UChicago News

Mary Lou Gorno appointed chair of Smart Museum Board

Tue, 05 Jun 2018 16:15 -0500

Mary Lou Gorno, a business executive and alumna of Chicago Booth who serves as vice chair of the University of Chicago’s Board of Trustees, has been appointed chair of the Smart Museum of Art’s Board of Governors.

Gorno, managing director of the executive search firm Ingenuity International, serves the University in a variety of capacities, including chair of the University of Chicago Phoenix Society, a trustee of Court Theatre and a director at NORC. She has been a member of UChicago’s Board of Trustees since 2004.

“Mary Lou Gorno brings to the Smart Museum Board of Governors a deep knowledge of the University of Chicago and extensive experience in leading organizations. I look forward to seeing momentum as the Smart Museum continues to grow with her board leadership, supporting the expanding role of the arts at the University,” President Robert J. Zimmer said.

Gorno’s two-year appointment as board chair is effective Sept. 1. The Smart Museum of Art is UChicago’s fine arts museum, home to thought-provoking exhibitions, a wide-ranging collection, and public programs that encourage the examination of complex issues through the lens of art objects and artistic practice, both contemporaneously and across history.

"The arts have an important and growing role at the University of Chicago. I look forward to working with my fellow board members in support of Alison Gass and her dynamic team as the Smart Museum writes the future of university art museums," Gorno said.

Gorno succeeds Pamela Hoehn-Saric, MAT’81, who has served as chair of the Smart Museum Board since 2012. During that period, the Smart Museum celebrated its 40th anniversary, appointed Alison Gass as the Dana Feitler Director and launched the Feitler Center of Academic Inquiry. Hoehn-Saric will continue to serve as a member of the Smart Museum Board.

“I am thrilled to welcome Mary Lou to the board as chair-elect,” said Hoehn-Saric. “The Smart is on an exciting trajectory, and Mary Lou brings extensive experience and talent in board development and strategy, which will help Ali, the board and the staff realize Ali’s exciting vision for the museum.”

Gorno earned a bachelor’s degree in business and economics from Saint Mary’s College, a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University, and master’s degree in finance and accounting from UChicago’s Booth School of Business.

Gorno began her career in advertising, becoming a senior executive at the Leo Burnett Company where she worked with Walt Disney, Reebok and Procter & Gamble. She later moved to the executive search profession and currently leads the CEO and Board practice for Fortune 500, mid-cap and privately owned companies. As a board and CEO adviser, she specializes in organizational governance, succession planning and leadership issues.

In addition to her extensive involvement at the University, Gorno serves as vice chair of the Board of Trustees of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, vice chair of the Archdiocese of Chicago Catholic School Board and director of the Chicago Humanities Festival.

Behavioral economist Sendhil Mullainathan to join Booth faculty as University Professor

Mon, 21 May 2018 12:10 -0500

Influential economics scholar Sendhil Mullainathan will join the University of Chicago Booth School of Business faculty on July 1, 2018, where he has been appointed University Professor. He currently serves as the Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics at Harvard University.

Mullainathan’s research spans broad areas of economics: behavioral, labor, public economics and corporate finance, and most recently has focused on the intersection of machine learning and public policy. His seminal research includes topics ranging from the impact of poverty on mental bandwidth to showing that higher cigarette taxes make smokers happier.

“Sendhil is a phenomenal scholar, whose work has had great impact in a variety of fields,” said Madhav Rajan, dean of Chicago Booth and the George Pratt Shultz Professor of Accounting. “Sendhil’s history of collaboration across disciplines will strengthen ties among Booth’s research areas and deepen the school’s connections to the rest of the University.”

University Professors are selected for internationally recognized eminence in their fields as well as for their potential for high impact across the University. Mullainathan will become the 22nd person to hold a University Professorship, and the ninth active faculty member holding that title.

After completing his PhD in economics at Harvard in 1998, Mullainathan taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology until 2004, when he moved to Harvard, where he is a professor of economics and affiliate of Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

“The University of Chicago has a grand tradition of defining new disciplines: the phrase ‘Chicago School of’ has its own resonance in many academic fields,” Mullainathan said.

“Today a new discipline is emerging at the intersection of human and machine intelligence. Algorithms are now capable of amazing feats, and fully harnessing their capacities requires integrating them equally with marvelous aspects of human cognition,” he added. “I’m excited to join Booth and be part of a team that will hopefully define another ‘Chicago School’ in this emerging discipline.”

Mullainathan has published more than 50 journal articles, including 14 papers in top economics journals. He recently co-authored Scarcity: Why Having too Little Means so Much and writes regularly for The New York Times. In 2002, he received a MacArthur Fellowship and serves on the board of the MacArthur Foundation.

In 2012, Mullainathan was designated a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum; was labeled a “Top 100 Thinker” by Foreign Policy Magazine, and named to the “Smart List: 50 people who will change the world” by Wired Magazine.

He helped co-found the non-profit organization ideas42, which applies behavioral science to positively change lives; and co-founded Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, a center to promote the use of randomized control trials in development. Mullainathan is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Chicago Booth’s Douglas Diamond wins Onassis Prize in Finance

Wed, 25 Apr 2018 09:30 -0500

Prof. Douglas W. Diamond, one of the world's leading authorities on bank runs and liquidity crises who is considered the father of modern banking theory, has been awarded the 2018 Onassis Prize in Finance.

Awarded every three years, the Onassis Prize recognizes the world’s foremost academics in the fields of finance, international trade and shipping, to honor outstanding academic achievements that have had international significance. Nobel laureate and Chicago Booth scholar Eugene Fama won the inaugural prize in finance in 2009.

“I am delighted to receive the Onassis Prize,” said Diamond, the Merton H. Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “After the recent financial crisis, policymakers and scholars have a renewed focus on the stability of financial institutions.”

Diamond changed the way people view banks through his pioneering research, which laid the groundwork for how central bankers, regulators, policymakers and academics approach modern finance. His research agenda for the past 30 years has been to explain what banks do, why they do it and the consequences of these arrangements.

Named after Aristotle Onassis who excelled in these three disciplines, each Onassis Prize is worth $200,000; they are sponsored by the Onassis Foundation and awarded jointly by Cass Business School London with the Onassis Foundation.

—This story first appeared on the Chicago Booth website.

Prof. Richard Thaler delivers Nobel Prize lecture

Fri, 08 Dec 2017 13:37 -0600

Until Prof. Richard H. Thaler came along, economists resisted the idea of basing their models on how real people behave. The reality is people don’t always know what they want, much less what’s best for them.

In October, Thaler was honored with the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for his pioneering scholarship in the field of behavioral economics. On Dec. 8, the Chicago Booth scholar delivered his Nobel lecture in Stockholm as part of a weeklong celebration of the 2017 Nobel laureates. He will receive his Nobel Medal on Dec. 10 at a white-tie-and-tails affair at the Stockholm Concert Hall. (Live webcast begins at 7:30 a.m. CST here).

In his Nobel speech, entitled “From Cashews to Nudges: The Evolution of Behavioral Economics,” Thaler told stories of various field experiments in his everyday life—ranging from a dinner party as a graduate student in Rochester, N.Y. in the 1970s to the Swedish government’s present-day effort to get its citizens to sign up for retirement plans.

Prof. Richard Thaler delivers the 2017 Nobel Prize Lecture in Economic Sciences on Dec. 8. (Photo by Henrik Montgomery / TT)

“One lesson from these stories is that there are a bunch of things economic theory says we can leave out, and in fact, makes the strong prediction that they simply will not matter,” Thaler said in his Nobel address. “I call these ‘supposedly irrelevant factors.’ And really my research can be summarized as there are a lot of these supposedly irrelevant factors that are not irrelevant. They matter.”

Thaler launched his journey as one of the founders of behavioral economics with a bowl of cashews at a dinner party. He was concerned his guests were eating too many and that it would spoil their appetites, so he took them away. His guests, all economists, were happy when he removed the nuts, and that led to a discussion: How could they be happy, given that a first principle of economics is more choices are better than fewer choices?

“If we learn from other social scientists, we can improve economics and increase its explanatory power, and it can give us new tools we can use to improve people’s outcome. In short, we can nudge them.”Prof. Richard H. Thaler

Prof. Richard Thaler to receive Nobel Prize this weekend

Wed, 06 Dec 2017 12:29 -0600

Nearly two months have passed since a 4 a.m. call from Sweden changed the life of economist Richard Thaler.

That morning, Thaler called receiving the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, the culmination of “a long journey” of scholarship. Known as one of the founding fathers of behavioral economics, Thaler, the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, said his field had come a long way since being “out in the wilderness” 40 years ago.

“When you’re doing research that’s a little unusual, and your approach is unusual, and you’re criticizing some of the other people in the field, you never know whether anybody’s taking it seriously,” said Thaler, who is in Stockholm, Sweden this week to receive his award.

Thaler will deliver the Nobel Prize Lecture in Economic Sciences on Dec. 8 and receive his Nobel medal on Dec. 10. (Both events will be webcast live on the Nobel website.) Thaler is the 90th scholar associated with UChicago to be awarded a Nobel Prize and sixth current member of the UChicago faculty.

“The last month has been frenetic, so I don’t know if it has sunk in,” Thaler said. “I’m not sure it will sink in until I get back from Stockholm.”

