Faculty Honors and Awards | 2007-2009 

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2009



The French Republic named Suzanne Berger, Raphael Dorman and Helen Starbuck Professor of Political Science, Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur for her research and efforts to strengthen ties between MIT and French researchers.

Vivek Bald, Assistant Professor of Writing and Digital Media, received the New York University Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship.

Ricardo Caballero, Ford International Professor of Economics and Department Head, along with Takeo Hoshi, and Anil K. Kashyap, received an Emerald Management Reviews Citation of Excellence from the American Economic Review for “Zombie Lending and Depressed Restructuring in Japan." In its thirteenth year, these distinguished awards recognize the 50 outstanding articles published by the top 400 management journals in the world.
 

Michael Scott Cuthbert, Assistant Professor of Music, was awarded a $100,000 grant from the Seaver Institute for his research project "music21: a Computer-aided Framework for Musical Analysis." The project will produce a set of tools for sophisticated musical and statistical analysis.
 

Esther Duflo, Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics, received the Inaugural Calvó-Armengol Prize. Established in the memory of Prof. Antoni Calvó-Armengol, the Calvó-Armengol Prize is awarded biannually to an economist/social scientist under the age of 40 for his or her contributions to the understanding of social structure and its implications for economic interactions and recognizes exceptional achievement in research.
 

Professor of Economics and MacVicar Faculty Fellow Jonathan Gruber has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 
 

David Jones, Associate Professor of the History and Culture of Science and Technology, was awarded the MacVicar Faculty Fellowship. The MacVicar Faculty Fellows Program was named to honor the life and contributions of Margaret MacVicar, Professor of Physical Science and Dean for Undergraduate Education at the time of her death in 1991.
 

Paul Joskow, Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics and Management, received the 2009 USAEE Adelman-Frankel Award for “Unique and Innovating Contributions to the Field of Energy Economics" from the United States Association for Energy Economics.
 

Guido Lorenzoni, Pentti J.K. Kouri Career Development Assistant Professor of Economics, received a 2009 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. It is awarded yearly to early-career scientists and scholars who show unique potential to make substantial contributions to their field.
 

Anne McCants, MacVicar Faculty Fellow, Professor of History and Section Head, received the Elizabeth Topham Kennan Award, given periodically to an outstanding alumna educator. The award honors the service given to the College, and to education in general, by former Mount Holyoke president Elizabeth Topham Kennan. Only the third recipient since the award's inception in 1995, Professor McCants received Kennan Award on the occasion of her 25th reunion at Mount Holyoke College.
 

Shigeru Miyagawa, Kochi Prefecture - John Manjiro Professor of Japanese Language and Culture and Section Head, was awarded the Franklin R. Buchanan Prize from the Association for Asian Studies for his project Visualizing Cultures. The Franklin R. Buchanan Prize was established in 1995 by the AAS Committee on Educational Issues and Policy and the Committee on Teaching about Asia and is awarded annually to recognize an outstanding curriculum publication on Asia designed for any educational level, elementary through university.
 

Heather Paxson, Associate Professor of Anthropology, is the first recipient of the Belasco Prize for Scholarly Excellence from the Association for the Study of Food and Society, for "Post-Pasteurian Cultures: The Microbiopolitics of Raw-Milk Cheese in the United States," published in Cultural Anthropology 23(1):15-47. The prize recognizes a peer-reviewed article that exhibits superior research, a unique perspective and methodological approach, and novel insights for the study of food.

 

Jim Poterba, Mitsui Professor of Economics and President of the National Bureau of Economic Research, took office as President of the National Tax Association in November 2008 and was also elected Vice-President of the American Economics Association beginning in January 2009.
 

Agustin Rayo, Associate Professor of Philosophy, was awarded the Burkhardt Residential Fellowship. The Fellowship supports recently tenured scholars in the humanities and social sciences in the crucial years immediately following the granting of tenure, and provide potential leaders in their fields with the resources to pursue long-term, unusually ambitious projects.
 

