September 20, 2024
Alumni Updates: Summer/Fall 2024
Discover the latest noteworthy achievements from Harvard Griffin GSAS alumni, including a "40 Under 40" award for health equity leadership, a Guggenheim Fellowship, scientific breakthroughs, and prominent new academic appointments.
Champion of Health Equity
Chidi Akusobi, PhD '20, biological and biomedical sciences, was named one of the "40 Under 40 Leaders in Minority Health for 2024" last March by the National Minority Quality Forum (NMQF). The award recognizes young health leaders from minoritized populations who are making significant strides in improving patient outcomes and fostering healthy communities. Since its inception in 2016, the "40 Under 40" award has recognized clinicians, patient advocates, researchers, and policy influencers at the forefront of reducing health disparities. Akusobi, an internal medicine resident at Massachusetts General Hospital, and his fellow honorees were celebrated at the NMQF Leadership Summit on Health Disparities and Health Braintrust during National Minority Health Month last April.
More Alumni News
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Floor Broekgaarden, PhD '23, astronomy, received the Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin Doctoral Dissertation Award in Astrophysics from the American Physical Society. The award encourages effective written and oral presentation of research results, skills Broekgaarden honed as a Harvard Horizons Scholar in 2023. | Image
Martha Bulyk, PhD '01, biophysics, was one of eight Harvard faculty named a 2023 fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a distinguished lifetime honor within the scientific community. AAAS is one of the world's largest general scientific societies and publisher of the Science family of journals. |
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Adele Diamond, PhD '83, personality and developmental psychology, professor of developmental cognitive neuroscience at the University of British Columbia, was conferred a doctor of science honoris causa by the University of Cambridge, a distinction reserved for individuals of outstanding national and international achievement in their field. |
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Harvard Professor Kosuke Imai, PhD '03, political science, was named a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow based on his "prior career achievement and exceptional promise". The fellowship, which involved "a rigorous application and peer review process" was given in support of Imai's project proposal "Improving Statistical Methodology for Evaluating and Reducing Racial Disparities". |
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Luke Leafgren, PhD '12, comparative literature, was named the 2023 winner of the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation. The annual prize was awarded to Leafgren for his translation of Mister N, a novel by Lebanese writer Najwa Barakat. Leafgren is an assistant dean at Harvard College where he is also resident dean of Mather House. | Image
A team led by Harvard Professor Andrew Myers, PhD '85, chemistry, reported in the journal Science that their synthetic compound, cresomycin, kills many strains of drug-resistant bacteria. Pathogenic bacterial strains like the ones cresomycin targets kill more than a million people each year, making the Myers team's discovery a potential new weapon in the war against "superbugs". |
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David Sadighian, PhD '23, history of art and architecture, was appointed tenure-track assistant professor at the Yale School of Architecture. Sadighian teaches global histories of architecture, infrastructure, and material culture in the modern Atlantic world from 1750 to the present, and is also developing a book manuscript based on his Harvard PhD dissertation. | Image
Jeremy M. Weinstein, PhD '03, political economy and government, was named dean of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government by interim President Alan M. Garber last spring. Weinstein comes from Stanford University where he helped develop cross-university initiatives and led efforts to advance the social sciences, global and area studies, and issues of ethics, technology, and public policy. |