A view of the Stockholm Concert Hall, where Prof. Richard Thaler will receive his Nobel Prize medal during a Dec. 10 ceremony. (Photo by Frank Augstein/Associated Press)

‘A speech to the general public’

Author of the best-selling book Nudge, Thaler is renowned for research showing how human behavior contradicts traditional economic logic. And much like his groundbreaking scholarship, Thaler will be taking a different approach to his Nobel lecture.

Charged with delivering a 35-minute Nobel address, Thaler hopes to make it visual and “not bogged down in technical details.” Thaler knows a few things about writing a Nobel lecture, having heard five Nobel lectures in the two times he’s attended the ceremony—including 2002, when friend and former Stanford University colleague Daniel Kahneman was honored.

“Thirty-five minutes is not that long, and I don’t talk that fast. For the speech, I’m just trying to think about what is the best introduction of this material for 500 to 800 mostly Swedish residents of Stockholm,” Thaler said. “It’s not a speech to experts; it’s not a speech to my colleagues—it’s a speech to the general public.”

Thaler described the day the Nobel Prize was announced on Oct. 9 as a blur. He recalls the flood of congratulatory messages and a news conference at Booth, but also teaching a class that night at the Gleacher Center.

The work of a scholar, Nobel-winning or not, never ends. Soon after Stockholm, Thaler will return to research and tackling the task of writing a technical research paper for Nobel, due Jan. 31, which will be published in the American Economic Review.

“When you wake up in the morning, you still have to brush your teeth and take a shower—and pretty much life goes on,” Thaler said. “People have asked me: ‘Do your colleagues treat you any differently?’ No. They may have cut me slack for 10 or 15 minutes, and then it’s back to normal.”

Richard Thaler wins Nobel Prize 'for his contributions to behavioural economics'

Mon, 09 Oct 2017 05:06 -0500

University of Chicago Prof. Richard H. Thaler has been awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2017.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences honored Thaler, the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, “for his contributions to behavioural economics,” a relatively new field that bridges the gap between economics and psychology. Thaler’s research investigates the implications of relaxing the standard economic assumption that everyone in the economy is rational and selfish, instead entertaining the possibility that some of the agents in the economy are sometimes human.

“Richard’s original, broadly influential and paradigm-defining work has richly earned this recognition,” President Robert J. Zimmer wrote in a message to the UChicago community. “We look forward to celebrating Richard’s work and his place in the distinguished legacy of eminent economics research at the University of Chicago.”

He is among the 90 scholars associated with the University to receive Nobel Prizes, and among the 29 who have received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. In addition to Thaler, five current UChicago faculty members are Nobel laureates in economics: Profs. Eugene Fama and Lars Hansen (who won in 2013), Roger Myerson (2007), James Heckman (2000) and Robert E. Lucas Jr. (1995).

Thaler learned of the award after his cell phone rang at 4 a.m. The phone number was from Sweden, so “I had a pretty good idea what that might be,” he said Monday. The award was particularly meaningful because behavioral economics was “really out in the wilderness 40 years ago,” when Thaler began his research.

“It’s been a long journey,” he said, “so I’m happy about that.”

‘Knowledge with enduring impact’

At a news conference Monday morning in the Charles M. Harper Center, Chicago Booth Dean Madhav Rajan said Thaler “represents the quintessence of Chicago Booth’s mission: to produce knowledge with enduring impact, and to influence and educate current and future leaders.” Rajan also credited Thaler with helping to build Chicago Booth’s faculty in behavioral science, “vastly expanding the school’s footprint and stature in this field.”

Thaler, who took the stage to cheering from the excited students and faculty who had lined the staircases of the Winter Garden, described the experience being a Booth faculty member as one of “tough love. The behavioral science group, it’s a little less tough, but only a little.”

He admitted he hadn’t persuaded all of his colleagues and fellow economists of the importance of behavioral economics, so instead, “I’ve used the strategy of corrupting the youth, whose minds aren’t already made up,” he said. “Many great, young economists have embraced behavioral economics…The growth of the field is really due to the work of the people that followed me.”

Spotting fellow Nobel laureate Eugene Fama, the Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professor of Finance, in the front row, Thaler added, “It’s been good to be here all these 20 years, arguing with guys like Fama. It’s good for me.” These days, however, “[we] try to keep our arguments to the golf course.”

Prof. Richard Thaler talks to Cass Sunstein, his former UChicago scholar and his Nudge coauthor, via Skype from his living room after winning the Nobel Prize. (Photo by Anne Ryan)

‘The father of behavioral economics’

Thaler, who has been dubbed the “father of behavioral economics,” wrote the bestselling books Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics (2015) and Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness (2008). He is renowned for creating easy-to-understand scenarios that show how human behavior often contradicts traditional economic logic.

Many economic models, Thaler told National Public Radio last year, assume people are rational, unemotional, and self-controlled. “I believe that for the last 50 or 60 years, economists have devoted themselves to studying fictional creatures,” he said. “They might as well be studying unicorns.” Every day, his research reveals, we behave in ways that violate economic principles.

In keeping with his research into these human idiosyncrasies, Thaler joked in a Nobel news conference Monday morning that he planned to spend the 9 million Swedish krona (about $1.1 million USD) he will receive with the prize “as irrationally as possible.”

In Misbehaving, which Financial Times named one of the six most influential business books of 2015, Thaler chronicles the struggle to bring the academic discipline of economics back down to earth and reveals how behavioral economic analysis can change the way we think about everything from household finances to the NFL draft.

For instance, Thaler’s research has challenged the classical economic notion that money is fungible—that is, that one dollar is the same as any other dollar. But Thaler’s work on mental accounting, one of the areas of research highlighted by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in its Nobel citation, has shown that, in practice, people don’t treat money this way. Instead, they mentally earmark money for specific purposes, such as housing, food, and travel, and make financial decisions based on how those decisions will affect each small fund. “Money in one mental account is not a perfect substitute for money in another account,” Thaler wrote in a 1999 paper.

Thaler illustrated the point with his own Nobel win. Most economists, he said at the news conference, would challenge the premise of a question like, “What do you plan to do with your prize money?” Because they view money as “fungible,” they wouldn’t—in theory—distinguish prize money from any other money.

Not Thaler. “I believe in something called mental accounting, which is precisely people putting labels on money,” he explained. “Anytime I spend any money [on something] that’s really fun, I’m going to say that came from the Nobel Prize.”

‘Make it easy’

Nudge, coauthored with Harvard Law School Professor Cass R. Sunstein, explores how the concepts of behavioral economics can be used to tackle many of society’s major problems and influence public policy. Ranked as the Best Book of the Year by The Economist and Financial Times, the research prompted the United Kingdom’s government in 2010 to establish a Behavioral Insight Team, or “Nudge Unit,” to create policies that nudge British citizens to make better choices and, in turn, save the state money. Thaler served as an advisor in setting up the unit’s guiding principles.

At the heart of Nudge is what Thaler calls his “mantra”: “If you want to get people to do something, make it easy. Remove the obstacles,” he explained. “Nudges” push people toward better choices by making those choices easy. For example, employers can “nudge” employees by automatically enrolling them in a retirement savings plan, rather than requiring them to opt in; schools can “nudge” kids toward healthy food choices by putting fruit at eye level.

“If you want to get people to do something, make it easy. Remove the obstacles.” Prof. Richard Thaler on the mantra behind 'Nudge'

Thaler’s other books include Quasi-Rational Economics and The Winner's Curse: Paradoxes and Anomalies of Economic Life. His work has been published in the American Economics Review, the Journal of Finance, and the Journal of Political Economy.

Thaler was named in 2015 to Bloomberg Markets 50 Most Influential People; he also was the American Economic Association’s president for 2015. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000.

Before joining the Chicago Booth faculty in 1995, Thaler taught at the University of Rochester and Cornell University. He also served as a visiting professor at the University of British Columbia, the Sloan School of Management at MIT, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

Originally from New Jersey, Thaler attended Case Western Reserve University where he received a bachelor's degree in 1967. Soon after, he attended the University of Rochester where he received a master's degree in 1970 and a PhD in 1974.

Alexander Beilinson, Douglas Diamond elected to National Academy of Sciences

Wed, 03 May 2017 14:22 -0500

Two University of Chicago faculty members have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences: Alexander Beilinson, the David and Mary Winton Green University Professor of Mathematics; and Douglas W. Diamond, the Merton H. Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance. They are among the 84 new members the academy announced May 2.

Beilinson is a mathematician who has done pioneering work in algebraic geometry, geometric representation theory and mathematical physics. His “Beilinson Conjectures” serve as a guiding influence in the field of arithmetic geometry, while Beilinson has made substantial contributions to geometric representation theory. Beilinson’s work with Vladimir Drinfeld, the Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor at UChicago, is critical to geometric Langlands theory.

Beilinson’s honors include the Ostrowski Prize and Moscow Mathematical Society Prize and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A member of the UChicago faculty since 1998, Beilinson is one of eight University professors, selected for internationally recognized eminence in their field and potential for high impact across the University.

Considered the father of modern banking theory, Diamond changed the way people view banks. His pioneering research laid the groundwork for how central bankers, regulators, policymakers and academics approach modern finance. A UChicago faculty member since 1979, Diamond is known for his research into financial intermediaries, financial crises and liquidity. His research agenda for the past 30 years has been to explain what banks do, why they do it and the consequences of these arrangements.

