2022 Co-op Research Excellence and Hamilton Book Awards Winners Announced

Career Award: Presented to Dr. Kristen Harris, Professor of Neuroscience in the College of Natural Sciences, for her long and distinguished career and clear leadership in the area of synaptic plasticity and passionate devotion to reconstructing brain structures key to thought processes, memories and beliefs.

The Career Excellence Award recognizes sustained outstanding research achievement by a faculty member or permanently employed staff researcher over many years.

Best Paper Award: Presented to Dr. Maria Croyle, Molecular Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery Glaxo Wellcome Professor, College of Pharmacy, for her paper, “Novel technology for storage and distribution of live vaccines and other biological medicines at ambient temperature,” which presents a novel, thin-film platform that preserves live viruses, bacteria, antibodies, and enzymes without refrigeration for extended period of time. This work introduces the possibility of improving global access to a variety of vaccines and medicines by offering a technology capable of reducing costs of production, distribution, and supply chain maintenance. (ScienceAdvances, Vol 6, Issue 10).

The Best Research Paper Award recognizes extraordinary achievement by a faculty member or staff researcher who was the principal or sole author of a peer-reviewed scholarly paper reporting original research and published during January 1, 2020 – December 31, 2021.

Creative Research Award: Presented to Dr. Raj Patel, Research Professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs, for his film The Ants And The Grasshopper. Filmed over 10 years, this documentary project weaves together themes of race, gender, internationalism, and power. In its making, the project attempted to decolonize the documentary form, with narration, filming destinations and editing choices driven by the main Malawian character. Combining research and creative choice in product and process, the film has broken new ground, as evinced by its wide success.

The Creative Award recognizes extraordinary creative achievement and scholarship by a faculty member or staff researcher from January 1, 2021 – December 31, 2022.

The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., by Peniel Joseph, Associate Dean for Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion; Professor of Public Affairs; Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values; Founding Director, Center for the Study of Race and Democracy in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. Dr. Joseph is also Professor of History in the College of Liberal Arts.

In The Sword and the Shield, Joseph upends misconceptions about the contrasting ideals of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. – self-defense versus nonviolence, Black Power versus civil rights – and reveals a nuanced portrait of two men who, despite markedly different backgrounds, inspired and pushed each other throughout their adult lives. This is the definitive dual biography of the two most important Black political activists of the twentieth century.

Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing, by Sarah Brayne, Associate Professor of Sociology in the College of Liberal Arts.

In Predict and Surveil, Brayne offers an unprecedented, inside look at how police use big data and new surveillance technologies, leveraging on-the-ground fieldwork with one of the most technologically advanced law enforcement agencies in the world—the Los Angeles Police Department.

Sex, Love, and Letters: Writing Simone de Beauvoir, by Judith Coffin, Professor of History in the College of Liberal Arts.

Coffin’s book documents the relationship between a philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir, and the people who wrote to her: a remarkably diverse group of readers around the world, from Sarajevo to New York. It follows that relationship in historical context, from 1949, The Second Sex, to 1972, the last volume of her memoirs. The letters allow us to see this history anew, from a perspective that fuses politics and philosophy with everyday life.

Inca Apocalypse: The Spanish Conquest and the Transformation of the Andean World, by R. Alan Covey, Professor of Anthropology in the College of Liberal Arts.

This work develops a new perspective on the Spanish invasion and transformation of the Inca realm. Alan Covey’s sweeping narrative traces the origins of the Inca and Spanish empires, identifying how Andean and Iberian beliefs about the world’s end shaped the collision of the two civilizations. Rather than a decisive victory on the field at Cajamarca, the Spanish conquest was an uncertain, disruptive process that reshaped the worldviews of those on each side of the conflict.