Four Pitt Faculty Members Honored for Achievement in Mentoring Doctoral Students

PITTSBURGH—Four members of the University of Pittsburgh faculty are recipients of the 2008 Provost's Award for Excellence in Mentoring, an award that recognizes faculty for their mentoring of doctoral students. This is the third year the awards have been granted.

The awardees were selected from 31 nominations made by Pitt doctoral students and faculty.

The honorees are Louise Comfort, professor of public and urban affairs in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs; Donald DeFranco, professor of pharmacology in the School of Medicine; Leon Gleser, professor of statistics in the School of Arts and Sciences; and Kenneth Jordan, Distinguished Professor of Computational Chemistry in the School of Arts and Sciences. The winners will be honored along with other Provost's Award nominees at a reception at 3 p.m. April 15 in the Kurtzman Room, William Pitt Union, 3959 Fifth Ave., Oakland. Each of the four honorees will receive a cash prize of $2,500.

"Fundamental to the success of our doctoral training programs are the faculty members who serve as mentors to our graduate students," said Pitt Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor James V. Maher. "Our faculty mentors provide intellectual and professional guidance that helps support, encourage, and promote the growth of our students. The faculty selected for these awards exemplify our commitment to the excellence of graduate education at the University of Pittsburgh."

Brief biographies of the recipients follow:

Louise Comfort is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and a Fulbright Senior Scholar. Comfort has chaired 16 doctoral dissertations, served on 22 doctoral dissertation committees, and is currently advising 11 additional students. Her students have participated in a variety of research projects, including Interactive, Intelligent Spatial Information System (IISIS), which is computational software that helps community leaders manage risk during disasters and better link communities together when public safety is at risk. Comfort, who directs the operation, and the IISIS team have spent several years researching and compiling data, and are now conducting field demonstrations in the Pittsburgh metropolitan region. Alumni who have studied under Comfort have gone on to hold both academic positions and high-level policy-setting administrative positions throughout the world.

Donald DeFranco has made significant contributions to the graduate experience of all pharmacology students as the current graduate director. A number of projects in his laboratory are focused on examining the molecular basis of neuronal cell death. He has implemented a student journal club where students present a paper by the weekly invited visiting seminar speaker and later meet with the visiting scientist to discuss the paper. Throughout the past 23 years, DeFranco has advised 17 doctoral students and is currently advising three others. His students have been very successful in securing tenure stream or postdoctoral positions at distinguished medical schools.

Leon Gleser has advised all incoming students in his role as graduate director since the inception of the Department of Statistics in 1997. He has enjoyed a distinguished research career and was the executive editor of Statistical Science. Gleser has supervised a total of 23 doctoral dissertations, 10 of which have been at Pitt. He is currently advising three other students. His students have been placed with tenure stream or postdoctoral positions at Harvard University, the Cleveland Clinic, and Vanderbilt University, among others.

Kenneth Jordan is the director of the University's Center for Molecular and Materials Simulations and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He also is a member of Pitt's Petersen Institute for Nanoscience and Engineering and an associate faculty member in the Department of Computational Biology. Jordan is an expert in the use of theoretical and computational methods for understanding the properties of molecules, clusters, and surfaces. In recent years, he has been especially interested in hydrogen bonding and how excess electrons and protons localize in clusters of water. Jordan's research on water was included in Science magazine's top 10 scientific breakthroughs of 2004. During the past 30 years at Pitt, Jordan has advised 23 doctoral students and is currently advising six others. His former students maintain successful research careers at both research universities and national laboratories.

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4/7/08/amm