His groundbreaking work on bank runs and financial crises earned him the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group-MSRI Prize in Innovative Quantitative Applications in 2015. He received the Morgan Stanley-American Finance Association Award for Excellence in Finance in 2012. Diamond is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. He is a fellow of the Econometric Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Finance Association.

Madhav Rajan appointed dean of University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Wed, 08 Mar 2017 09:30 -0600

Madhav Rajan, former senior associate dean at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, where he holds the Robert K. Jaedicke Chair in Accounting, has been appointed the next dean of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. President Robert J. Zimmer and Provost Daniel Diermeier announced the appointment, which will begin July 1, 2017.

Rajan served as senior associate dean for academic affairs at the Stanford GSB from 2010 to 2016. That role included leadership of Stanford’s MBA program, with oversight of admissions, curriculum, the student experience and career management. He launched new joint-degree programs with Stanford’s engineering school and rolled out initiatives for tighter integration with the rest of the university.

“We sought the most outstanding candidate whose values, ambition and abilities fully comport with the distinctiveness of Chicago Booth as one of methodological rigor in its research and education, and through that commitment one of high impact on the world,” Zimmer and Diermeier wrote in announcing the appointment. “We are confident that Madhav will be an outstanding leader for Chicago Booth in the coming years.”

“The values I have in research and education are deeply valued at Chicago Booth,” Rajan said. “People come here to do rigorous, empirically based research and analysis, which provides the basis for a transformative student experience and an extremely effective MBA curriculum. We have an exciting opportunity to take Booth’s deep strengths and leverage them here and around the world. I am thrilled to have the chance to be dean at what is unquestionably the greatest academic business school.”

Rajan’s primary research interest is the economics-based analysis of management accounting issues, especially as they relate to the choice of internal control and performance systems in firms. He served as editor of The Accounting Review from 2002 to 2008 and is co-author of Cost Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis, the leading cost accounting textbook used around the world.

In 2000, Rajan won the David W. Hauck Award, the highest undergraduate teaching award at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. This April he will receive the Robert T. Davis Award for lifetime service and achievement, the highest faculty recognition awarded by the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Rajan completed his bachelor’s degree at the University of Madras, India. He holds a PhD and two master’s degrees from Carnegie Mellon University. Before going to Stanford in 2001, Rajan held faculty positions at the Wharton School. He held a visiting professorship at Chicago Booth in 2007-08.

Rajan succeeds former Dean Sunil Kumar, who was named provost of Johns Hopkins University in July 2016. His appointment follows a national search, informed by a Booth faculty committee chaired by Reid Hastie, the Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science at Booth.

In a note to the Chicago Booth community, Zimmer and Diermeier thanked Douglas Skinner, the Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Accounting, who served as interim dean. They noted his vital leadership on the Francis and Rose Yuen Center in Hong Kong, which is scheduled to open in 2018.

Prof. Amir Sufi awarded Fischer Black Prize honoring top finance scholar under 40

Wed, 11 Jan 2017 11:45 -0600

Amir Sufi, the Bruce Lindsay Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, has been awarded the 2017 Fischer Black Prize by the American Finance Association.

Honored for his groundbreaking research on household debt and the financial crisis, Sufi received the award Jan. 7 at the annual meeting of the American Finance Association.

Recognizing the top finance scholar under the age of 40, the Fischer Black Prize honors the memory of Fischer Black, formerly a general partner at Goldman Sachs and a professor at Chicago Booth and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose seminal research included the development (with Myron Scholes) of the widely applied Black-Scholes Option Pricing Model.

Established in 2002, the biennial prize honors individual financial research and is awarded for a body of work that best exemplifies the Fischer Black hallmark of developing original research that is relevant to finance practice.

Sufi’s research on household debt, the Great Recession, consumption and the economy has been publicized widely and has been presented to policymakers at the Federal Reserve, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs, and the White House Council of Economic Advisors.

His body of recent research on debt forms the basis of his book co-authored with Atif Mian: House of Debt: How They (and You) Caused the Great Recession and How We Can Prevent It from Happening Again, which was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2014. The book made the Financial Times shortlist for “Best Business Book of the Year” in 2014.

Sufi and his co-author reveal in House of Debt how the Great Recession and Great Depression, as well as the current economic malaise in Europe, were caused by a large run-up in household debt followed by a significantly large drop in household spending.

"We are delighted that Amir has been recognized in this way. His work on debt markets and particularly the role of household debt in the financial crisis is truly path-breaking, and continues to have important implications for the U.S. economy,” said Douglas Skinner, interim dean of Chicago Booth.

“It is remarkable that, of the seven times this award has been given since its inception in 2003, Booth faculty have won three times.”

Other Booth recipients of the prize include Prof. Raghuram Rajan, who was awarded the inaugural prize in 2003; and former Booth faculty member Tobias Moskowitz, who taught at Booth from 1998-2016 and received the prize in 2007.

Sufi has been a member of the Booth faculty since 2005.

Prof. Michael Greenstone to lead Becker Friedman Institute

Mon, 05 Dec 2016 16:15 -0600

Michael Greenstone, the Milton Friedman Professor and a leading economist, has been appointed director of the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics.

Greenstone will build upon the work of Lars Peter Hansen, the David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor and inaugural director of the Becker Friedman Institute, and Kevin M. Murphy, the George J. Stigler Distinguished Service Professor, who has served as co-chair with Hansen since 2014. The institute supports economic research and interdisciplinary scholarship, bringing together scholars from around the world and building programming and public outreach that draws upon the University’s strength in the field of economics.

“The Becker Friedman Institute carries on the University’s distinctive tradition of developing new ideas through intense discussion and collaboration. Michael embodies those ideals in his work, and he is the right leader to continue developing the institute’s ambitious intellectual approach,” President Robert J. Zimmer said.

“Michael is an exceptional scholar who also has a deep understanding of public policy,” Provost Daniel Diermeier said. “As director, he will further enhance the development and impact of the creative thinking and rigorous research for which the institute has become known under the leadership of Lars Hansen and Kevin Murphy.”

The research of Greenstone, who is director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), spans issues of energy and the environment, developed and developing country growth, and financial markets. He brings to the institute extensive policy experience, including serving as chief economist for the White House Council of Economic Advisors and director of The Hamilton Project, an economic policy group studying a range of policies to promote broad-based economic growth. He is currently on the Hamilton Project’s Advisory Council.

“Michael’s research has had a considerable impact on the modern study of economics, underscoring the field’s relevance for policy and people’s quality of life,” said John List, chairman of the Department of Economics and the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor. “He is a prominent voice in the field who will build importantly on the innovative insights and groundwork laid by Lars Hansen and Kevin Murphy.”

“Becker and Friedman were giants in helping to shape understanding of the world, both within economics and more broadly. It is an honor to lead an institute that aims to carry on the tradition and high bar for excellence that they have set for Chicago economics.” Prof. Michael Greenstone

Greenstone’s appointment takes effect July 1, 2017. He will continue in his role as director of EPIC, which will function as an integral part of the Becker Friedman Institute. EPIC is an interdisciplinary center that brings together the University’s research efforts on energy and the environment and translates research to maximize its impact on policy, while working to train the next generation of global energy leaders.

“Becker and Friedman were giants in helping to shape understanding of the world, both within economics and more broadly. It is an honor to lead an institute that aims to carry on the tradition and high bar for excellence that they have set for Chicago economics,” said Greenstone, a professor in Economics, the College and the Harris School of Public Policy. “Specifically, we will continue to build economic theory that deepens understanding, tests those theories with all of the modern tools available to researchers today and communicates the results in ways that are broadly accessible. I feel especially fortunate to be able to build upon the tremendous foundation that Lars Hansen and Kevin Murphy have constructed.”

Greenstone said his new role at UChicago comes at an exciting time for economic research, when a confluence of advances in techniques, computing and access to data have laid the groundwork for much deeper understanding of economics and the world. “We are entering a golden era where economic theory and empirical work are poised to make great advances that can be of tremendous value outside of academia, particularly to policymakers,” Greenstone said.

“Michael’s research is cutting-edge, practical and relevant to real-world challenges,” said Henry M. Paulson Jr., chairman of the Paulson Institute at the University of Chicago who serves on the Becker Friedman Institute Council. “He combines great analytical and communications skills and is an excellent choice for this role.”

The Becker Friedman Institute was created in 2011 with the joining of the Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics and the Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory. Based in the Saieh Hall for Economics, the institute works in collaboration with the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, the Department of Economics, the Law School and the Harris School of Public Policy.

The institute’s first chair was Gary S. Becker, AM’53, PhD’55, University Professor of Economics and Sociology, who pushed economics into new scholarly fields and policy areas, such as crime, discrimination, education and addiction. Becker died in 2014.

Before coming to the University in 2013, Greenstone served as the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an editor of The Journal of Political Economy.

In addition to serving as the chief economist for the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2009 to 2010, Greenstone now serves on the U.S. Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board, and continues to consult with governments around the world to develop sound economic policies. He was a member of the EPA Science Advisory Board’s Environmental Economics Advisory Committee.

Greenstone has deep roots at UChicago. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and served as an assistant professor of economics at the University from 2000 to 2003. His grandmother, Erika Fromm, was on the psychology faculty at UChicago and his father, J. David Greenstone, was a professor and chairman of the Department of Political Science before his death in 1990.

