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IN LUMINE TUO
Purpura, who has been dean of the Albert Einstein School of Medicine since 1984, is widely recognized for his work on the origin of brain waves, developmental neurobiology, and the mechanism of epilepsy. His groundbreaking work on mental retardation identified the primary involvement of certain structural abnormalities in nerve cells in the brain. Stormer became Columbia's 59th Nobel laureate in 1998, when he shared the physics prize for discovering the fractional quantum hall effect, which may have applications in the development of enhanced microchips. He joined the Columbia faculty in 1997. Conrad, an associate professor of physics, will receive a Young Investigator Award, given to researchers younger than 40. She is currently pursuing high-energy research at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, where she is investigating the unproven theory that neutrinos have mass. Two other Columbians also received Mayor's Awards this year: Angelo Christian, associate professor at P&S, and New York Times science correspondent John Noble Wilford '62J.
The $5,000 award, given annually since 1992 by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, honors books dedicated to improving government or politics through an examination of the press and government or the intersection of press and politics in creating public policy. Shapiro,
who is chairman of the political science department and has a joint
appointment with the School of International and Public Affairs,
is associate director of Columbia's Institute for Social and Economic
Research and Policy. He is co-author of The Rational Public (1992)
and co-editor of Presidential Power (2000).
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HONORED: In March, the National Science Foundation named Duncan
J. Watts, assistant professor of sociology, as a Faculty Early
Career Development Award recipient. The $370,000 award, which will
support Watts's research on the theory and applications of complex
social networks, is the NSF's most prestigious award for junior
faculty members. Watts's research - which draws upon techniques
used in physics, applied mathematics and computer science - seeks
to map the ways large-scale human networks, such as a multi-national
corporation, function in the new economy. Watts, who attended the
University of New South Wales in Australia before earning his Ph.D.
from Cornell, is currently at Columbia as part of an initiative
funded by the University's Office of Strategic Initiatives (OSI),
a branch of the Office of the Executive Vice Provost. 
