and social dimensions to the technical subject of wireless engineering. In 2002, Poor received the National Science Foundation’s Director’s Award for Distinguished Teaching Scholars.

Poor, who earned a Ph.D. from Princeton in electrical engineering in 1977, also has made major research contributions in signal processing and wireless communications. He has been a member of the Princeton faculty since 1990.

Stephen Chou, Princeton’s Joseph Elgin Professor of Engineering and professor of electrical engineering, has been elected to the New Jersey High-Tech Hall of Fame. He was honored with the other inductees at a ceremony and dinner in Iselin, N.J., on April 21.

The High-Tech Hall of Fame is a joint project of the American Electronics Association, the Biotechnology Council of New Jersey and the Healthcare Institute of New Jersey. It recognizes people who “through their leadership and accomplishments, have made New Jersey one of the premier high-tech states in the nation.”

Chou is widely known for his work in the field of nanotechnology, the creation of molecular-scale structures that have many uses in electronics, communications, biotechnology and materials science. He has invented methods that are many times faster and less expensive than conventional techniques for making ultra-small structures.

The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation has selected Joshua Rabinowitz to receive a 2005 Beckman Young Investigators Award, a program that provides research support to the nation’s most promising young faculty members in the chemical and life sciences.

Rabinowitz, an assistant professor of chemistry and in the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, was among 24 scientists selected for the award. His research project is titled “Toward a Holistic Understanding of Cellular Metabolism.”

Rabinowitz earned a 1999 Ph.D. in biochemistry and a 2001 M.D. from Stanford University and went on to help start and run a biotechnology company aimed at improving the performance of existing drugs through better delivery systems. He joined the Princeton faculty in 2004.