Prof. Douglas J. Skinner named interim dean at Chicago Booth

Wed, 03 Aug 2016 15:30 -0500

Douglas J. Skinner, the Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Accounting and deputy dean for faculty, will serve as the interim dean of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, effective Aug. 15.

“Doug’s appointment will help sustain the momentum that has been built to further establish Chicago Booth as one of the world’s preeminent business schools while the search for the next dean is conducted,” said President Robert J. Zimmer.

A UChicago faculty member since 2005, Skinner is a leading expert in corporate disclosure practices, corporate financial reporting and corporate finance, with a focus on payout policy. His teaching topics include financial accounting, financial statement analysis, corporate finance and empirical methods in accounting research.

Prior to his appointment at Chicago Booth, Skinner was the KPMG Professor of Accounting at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.

“It is a great privilege to be a member of the Booth faculty, and even more so to serve in the dean’s office for the last 16 months. I am now honored to have the opportunity to serve Booth and the University in this even more important role,” Skinner said. “Our faculty, staff, alumni and students continue to make Booth one of the world’s best business schools, and I look forward to working with all of our constituents to continue our success while preserving the school’s long-held values. I am confident that Chicago Booth will continue to flourish during this transition.”

Appointed Booth’s deputy dean for faculty in 2015, Skinner oversees the finance, operations, macroeconomics, organization and markets, and entrepreneurship faculty groups, as well as the Initiative on Global Markets, the Fama-Miller Center for Research in Finance, the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the Social Enterprise Initiative, and the Harry L. Davis Leadership Center.

The formal process for selecting the next dean of Booth will begin soon with the election of a faculty committee to advise the president and provost.

Skinner succeeds Sunil Kumar, the George Pratt Shultz Professor of Operations Management, who will become provost of Johns Hopkins University on Sept. 1, after serving as Booth’s dean since 2011.

Wallace W. Booth, alumnus and trustee emeritus, 1922-2016

Tue, 19 Jul 2016 13:00 -0500

A prominent business executive and philanthropist, Trustee Emeritus Wallace (Wally) W. Booth, AB’48, MBA’48, died at home in Los Angeles last month at age 93.

Booth was the retired chairman of the board and CEO of Ducommun Inc., a Los Angeles-based company engaged in the production and servicing of aerospace-related components. Throughout his career, he held senior positions with Ford Motor Co., Rockwell International and United Brands, Inc.

Born in Nashville, Tenn., Booth was raised in Chicago. He served as an officer in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II before earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business from UChicago in 1948. He was elected to the University Board of Trustees in 1982, becoming a life trustee in 1991 and trustee emeritus in 2007.

He served on the budget planning, development planning and investment committees and was a vice chair of the Council on the Graduate School of Business (Booth Council). In 1986 he endowed the Wallace W. Booth Professorship. (Wallace Booth is of no relation to David Booth, for whom Chicago Booth is named).

He served on the board of directors of several companies, including Litton Industries, Rohr, First Interstate Bank and Navistar International and was involved in a number of philanthropic organizations, including The Children’s Bureau, the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Foundation and the League for Children. Booth also was a former president of the Southern California United Way.

Booth is survived by his wife, Rosemary; his children, Ann Booth Cox and John England Booth; three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by Donna Booth, to whom he was married for 50 years.

Charles M. Harper, MBA'50, longtime supporter of Chicago Booth, 1927-2016

Thu, 02 Jun 2016 10:00 -0500

Charles M. Harper, a University of Chicago Booth School of Business alumnus whose landmark gift in 2007 led to the renaming of the school’s main campus building in Hyde Park, died May 28 at his home in Omaha. He was 88.

Harper, who was known as Mike, earned his MBA in 1950. He rose to prominence in the 1970s when he rescued ConAgra from near bankruptcy and transformed the failing food producer into an industry powerhouse. After a 1985 heart attack forced him to change his eating habits, Harper pioneered the creation of ConAgra’s Healthy Choice brand—one of the first mainstream food lines aimed at healthful diets.

“Throughout his remarkable career, Mike was an extraordinary alumnus. Even in retirement, he remained a generous and engaged supporter of Chicago Booth,” said Sunil Kumar, Chicago Booth dean and the George Pratt Shultz Professor of Operations Management.

In recognition of his donation in 2007, at the time the largest gift in the business school’s history, the Hyde Park Center at 5807 S. Woodlawn Ave. was renamed the Charles M. Harper Center. He also sponsored the Charles M. Harper Road to CEO Series and served on the Council on Chicago Booth from 1992 to 1995. He was awarded Booth’s Distinguished Corporate Alumnus Award in 1991.

Harper was born on Sept. 27, 1927 in Lansing, Mich., and grew up in South Bend, Ind. He received a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from Purdue University and served in the U.S. Army. After earning his MBA, Harper began his career as an engineer for General Motors, followed by 20 years at Pillsbury, a unit of General Mills, where he was a group vice president.

During his nearly two decades at ConAgra—as executive vice president and chief operating officer in 1974 until his retirement as chairman and chief executive officer in 1992—ConAgra’s annual sales increased from $600 million to more than $20 billion. After a brief retirement, he served as chairman and chief executive of RJR Nabisco from 1993 to 1996.

Harper’s wife, Josie, preceded him in death. The Josie Harper Admissions Suite at Booth is named for her. Harper is survived by his daughters, Carolyn Harper, Elizabeth Murphy and Kathleen Wenngatz; son, Charles Jr.; 11 grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren.

Juan de Pablo to receive 2016 DuPont Medal for excellence in nutrition and health science

Wed, 25 May 2016 10:11 -0500

The Danisco Foundation has selected the University of Chicago’s Juan de Pablo as the recipient of the DuPont Nutrition and Health Science and Excellence Medal 2016.

The Liew Family Professor in Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, de Pablo will be honored for his work that led to optimal processes to stabilize live bacteria for survival and extended stability performance after lyophilization (freeze-drying). Such processes are now used throughout the world in the food and probiotic industries. de Pablo holds several patents on the underlying technology, which also has pharmaceutical and medical applications for preservation of drugs, cells and tissue.

The technology that de Pablo and his students developed was originally inspired by nature’s own mechanisms to withstand prolonged periods of drought and low temperatures. His team developed detailed molecular models to explain such mechanisms, whose results were subsequently translated into working bacterial formulations and processes.

The foundation grants the medal upon recommendations from DuPont Nutrition & Health’s Technical Fellows to a senior scientist broadly recognized by the fellows for scientific and operational excellence and a remarkable record of accomplishment in the industry. DuPont Fellows are scientists and engineers who define new technologies, influence research directions, and mentor scientists both inside and outside the company. The award includes an invitation to address the Nutrution and Health Technical Fellows at a ceremony to be held in Denmark.

Danisco, a subsidiary of DuPont, is a Danish biotech company that employs more than 7,000 people in more than 40 countries. Its products, used in ice cream, jams, bread, and many other food products, are eaten regularly by more than 100 million people worldwide.

UChicago faculty members receive named, distinguished service professorships

Wed, 17 Feb 2016 16:20 -0600

A total of 19 faculty members recently have received named professorships or have been named distinguished service professors. Graeme I. Bell, Philip Bohlman, Eric D. Isaacs and Konstantin Sonin have received distinguished service professorships; and Daniel Abebe, Sian Beilock, Diane Brentari, Kathryn A. Colby, Nicolas Dauphas, Justin Driver, Robert D. Gibbons, Melissa L. Gilliam, Gary Herrigel, Aziz Huq, Michèle Lowrie, David Meltzer, Andrey Rzhetsky, Amir Sufi and Gary Tubb have received named professorships.

Biological Sciences Division

Graeme I. Bell, the Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine and Human Genetics, has been named the Kovler Family Distinguished Service Professor.

Bell studies the genetics of diabetes mellitus and the biology of the insulin-secreting pancreatic beta-cell. He cloned and characterized many of the genes involved in the regulation of glucose metabolism, including insulin, glucagon, glucose transporters and others.

He has won many honors in the field, including the 2013 Banting Medal for Scientific Achievement from the American Diabetes Association for his pioneering work in understanding the role of genetics in the diagnosis and treatment of diabetes. In 2012, he received the Manpei Suzuki International Prize for Diabetes Research. Bell is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

As a core member of the University of Chicago Medicine’s diabetes genetics team, Bell works to personalize treatment based on a patient’s specific genetic defect. Many of these patients are children, and some can be treated with pills that compensate for the genetic defect, rather than with insulin shots. More than 1,500 patients and family members are now participating in genetic studies aimed at improving treatment through a better understanding of genetics.

Bell joined the UChicago faculty in 1986.

Kathryn A. Colby, Professor and Chair of Ophthalmology and Visual Science, has been named a Louis Block Professor.

Colby is an internationally renowned corneal surgeon, educator and researcher with expertise in a wide variety of corneal diseases, neoplastic diseases of the surface of the eye, and the implantation of artificial corneas. She has a longstanding interest in Fuchs’ corneal dystrophy, the most common cause for corneal transplantation in the United States and her studies in this area have run the gamut from basic science to clinical trials and novel surgical treatments to improve patient outcomes.

In addition, she has specific expertise in the management of ocular surface tumors, including conjunctival melanoma and squamous cell carcinoma. Colby spearheaded efforts to improve surgical techniques for a variety of implanted eye devices, including the Boston keratoprosthesis (artificial cornea) and the implantable miniature telescope, the only FDA-approved device to improve vision for patients with advanced macular degeneration.

