awards

McNerney recognized for teaching

Megan McNerney, PhD’05, MD’07, Associate Professor of Pathology, was one of five recipients of this year’s Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Mentoring.

McNerney says a quest for knowledge

Kidwell honored with paleontology prize

the 2020 Paleontological Society Medal for her contributions to interpreting the older fossil record and advancing conservation paleobiology.

The medal—the most prestigious honor bestowed by the Geological Society of America (GSA)—is awarded to a person whose eminence is based on advancement of knowledge in paleontology. Kidwell was previously honored with GSA’s early career Charles Schuchert Award in 1995.

Kidwell is the William Rainey Harper Professor in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences and a Committee of Evolutionary Biology faculty member. underlies her work in cancer biology— and her teaching.

“My hope is always that by the end of class, students appreciate how little we understand the genome, but how exhilarating it is to study,” she said. “My

Esterhazy named a Pew Scholar

immunological balance in the digestive system, has been selected to join the 2020 class of Pew Scholars in the Biomedical Sciences by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Esterhazy investigates how immune equilibrium is maintained in the digestive system and how imbalances can lead to such disorders as food allergies, inflammatory bowel diseases, autoimmune diseases and cancer. Esterhazy is an assistant professor in the Department of Pathology. She and the 21 other early-career scientists in this year’s class of Pew Scholars will receive four years of funding to pursue breakthroughs that advance human health. approach to teaching, in the classroom or outside, is to foster students’ independent critical thinking skills. It is more Socratic than didactic.”

Students of all levels receive the same attention and encouragement to branch out, according to those who nominated McNerney for the award. They described an inclusive environment in which individual mistakes or failures were never penalized or judged, but calmly and thoroughly examined and worked through.

“She is incredibly skilled at directing the projects in her lab and... goes above and beyond to read and understand our field, and yet she is always willing to take even the most junior students’ ideas into consideration,” one wrote.

Asked for teaching advice for a new professor, McNerney says simply: “Measure your success by the success of those around you.”

Susan Kidwell, PhD, has been awarded

Daria Esterhazy, PhD, who studies

Megan McNerney, PhD’05, MD’07

Golovkina recognized for retrovirology research

Tatyana Golovkina, PhD, Professor in the Department of Microbiology, has been awarded the 2020 KT Jeang Retrovirology Prize for her outstanding contributions to the field. Golovkina’s research focuses not only on how the innate immune system detects a retroviral infection and initiates a neutralizing response, but also how retroviruses evolve new mechanisms to overcome those protective immune responses.

Some of her work laid the groundwork for a new understanding of how the gut microbiome plays a role in viral infections, while other research has identified genetic variants in humans that could potentially contribute to the control or persistence of hepatitis B and C viral infections.