Susan Silbey, Professor of Anthropology, received the 2009 Harry J. Kalven Jr. Prize from the Law and Society Association. The award is given in recognition of a body of scholarly work, and goes to individuals who have demonstrated empirical scholarship that has contributed most effectively to the advancement of research in law and society.
 

The Organization of American Historians named Merritt Roe Smith, Leverett Howell and William King Cutten Professor of the History of Technology, a Distinguished Lecturer. The OAH Distinguished Lectureship Program features more than three hundred and fifty historians who have made major contributions to the study of American history.
 

Marcus Thompson, Robert R. Taylor Professor of Music, was named the new Artistic Director for the Boston Chamber Music Society to begin in the 2009-2010 season.
 

Jing Wang, S C Fang Professor of Chinese Language & Culture, received a two-year grant (2009-2011) from the Ford Foundation in Beijing for “Chinese NGOs in the Web 2.0 Environment.” It is a project undertaken in collaboration with the University of Science and Technology of China and three Chinese NGO partner organizations.

 


2008



Abhijit Banerjee, Ford International Professor of Economics, Esther Duflo, Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics, along with Rachel Glennerster, Executive Director the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab were awarded the First BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Development Cooperation. The Frontiers Awards honor fundamental disciplinary or supradisciplinary advances in a series of basic, natural, social and technological sciences as well as other cultural areas.
 

Ricardo Caballero, Ford International Professor of Economics and Department Head, along with co-author Arving Krishnamurthy, was awarded the Smith Breeden Prize by the American Finance Association for "Collective Risk Management in a Flight to Quality Episode," published in the Journal of Finance, vol. LXIII, No. 5, 2008.


Junot Díaz, Associate Professor of Writing and Humanistic Studies, received the 2008 Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle 2007 Award, for his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.
 

Esther Duflo, Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics, was named the International Chair for Knowledge Against Poverty at the Collège de France. Professor Duflo was also awarded the Prix Luc Durand-Reville by the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques in France. The Prix Luc Durand-Reville is an annual prize to reward work on assistance from France or Europe for economic development in the Third World.
 

Amy Finkelstein, Professor of Economics, was awarded the 2008 Elaine Bennett Prize "to recognize, support, and encourage outstanding contributions by young women in the economics profession." Professor Finkelstein was also awarded the 2008 TIASS CREF Paul A. Samuelson Award, for a paper in the June 2008 American Economics Review, co-authored with Jeffrey Brown (MIT PhD 1999) entitled, "The Interaction of Public and Private Insurance: Medicaid and the Long-Term Care Insurance Market."
 

Kai von Fintel, Professor of Linguistics, was named Associate Dean of the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and  Social Sciences. Making the announcement, Dean Fitzgerald cited his intellectual acuity, institutional experience, and personal warmth. 
 

Mikhail Golosov, Rudi Dornbusch Career Development Associate Professor of Economics, was awarded an NSF Career Grant in support of outstanding junior faculty and a Sloan Research Fellowship, which is awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars."
 

Panle Jia, Assistant Professor of Economics, was the inaugural recipient of the Tufts Graduate and Undergraduate Economics Alumni Achievement Award in 2008.
 

Professor of Writing and Humanistic Studies, Robert Kanigel, received a 2008 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Arts. The Fellowships are given to those who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.
 

Former Professor and Alumnus Paul Krugman was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.
 

Keeril Makan, Assistant Professor of Music, was awarded the 2008 Rome Prize for musical composition.  
 

Heather Paxson, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, received the 2008 Levitan Prize in the Humanities for her innovative research about the world of American artisanal cheese. 
 

Jim Poterba, Mitsui Professor of Economics and President of the National Bureau of Economic Research, took office as President of the National Tax Association in November 2008 and was also elected Vice-President of the American Economics Association beginning in January 2009.

 

 

2007
 


 

Junot Díaz, Associate Professor of Writing and Humanistic Studies, received the 2008 Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle 2007 Award, for his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.  


Deborah Fitzgerald, Professor of the History of Technology, in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society, was appointed Kenan Sahin Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.  


Michael M. Kaiser, MIT Sloan School of Management 1977, received the 2007 Robert A. Muh Alumni Award in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and delivered a talk entitled "Cultural Diplomacy."