Colby is an active teacher, who has trained hundreds of medical students, ophthalmology residents, clinical cornea and pediatric ophthalmology fellows, many of whom are leaders in ophthalmology. Colby was the founding director of the pediatric cornea service at Boston Children’s Hospital and is a member of the executive committee of the board of directors of the Cornea Society.

Colby joined the University of Chicago faculty in 2015.

Robert D. Gibbons, Professor of Medicine, Public Health Sciences and Psychiatry has been named the Blum-Riese Professor.

Gibbons is a nationally recognized authority on a range of statistical disciplines, including mental health statistics, environmental statistics, item-response theory and drug safety. Gibbons has led the Center for Health Statistics since it was established in 2010. From its beginning, the center has continuously earned federal funding and acclaim for its work applying complex statistical theory to inform public policy.

Gibbons has authored or co-authored nearly 300 peer-reviewed publications and six textbooks. In addition, he has served on several editorial boards, including the board of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Psychiatry.

Gibbons is a Pritzker Scholar, a fellow of the American Statistical Association and cofounder of its Mental Health Statistics section. He also is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute and the National Academy of Medicine. Gibbons has earned numerous important accolades, including lifetime achievement awards from the American Statistical Association, the American Public Health Association, and Harvard University, as well as two W. J. Youden Awards for outstanding contributions to statistics in chemistry.

He joined the UChicago faculty in 2010.

Melissa L. Gilliam, Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Pediatrics, has been named the Ellen H. Block Professor in Health and Justice.

Gilliam is section chief of family planning and contraceptive research at the University and serves as dean for diversity and inclusion for the University of Chicago Medicine and Biological Sciences Division.

As an authority on contraception and adolescent health, Gilliam addresses the gynecologic needs of girls and adolescents, especially youth of color, sexual minorities and young people at risk for poor sexual and reproductive health. Gilliam says her work focuses on “marginalized populations, reduction of health disparities through community-based interventions and efforts to increase diversity and improve health policy.” She heads the University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Innovation in Sexual and Reproductive Health, also known as Ci3. She cofounded the Game Changer Chicago Design Lab, which develops games and digital media interventions for youth.

In October of 2015, she was elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine, which honors those who have made major contributions to the fields of health and medicine and demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service.

Gilliam joined the University of Chicago faculty in 2005.

David Meltzer, Professor of Medicine, Economics and Public Policy, has been named the Fanny L. Pritzker Professor.

Meltzer’s research explores problems in health economics and public policy with a focus on the theoretical foundations of medical cost-effectiveness analysis, and the cost and quality of hospital care. In his research, Meltzer uses economic analysis to address problems in health economics and public policy, focusing on the cost and quality of care, especially in teaching hospitals.

He is a national leader in the study of the relatively new specialty of hospital medicine. He heads the Hospitalist Scholars Program at UChicago, which provides training in this field and examines the economic forces that have fueled growth of this specialty. Meltzer also pioneered the development of the Comprehensive Care Physician model, in which physicians provide inpatient and outpatient care for patients who are at an increased risk for hospitalization. The model is designed to leverage the power of the doctor–patient relationship and improve outcomes while controlling costs.

Meltzer also directs the Center for Health and the Social Sciences, and chairs the Committee on Clinical and Translational Science. Meltzer also is director of the University of Chicago Urban Health Lab. In October of 2015, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Meltzer joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1996.

Andrey Rzhetsky, Professor of Medicine, has been named the Edna K. Papazian Professor.

Rzhetsky is a pioneer in the development of novel computational strategies that shed light on the complex genetic, molecular and environmental interactions involved in human health and disease.

His research utilizes powerful approaches to extract insights from big data. To harvest as much information as possible, his group runs data-mining projects that involve mathematical modeling and analysis of disparate datasets, such as electronic medical records, scientific texts and high-throughput experimental data. His models require dynamic collaboration with a range of experts in disease phenotypes, genetics, statistical modeling, epidemiology and the sociology of science. Rzhetsky also developed in invented the first automated literature extraction program for the prediction of molecular interactions.

Rzhetsky is the director of the Conte Center for Computational Neuropsychiatric Genomics, and is a senior fellow of both the Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology and the Computation Institute.

He serves as associate editor for numerous high-profile journals, including Nature Scientific Reports and PLoS Computational Biology.

Rzhetsky joined the UChicago faculty in 2007.

Humanities Division

Philip Bohlman, the Mary Werkman Distinguished Service Professor of Music and in the College, has been named the Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish History.

An ethnomusicologist, Bohlman studies a wide range of topics related to music and modernity, with a focus on Jewish music and the politics of religion and race in the music of the Middle East and South Asia. His other research interests include Song Loves the Masses (2016) a translation of the musical writings of the 18th-century philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder and the Eurovision Song Contest.

Bohlman is the author of Revival and Reconciliation: Sacred Music in the Making of European Modernity (2013), Focus: Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe (2011), Jewish Music and Modernity (2008), and World Music: A Very Short Introduction (2002). He also edited The Cambridge History of World Music (2013).

An active performer as well as a scholar, Bohlman is the artistic director of the New Budapest Orpheum Society. The eight-member Jewish cabaret troupe is the ensemble-in-residence of the Division of the Humanities at the University.

The group’s recent projects include As Dreams Fall Apart (2014), a CD that draws on music from Yiddish and German-Jewish films from the 1920s to the post-Holocaust generation of the 1950s, and for which the ensemble received a 2016 Grammy Award nomination. Bohlman and the New Budapest Orpheum Society were the recipients of the 2011 Noah Greenberg Award for Historical Performance from the American Musicological Society.

Bohlman joined the UChicago faculty in 1987.

Diane Brentari, Professor of Linguistics and in the College, has been named the Mary Werkman Professor.

Brentari, PhD’90, studies sign languages from around the world to better understand their similarities and differences and to illuminate the properties that all languages share. Her work has included projects on phonetics, phonology, morphology and prosody. She has developed the Prosodic Model of sign language phonology.

Currently, her work addresses cross-linguistic variation, particularly the differences and similarities among sign languages. She is also interested in the emergence of language, and is engaged in studies of the cognitive, social and cultural aspects of gesture, homesign systems and well-established sign languages.

Brentari is the author of Sign Languages: A Cambridge Language Survey (2010) and A Prosodic Model of Sign Language Phonology (1998), and editor of Foreign Vocabulary in Sign Languages: A Cross-linguistic Investigation of Word Formation (2001) and Morphology and its Relation to Syntax and Phonology (1998).

She is the director of the Sign Language Linguistics Laboratory and co-director of the Center for the Study of Gesture, Sign, and Language.

Brentari joined the UChicago faculty in 2011.

Michèle Lowrie, Professor of Classics and in the College, has been named the Andrew W. Mellon Professor.

A literary scholar with interests in ideology and forms of expression, Michèle Lowrie traces the history of political concepts and their transmission by figurative means. Her research focuses on Roman literature and political thought and ancient Rome’s continued resonance in modernity.

Her current projects include: the emergence of security as a concept in the wake of the collapse of the Roman Republic; the Roman tradition of representing civil war, in collaboration with Barbara Vinken; the exemplum and exceptional politics from Cicero to Augustus; “Thinking through Tropes,” a faculty seminar funded by the Neubauer Collegium that examines the representational methods for structuring traditions; and transformations in the public sphere between Cicero and Horace.

Lowrie has written two monographs and numerous articles, as well as edited four volumes. She is a recipient of the Burkhardt Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, a visiting research professorship at the Warburg-Haus in Hamburg, a fellowship from the Research Center for Cultural Theory and Theory of the Political Imaginary at the University of Konstanz, and fellowships from the Center for Advanced Studies at Ludwig-Maximilian’s University in Munich. Lowrie is currently in residence at the American Academy in Berlin as the Dirk Ippen Berlin Prize Fellow. Her sabbatical has received additional funding from the Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship.

Lowrie, who will become deputy dean for the Division of the Humanities on July 1, joined the UChicago faculty in 2009.

Gary Tubb, Professor of South Asian Languages and Civilizations and in the College, has been named the first Anupama and Guru Ramakrishnan Professor.

A leading Sanskrit scholar, Tubb examines the tradition’s poetics, grammatical forms and commentarial traditions. In addition to his scholarship of Sanskrit language and literature, Tubb studies the literary, religious and philosophical traditions of India.

Tubb is the author of Scholastic Sanskrit: A Handbook for Students (2007). He is an editor and primary contributor in the book Innovations and Turning Points: Toward a History of Kavya Literature (2014). Another book, On Poets and Pots: Essays on Sanskrit Poetry, Poetics and Philosophy, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Alongside his teaching and research, Tubb is the faculty director of the University of Chicago Center in Delhi.

He joined the UChicago faculty in 2007.

Physical Sciences Division

Nicolas Dauphas, Professor of Geophysical Sciences and in the College and the Enrico Fermi Institute, has been named a Louis Block Professor.

A leading isotope geochemist, Dauphas draws upon the analytical and modeling methods of his training as an engineer to develop novel strategies for solving important scientific questions using naturally occurring isotope variations. He founded and directs UChicago’s Origins Laboratory to examine questions pertaining to the early evolution of the Earth and what meteorites reveal about the formation of planets, asteroids and comets.

His research has included an examination of how the rapid formation of Mars makes it more akin to a planetary embryo than a fully grown planet, and the discovery of microscopic remnants in a meteorite of a nearby supernova that exploded before the solar system was formed.

