Alumni Updates 

Michael Balick

Michael J. Balick, PhD ’80, organismic and evolutionary biology, vice president for botanical science and director and philecology curator of the Institute of Economic Botany at the New York Botanical Garden, has been named the 2020 recipient of the H. Marc Cathey Award from the American Horticultural Society, which is given to an individual for outstanding scientific research that has enriched the field of horticulture and botany. 

Edward Jones-Imhotep

Edward Jones-Imhotep, PhD ’01, history of science, became director of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto on July 1. The author of the award-winning book, The Unreliable Nation: Hostile Nature and Technological Failure in the Cold War, Jones-Imhotep explores the social and cultural life of machines and what their malfunctions tell us about the culture, politics, and economics of modern societies.

Marianne Novy

Marianne Novy, AM ’67, English and American literature and languages, was awarded the Iris Marion Young Award for Political Engagement this year from the Gender, Sexuality, & Women’s Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh. The author of Reading Adoption: Family and Difference in Fiction and Drama, Novy is a pioneer in adoption studies. The award honors her many contributions to the field, which includes co-founding and co-chairing the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture and developing the Pittsburgh Consortium for Adoption Studies. 

Recently Published by GSAS Alumni 

Catherine Asaro, PhD ’85, Chemistry and Physics, The Vanished Seas, Baen/Simon & Schuster, 2020 

Michael J. Balick, PhD ’80, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and Lewis S. Nelson, Handbook of Poisonous and Injurious Plants, Springer, 2020 and with Paul Alan Cox, Plants, People and Culture: The Science of Ethnobotany, Routledge, 2020  

Jeffrey Collins, PhD ’99, History, In the Shadow of Leviathan: John Locke and the Politics of Conscience, Cambridge University Press, 2020  

Scott Newstok, PhD ’02, English and American Literature and Languages, How to Think like Shakespeare, Princeton University Press, 2020  

Álvaro Santana-Acuña, PhD ’14, Sociology, Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic, Columbia University Press, 2020  

Miriam Udel, PhD ’08, Comparative Literature, Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children’s Literature, New York University Press, 2020