RCSA Announces 2020 Cottrell IMPACT and STAR Awards
Research Corporation for Science Advancement announces that Rigoberto Hernandez (Cottrell Scholar 1999, Johns Hopkins University) is the recipient of its 2020 IMPACT Award. In addition, two Cottrell Scholars have been named recipients of 2020 STAR Awards – Helen Blackwell (CS 2005, University of Wisconsin, Madison) and Julio de Paula (CS 1994, Lewis & Clark College.)
“These awards extend our commitment to Cottrell Scholars throughout their careers,” said RCSA President and CEO Daniel Linzer.
The IMPACT Award recognizes the work of an outstanding Cottrell Scholar who has had a national impact in science through leadership and service activities, while the STAR (Science Teaching And Research) Award recognizes the outstanding research and educational accomplishments of Cottrell Scholars. Both STAR and IMPACT awards include a $5,000 cash prize.
The awards will be presented at the 2020 Cottrell Scholar Conference in Tucson, Arizona, July 8-10, where recipients will give brief acceptance talks. During the year that follows the award presentation, STAR and IMPACT winners will be available to provide invaluable mentoring to their early-career Cottrell Scholar colleagues, according to RCSA Senior Program Director Silvia Ronco.
Rigoberto Hernandez’ IMPACT Award is in recognition of more than a decade of effort helping scientists develop the skills they need to grow into leadership roles beyond the classroom or research lab, as well as his commitment to removing the barriers that inequitably affect scientists in pursuing research careers. Hernandez has led an initiative, created in 2014 with nine other Cottrell Scholars, to provide leadership training for mid-career scholars who are interested in positions as department chairs, deans, provosts or research center directors. This yearly Academic Leadership Training workshop has trained more than 125 participants since 2016. He also founded and directs the Open Chemistry Collaborative in Diversity Equity (OXIDE), an effort to improve diversity equity by enabling communication between chemistry department chairs and the social science community. A blogger (EveryWhereChemistry) and frequent public speaker on science and diversity, Hernandez shares his vision for inclusive excellence by mentoring faculty at the universities he visits. At Johns Hopkins, his leadership with the Homewood Council on Inclusive Excellence has resulted in substantive changes to campus policies and procedures, advancing the climate of diversity.
STAR Award recipient Helen Blackwell is an innovator at the interface of chemistry and biology. Her work is playing a pioneering role in the field of bacterial quorum sensing (QS), an area of great potential impact as the crisis in antibiotic resistance requires new approaches. Over the past 16 years, her research laboratory has designed hundreds of new synthetic QS inhibitors and delivered insights into how mixed microbial communities respond to QS signals. As an educator, Blackwell reinvented the undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory course at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and founded a new graduate Ph.D. program in Chemical Biology in 2010, responding to an urgent need for students with critical interdisciplinary skill sets. A key feature of the graduate curriculum is a focus on strengthening student communication skills, crucial for scientists with a need to describe research to both chemists and biologists. She has also collaborated with “bio-artist” Sonja Bäumel to create free, public art installations that educate audiences about the relevance and presence of microbes on their own bodies and in society.
STAR Award recipient Julio de Paula is recognized as a researcher, educator and leader who is having a broad impact on science, his students and colleagues, and science education around the world. His recent, widely cited publications represent a growing body of work on porphyrin nanomaterials. He also co-leads a team of students researching the archaeometric applications of spectroscopy while working on a Roman archaeological site in Mallorca, Spain. Through a Cottrell Scholars SEED award, he is addressing the problem of limited access to high-quality instructional materials, especially in the STEM disciplines, by piloting a project to provide free online resources for chemistry students and faculty around the world in English, Spanish and Portuguese. He serves as co-director of Lewis & Clark College’s Pathways to Success in STEM Program, focusing on students of color and first-generation college students. He developed a small, intensive section of the first semester of the General Chemistry sequence, a foundation for many STEM majors, designed to help at-risk students by giving them more class time and personal attention from faculty.
Nominees for the IMPACT and STAR Awards must be at least 12 years beyond the year of their Cottrell Scholar Award and hold an academic position at a research university or primarily undergraduate institution.
Cottrell Plus Awards are aimed at advancing the skills, knowledge and experience of Cottrell Scholars toward attaining leadership roles in their institutions. The competitive Cottrell Plus portfolio offers several additional opportunities to post-tenure Cottrell Scholars beyond IMPACT and STAR. Additional awards include the SEED (Singular Exceptional Endeavors of Discovery) and FRED (Frontiers in Research Excellence and Discovery) awards.