Just last year, a paper Dauphas published was named an Editors’ Choice by Science Magazine. The paper addressed a longstanding problem regarding the origin of Earth’s depletion in silicon and the origin of Earth’s core density deficit. His research bridges the gap between planetary sciences and astrophysics, as attested by his invitation to deliver the 2015 Spitzer lecture in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University.

Dauphas has received the American Geophysical Union’s Macelwane Medal, the European Association for Geochemistry’s Houtermans Medal, and the Meteoritical Society’s Nier Prize. He also is an American Geophysical Union fellow and a David and Lucile Packard Foundation fellow.

Dauphas joined the UChicago faculty in 2004.

Eric D. Isaacs, Provost and Professor of Physics and in the College, has been named the Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor.

Isaacs’ distinguished research career as a condensed matter physicist has focused on quantum materials. His early research in developing synchrotron X-ray scattering techniques continues to play an important role in nanoscale scientific research.

Isaacs served as director of Argonne National Laboratory from 2009 to 2014. Under his leadership, Argonne researchers focused on solving the grand scientific and engineering challenges of our time—particularly the vital national priority of developing game-changing sustainable energy technologies. During that period he also played key roles in the creation of the Institute for Molecular Engineering and expanding the impact of the Computation Institute—two joint efforts of the University and Argonne.

From 2003 to 2008 he served as founding director of Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials.

Isaacs has authored or co-authored more than 150 scientific papers and presentations. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and has served on multiple national scientific advisory committees, including the Department of Energy’s Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee.

Isaacs joined the UChicago faculty in 2004 and became University provost in 2014.

Social Sciences Division

Sian Beilock, Vice Provost for Academic Initiatives and Professor of Psychology and in the College, has been named the Stella M. Rowley Professor.

Beilock, whose research focuses on topics at the intersection of cognitive science and education, explores the cognitive and neural substrates of skill learning as well as the mechanisms by which performance breaks down in high-stress or high-pressure situations.

Beilock is one of the world’s leading experts on the brain science behind “choking under pressure” and the many factors influencing all types of performance: from test-taking to public speaking to one’s golf swing. In her laboratory, the Human Performance Lab, Beilock employs a wide range of methods such as measures of performance, physiological measures of stress, and neuroimaging techniques. She also conducts studies in the classroom with students from early elementary school through college.

She has authored two books: How The Body Knows Its Mind: The Surprising Power of the Physical Environment to Influence How You Think and Feel (2015) and Choke: What The Secrets Of The Brain Reveals About Getting It Right When You Have To (2010).

Beilock joined the UChicago faculty in 2005.

University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Amir Sufi, the Chicago Board of Trade Professor, has been named the first Bruce Lindsay Professor of Economics and Public Policy.

In his research, Sufi focuses on finance and macroeconomics. His recent research on household debt and the economy has been profiled in The Economist, the Financial Times, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He also has presented this work to policymakers at the Federal Reserve, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs, and the White House Council of Economic Advisors. This research forms the basis of his book co-authored with Atif Mian: House of Debt: How They (and You) Caused the Great Recession and How We Can Prevent It from Happening Again, which was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2014.

Sufi also is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and he serves as an associate editor for the American Economic Review and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. His articles have been published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Finance and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Sufi graduated Phi Beta Kappa with honors from the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University with a bachelor’s degree in economics. As a PhD student in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he received the Solow Endowment Prize for Graduate Student Excellence in Teaching and Research.

He joined the UChicago faculty in 2005.

The College

Gary Herrigel, Professor of Political Science and in the College, has been named the Paul Klapper Professor.

Herrigel’s research interests include comparative political economy and alternative forms of governance in economic process and regulation throughout the developed and developing world. A common thread in his work has been an interest in the changing boundaries of firms and the political arrangements that govern them in Europe (particularly Germany), the United States and Japan.

Herrigel’s most recent book, Manufacturing Possibilities: Creative Action and Industrial Recomposition in the U.S., Germany and Japan, applies pragmatist theories of creative social action to contemporary industrial transformation processes.

Currently, he is completing a book on recursivity and governance in the globalization of German manufacturing. He also is beginning a project to explore the intersection of public and private governance architectures in environmental, health and safety regulation in the Norwegian offshore oil industry.

In the face of pessimism regarding the future of manufacturing in developed countries, Herrigel aims to understand and identify possibilities for continued growth and employment by conceiving of contemporary manufacturing in a globally interactive way.

In addition to the books Herrigel has authored and co-edited, he has written numerous articles and book chapters and has edited a special issue of the journal Enterprise and Society.

Herrigel joined the UChicago faculty in 1989.

Harris School of Public Policy Studies

Konstantin Sonin, Professor of Public Policy, has been named the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor.

A prominent scholar of Russian, Sonin’s research interests include political economics, development and economic theory and political economy. In recent years Sonin has focused on applying behavioral microeconomic concepts to an array of social and political phenomena, including corruption, dictatorship and the inequitable distribution of property.

His academic work has earned him three medals from the Global Development Network, best economist awards from the Russian Academy of Science in 2002-03, and the 2008 Ovsievich Memorial Prize in Mathematical Economics, given annually to a distinguished Russian scholar under 40.

Sonin’s papers have been published in leading academic journals of economics such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies and political science such as the American Political Science Review and American Journal of Political Science.

Sonin joined the UChicago faculty in 2015.

University of Chicago Law School

Daniel Abebe, Professor of Law, has been named the Harold J. and Marion F. Green Professor of Law.

Abebe’s research interests focus primarily on the relationship between the constitutional law of U.S. foreign relations, public international law and international politics; international courts and the structure of international organizations; and cyber warfare and presidential power.

He has taught foreign relations law, public international law, conflict of laws, international trade law, legal issues in international transactions, and refugee and asylum law, among other courses and seminars.

He is a contributor to a forthcoming book Why Comparative International Law Needs International Relations Theory, (Oxford University Press 2016) and two of his papers, “Cyber War, International Politics and Institutional Design” and “International Human Rights Law in Africa: Are Courts Effective,” will be published in the University of Chicago Law Review and the Virginia Journal of International Law respectively.

Abebe’s articles have appeared in the Chicago Journal of International Law, the Vanderbilt Law Review, the Stanford Journal of International Law, the Supreme Court Review, and the Michigan Journal of International Law.

Abebe clerked for Judge Damon J. Keith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

He joined the UChicago Law School faculty in 2008.

Justin Driver, Professor of Law, has been named the Harry N. Wyatt Professor of Law.

Driver’s principal teaching and research interests include constitutional law, constitutional theory, education law and the intersection of race with legal institutions.

His writing has appeared in publications such as the University of Chicago Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, Supreme Court Review, Harvard Law Review, and the New Republic.

His paper, “The Constitutional Conservatism of the Warren Court” (published in the California Law Review), was awarded the 2012 William Nelson Cromwell Article prize for the best article in American legal history published by an early career scholar.

Driver served as a law clerk to Judge Merrick B. Garland, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Justice Stephen Breyer of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Driver joined the University of Chicago Law School faculty in 2014.

Aziz Huq, Professor of Law, has been named the Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law.

Huq’s teaching and research interests include constitutional law, criminal procedure, federal courts and legislation. His scholarship concerns the intersection of institutional design and individual rights and liberties.

He has been published in both leading law reviews and peer-reviewed journals. His recent research articles have won the Association of American Law Schools’ Junior Scholars Paper Competition Award in Criminal Law and have been selected for the Harvard/Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum. His co-edited volume “Assessing Constitutional Performance” is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press this year.

Prior to UChicago, Huq litigated cases in both the U.S. Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court. He also was a senior consultant analyst for the International Crisis Group, researching constitutional design and implementation in Pakistan, Nepal, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka.

He clerked for Judge Robert D. Sack of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Huq joined the UChicago faculty in 2009.

Sunil Kumar appointed to second term as dean of University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Thu, 20 Aug 2015 15:00 -0500

Sunil Kumar has been appointed dean of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business for a second five-year term, President Robert J. Zimmer and Provost Eric D. Isaacs announced.

In their message to the Chicago Booth community, Zimmer and Isaacs commended Kumar for his energetic leadership, which has earned the respect of the school’s worldwide community.

“We look forward to working with Sunil in the years ahead to ensure that Booth remains a preeminent destination for business education and scholarship,” Zimmer and Isaacs wrote. “He has demonstrated a commitment to the success of Booth’s faculty individually and as a whole, and to the success of Booth students and alumni in Chicago and around the globe.”

Under Kumar’s leadership, Booth has broadened and strengthened its intellectual footprint, recruiting and expanding faculty with expertise in diverse areas ranging from marketing to operations management.

Kumar has supported students in realizing their broader aspirations by expanding student scholarships and the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, as well as establishing the Social Enterprise Initiative and the Harry L. Davis Center for Leadership. Chicago Booth has continued to aggressively develop its highly ranked full-time MBA program.

During his first term as dean, Kumar has enhanced the school’s global presence, including a successful move of the Executive MBA Program Asia to Hong Kong in 2014, which resulted in a strong, geographically diverse student body.

In its effort to strengthen ties with alumni, Booth has created Reconnect, a weekend-long event that combines its popular management conference with class reunions and alumni celebrations. Kumar established an office to disseminate the school’s intellectual capital more effectively through its Capital Ideas website, videos, blogs and redesigned magazine.

Kumar’s leadership since arriving at Booth as dean in 2011 has brought strong alumni engagement and fundraising support for student scholarships, faculty chairs, the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Social Enterprise Initiative and the Center in Hong Kong.

Prior to Booth, Kumar spent 14 years on the faculty of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, where he was the Fred H. Merrill Professor of Operations, Information and Technology. He has won numerous awards for his research and teaching. His research areas include performance evaluation and control of manufacturing systems, service operations and communications networks.

Kumar serves on the board of the Civic Consulting Alliance, Chicago, and the Indian Institute of Science Alumni Association of North America. He is a trustee of the University of Chicago India Trust, and the University of Chicago Hong Kong Trust.

Born in India, Kumar received a bachelor of engineering degree from Mangalore University in Surathkal, his master’s degree in computer science and automation from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, and a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

American Academy of Arts and Sciences elects 12 members with UChicago ties

Thu, 23 Apr 2015 15:30 -0500

The newly elected class of members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences includes five UChicago faculty members and seven additional University alumni, including University Trustee Joseph Neubauer, MBA’65.

One of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies, the American Academy is also a leading center for independent policy research. Members contribute to Academy publications and studies of science and technology policy, global security and international affairs, social policy and American institutions, and the humanities, arts and education.

Members of the 2015 class include recipients of the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes; MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships; and Grammy, Emmy, Oscar and Tony awards.

“We are honored to elect a new class of extraordinary women and men to join our distinguished membership,” said Don Randel, chair of the Academy’s Board of Directors. “Each new member is a leader in his or her field and has made a distinct contribution to the nation and the world. We look forward to engaging them in the intellectual life of this vibrant institution.”

Since its founding in 1780, the Academy has elected leading “thinkers and doers” from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th, and Margaret Mead and Martin Luther King Jr. in the 20th. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.

The full list of the new members is available at https://www.amacad.org/content/members/members.aspx.

The UChicago faculty members and alumni elected to the academy are:

László Babai, the George and Elizabeth Yovovich Professor in Computer Science and Mathematics, specializes in complexity theory, algorithms, combinatorics, asymptotic group theory, and the many interactions among these fields, including problems of pure mathematics motivated by questions in the theory of computing. His honors include the international Gödel Prize (1993) in theoretical computer science for developing the concept of interactive proofs, which helped reshape the landscape of the theory of algorithms. In 1994 he was a plenary speaker at the quadrennial International Congress of Mathematicians, a coveted honor in the field. In an indication of potential applications of his foundational work to emerging technologies, so-called “Babai points” in n-dimensional grids have been widely cited in the area of mobile communications. Babai is one of the founders of the highly acclaimed study-abroad program “Budapest Semesters in Mathematics” (1985). In 2005 Babai launched the prominent open-access journal Theory of Computing. In the same year he received the University’s Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

Matthew Gentzkow, the Richard O. Ryan Professor of Economics, studies empirical industrial organization and political economy, with a specific focus on media industries. His work, which has been covered by major national media, has appeared in the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Economic Review, and Econometrica. In 2014 Gentzkow received the American Economic Association’s John Bates Clark Medal, given to an American economist under the age of 40 who has made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge. He has also received an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and also has been awarded several National Science Foundation grants for research on media, and won a Faculty Excellence Award for teaching.

Françoise Meltzer, the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities, Divinity School, and the College, studies contemporary critical theory and 19th-century French, English and German literature. Meltzer’s publications include Hot Property: The Stakes and Claims of Literary Originality (1994), For Fear of the Fire: Joan of Arc and the Limits of Subjectivity (2001) and Seeing Double: Baudelaire's Modernity (2011). With her colleague Jas Elsner, she edited Saints: Faith Without Borders (2011). She has edited Critical Inquiry since 1982. In 2006, Meltzer received the Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques (Knight in the Order of the Academic Palms) from the French government, the highest honor for academics in France. She began teaching at UChicago in 1975.

Ray Pierrehumbert, the Louis Block Professor in Geophysical Sciences, has research interests that include the physics of climate, especially regarding the long-term evolution of planetary climates. Pierrehumbert is serving the current academic year as a King Carl XVI Gustaf Professor in Environmental Science at Stockholm University’s department of meteorology. The university will award him an honorary doctorate later this year. He was a co-author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Third Assessment (1997-2001). He has been recognized for his contributions to this work, for which the IPCC was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, jointly with Al Gore, “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.” Pierrehumbert also is the author of Principles of Planetary Climate, and co-editor of The Warming Papers: The Scientific Foundation for the Climate Change Forecast. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he also is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

Philip J. Reny, the William C. Norby Professor of Economics is an economic theorist who focuses on auction theory, game theory and the theory of mechanism design. Among his most important contributions are his results on the existence of Nash equilibrium in discontinuous games and his work on information aggregation in double auctions. Reny serves on the board of editors for American Economic Journal: Microeconomics and served as the head editor of Journal of Political Economy. He became a fellow of the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory in 2012, a charter member of the Game Theory Society in 1999 and a fellow of the Econometric Society in 1996.

Joseph Neubauer, MBA’65, will begin a three-year term as chairman of the University of Chicago’s Board of Trustees on May 28. Neubauer, the retired chairman of ARAMARK Corporation, has served as a trustee since 1992. He serves as chair of The University of Chicago Campaign: Inquiry and Impact, which launched in October 2014 with a goal of $4.5 billion. After earning his MBA, Neubauer took positions at Chase Manhattan Bank and PepsiCo. In 1979 he joined ARAMARK, a worldwide provider of food, hospitality and other professional services, as chief financial officer. He served for nearly three decades as ARAMARK’s chief executive officer and later board chairman. During his tenure the company grew revenues from $2 billion to $14 billion and employed more than 250,000 people in 23 countries. Neubauer and his wife Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer received the University of Chicago Medal in 2013. Awarded by the Board of Trustees, the University Medal recognizes distinguished service of the highest order to the University by an individual or a couple.

Other University of Chicago alumni who have been elected members of the Academy this year are: Jane C. Ginsburg, AB’76, AM’77; Richard Kurin, AM’74, PhD’81; Teresa A. Sullivan, AM’72, PhD’75; David S. Tatel, JD’66; Peter C. Wainwright, PhD’88; and Iván Werning, AM’99, PhD’02.

Chicago Booth’s New Venture Challenge ranks among top accelerator programs in country

Fri, 20 Mar 2015 16:00 -0500

The premier startup program at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, the Edward L. Kaplan, ’71, New Venture Challenge, was recently named a top accelerator program in the United States.

The NVC, which is run by the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Chicago Booth, ranked fourth in research released by the Seed Accelerator Rankings Program. Independent accelerator programs Angelpad, MuckerLab and Techstars landed in the top three. Stanford University’s StartX, which ranked sixth, was the only other university accelerator program listed in the top 10.

“This ranking puts a spotlight on university accelerator programs,” said Steve Kaplan, faculty director of the Polsky Center and the Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at Booth. “For the past 19 years, our NVC program has pioneered many of the same elements found in most accelerator programs today.”

This was the first year in which university accelerators were included in the annual research conducted by the Seed Accelerator Rankings Project. Accelerators are defined as a fixed-term, cohort-based program that includes mentorship, educational components and culminates in a public pitch event or demo day. Both independent and university accelerators meeting this definition were asked to submit information on companies that participated in their accelerator program between 2005 and 2014.

“We always knew university accelerator programs provided great educational opportunities for entrepreneurs,” said Yael Hochberg, managing director of the Seed Accelerator Rankings Project, and the Ralph S. O’Connor Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Rice University Jones Graduate School of Business. “By including universities in our research, our goal is to offer insights for the community and measure the impact and success these university programs provide.”

Notable NVC participants included in the Seed Accelerator Rankings Project research were Braintree, which was acquired by PayPal in 2013 for $800 million; GrubHub, which completed an IPO in April 2014 and whose market cap exceeds $3.8 billion; Bump Technologies, which was acquired by Google in 2013; and Simple Mills, which raised a seed round from Hyde Park Angels in July 2014.

“We are very proud of the work that goes into supporting our student entrepreneurs,” said Ellen Rudnick, MBA’73, executive director of the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. “In May 2016, we will mark a milestone as we celebrate 20 years of our NVC program.”

Yusef Al-Jarani wins Gates Cambridge Scholarship

Wed, 11 Feb 2015 13:20 -0600

Fourth-year College student Yusef Al-Jarani has won a Gates Cambridge Scholarship to study at the University of Cambridge beginning in the fall. One of 40 U.S. recipients chosen from a pool of some 800 applicants, Al-Jarani will complete an MPhil in development studies, focusing on the Middle East and North Africa.

The Gates Cambridge is awarded to students who exhibit academic excellence and leadership potential, and who demonstrate a commitment to improving others’ lives. Al-Jarani plans to work in economic development to help Arab youth find jobs. “I am grateful for this opportunity to help me get to where I want to be and help who I want to help,” Al-Jarani said.

Al-Jarani’s focus on the Arab world grew out of his childhood years traveling to Libya from his home in Troy, Ohio, to visit his father’s extended family. “As an Arab American you sort of can’t be divorced from the politics of the region,” he said.

Al-Jarani recalls the mood when longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi ruled the country. “My father would tell me not to look at anyone or speak to anyone because they could potentially be a state agent,” he said. “I remember a very authoritarian society.”

But during his most recent trip to Libya in September 2012—after Arab Spring uprisings led to Gaddafi’s overthrow—Al-Jarani saw possibilities for a new way forward. “People were the happiest I’d ever seen them,” he said. “They had suffered for so long and now was their chance to build a better life—it was a very inspirational experience for me.”

After completing his degree at Cambridge, Al-Jarani would like to develop small and medium-sized businesses in high-knowledge industries to help Middle Eastern and North African young people get jobs. He has in mind people like his cousin, a dentist, who graduated from his university with top honors but cannot find meaningful work.

“Youth in the Middle East and North Africa face very high unemployment rates, even though they are very well educated,” Al-Jarani said. “The opportunities simply are not there. I think there are ways for startup incubators and small business consultative services to help them grow their markets and create jobs.”

Al-Jarani says the bigotry and racism he has sometimes faced as an Arab Muslim growing up in the United States after 9/11 is partially what propelled him toward his goal. “In sixth grade, a girl came up to me on the playground and told me to go back to my own country,” he said. “I was born in Northern Virginia, my favorite music was hip-hop and I loved to watch Hollywood films,” he added. “I had never experienced this idea of myself as ‘Other.’ ”

That incident, however, prompted an exploration of his complex identity as both an American and a Muslim—“those two things aren’t mutually exclusive,” Al-Jarani said—and drew him closer to the region of his ancestry.

Al-Jarani is the recipient of a 2014 Harry S. Truman Scholarship. In 2013, he was awarded a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship to study Arabic in Jordan, and he represented UChicago at the McDonald Cadet Leadership Conference at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He is co-founder of the Phoenix Development Fund, a Chicago-based nonprofit providing free business development services to organizations on the city’s South Side. Twenty University of Chicago students have received Gates Cambridge Scholarships since the award’s inception in 2001.

“Yusef is a brilliant young man with a strong sense of public service,” said his advisor Robert Pape, professor in political science and co-director of the Program for International Security Politics. “His knowledge and insights on the politics of Libya are especially penetrating. He has been a leader at Chicago, and I have every confidence will be a leader at Cambridge and much beyond.”

Willard Manning, a leading researcher in health economics, 1946-2014

Fri, 12 Dec 2014 15:04 -0600

Willard G. Manning Jr., a leading researcher in health economics, died at British Home Rehabilitation in Brookfield, Ill. on Nov. 25. He was 68.

Manning taught at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and in the Department of Public Health Sciences before his retirement in 2011.

“Will was a beloved professor and an extraordinary researcher,” said Daniel Diermeier, dean of Chicago Harris. “In his distinguished career, he made many important contributions to our understanding of health insurance, poor health habits and mental health. We will miss a dear colleague and dedicated teacher.”

“What made Will stand out was not only the importance and rigor of his research but also the seriousness with which he approached his responsibilities as a member of the University and the larger academic community,” said Diane Lauderdale, professor of epidemiology and chair of Public Health Sciences. “The time and thought he put into mentoring junior faculty, advising graduate students and reviewing the work of others were extraordinary.”

With a focus on health economics, Manning is known for his studies that tested how the structure of insurance and costs affected demand for medical care and health. He developed a robust model to estimate optimal health insurance coverage by considering the tradeoff between the costs from moral hazard and the gains from risk pooling in health insurance.

In addition, his work involved rigorous examinations of statistical issues in modeling health and economic data, and the investigation of economic consequences of poor health habits, smoking, heavy drinking and lack of exercise. He was widely known for his work on the RAND Health Insurance Experiment, a randomized trial of alternative insurance plans conducted from 1974-1982.

Dan Black, deputy dean and professor at Chicago Harris, said Manning’s work with the RAND study “transformed our understanding of health insurance and has been the gold standard against which research in health economics and health services are still measured today.”

Black also commended Manning’s deep commitment to the teaching of statistics and the craft of research. “Will cared deeply that his research arrived at the correct conclusions, and he instilled this concern in his students,” said Black.

Manning published over 150 articles and chapters in his career and co-authored five books, including The Costs of Poor Health Habits by Harvard University Press in 1991. He received numerous awards for his papers on health economics, including the Victor Fuchs Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Health Economists in 2010, the Distinguished Investigator Award at the annual meeting of Academy Health in 2009 and the Kenneth Arrow Prize for the Best Health Economics Article in 2003.

A member of the Institute of Medicine, Manning served on different committees addressing the lack of insurance and health care at the end of life. He was also on a National Academy of Science panel that examined adding measures of medical risk to new poverty measures.

“Will’s scholarship made timeless contributions to our knowledge about how to analyze data on health spending and has allowed us to better understand critical health policy issues,” said David O. Meltzer, professor in the Department of Medicine, and affiliated faculty of Chicago Harris and the Department of Economics. “The methods he developed are essential tools for all health economists today.”

Meltzer, who was Manning’s research and teaching colleague for many years, said Manning’s devotion to his students was legendary.

“Will would provide amazingly detailed and thoughtful comments draft after draft of their written work and spend endless hours helping students solve their most difficult problems,” Meltzer added. “He set a standard for mentorship that is truly inspiring and is a model for all of us who have the honor of helping to train the next generation of scholars and teachers.”

For years, Manning had been plagued with health problems, but his daughters Lisa Manning and Heather Carlson describe their father as “an incredibly resilient man who overcame the obstacles with determination and positivity until the very end.”

As a father, Lisa said Manning taught his children and grandchildren to embrace the joy of learning and encouraged many endeavors that they had pursued in life. “My father was incredibly generous, which I always found very inspiring,” remembered Lisa. “He lit up at the prospect of seeing his grandchildren in a school recital or soccer game. The times I saw him playing Legos with them were the times he seemed to be at his happiest.”

Manning is survived by his wife, Erika Manning; his daughters, Lisa Manning and Heather Carlson; his son-in-law, Brad Carlson; and his grandchildren, Emelia and Andrew Carlson.

UChicago faculty members receive named, distinguished service professorships

Tue, 11 Nov 2014 14:00 -0600

Eleven UChicago faculty members—Andrew Cleland, Michael Greenstone, M. Todd Henderson, Ali Hortacsu, Wayne Hu, Jeffrey Hubbell, Jonathan Masur, John H. R. Maunsell, Larry Norman, David Rubin and Melody Swartz—have received named professorships, while five UChicago scholars—Victor Friedman, Lenore Grenoble, Chuan He, Ralph Weichselbaum and Luigi Zingales—have been named distinguished service professors.

Biological Sciences Division

John H. R. Maunsell has been named the Albert D. Lasker Professor in Neurobiology.

An internationally recognized neuroscientist, Maunsell has made fundamental contributions toward understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of vision and perception. Known for elegant, rigorous and technically demanding physiological experiments, he recently has focused on understanding how behavioral and cognitive factors, such as attention and learning, influence the way neurons process information in the visual circuits of the brain.

Since 2007, Maunsell has served as editor-in-chief of The Journal of Neuroscience, one of the top peer-reviewed journals in its field and primary publication of the Society for Neuroscience, the largest neuroscientist organization in the world.

Maunsell’s honors include election to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and appointment as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

Maunsell joined the University of Chicago faculty in 2014.

David T. Rubin, section chief of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition and co-director of the Digestive Diseases Center, has been appointed the Joseph B. Kirsner Professor in Medicine.

A nationally recognized authority on digestive diseases and investigational therapies, Rubin studies novel therapies for Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, colon cancer prevention and clinical medical ethics. He is the principal investigator for multiple clinical research projects and trials of novel therapies, including the first Food and Drug Administration-authorized study of fecal microbiota transplantation for ulcerative colitis.

Rubin is a fellow of the American Gastroenterological Association, the American College of Gastroenterology, and American College of Physicians and an active national leader in the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America.

Rubin has earned many honors and awards in his field, including the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Clinical Research in 2003 and 2013 from the American College of Gastroenterology, and the Rosenthal Award in 2012 from the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America. He is an associate editor for the journals Digestive Diseases & Sciences and Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

Rubin earned his medical degree with honors from the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine.

Ralph R. Weichselbaum, chairman of Radiation and Cellular Oncology and co-director of the Ludwig Center, has been named the Daniel K. Ludwig Distinguished Service Professor.

A nationally recognized authority on the effects of radiation and on radiation therapy for cancer, Weichselbaum has been a leader in research into the ability of certain types of tumors to resist the lethal effects of radiation, the combination of radiation therapy with chemo- or immune-therapy, and the use of precisely targeted high-dose radiotherapy for patients with a limited number of metastases.

Weichselbaum is a member of many scientific and medical societies, including the prestigious Institute of Medicine, and has served on national committees for the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, the American College of Radiology, the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology, and the Radiation Research Society. He serves on the editorial boards of several influential journals and on the advisory board of biotech companies.

Weichselbaum came to the University of Chicago in 1984 as professor and chairman of Radiation and Cellular Oncology.

Humanities Division

Victor A. Friedman, PhD’75, a linguist working on languages of the Balkans and Caucasus, has been named the Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities. He is also director of the University’s Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies.

Friedman’s publications include more than a dozen books and edited works, as well as more than 300 scholarly articles and book reviews. In addition to his research on the Balkan languages, he has published extensively on Lak grammar, as well as on Georgian, and he has done field work in Daghestan in addition to more than 40 years of field work in the Balkans. His main research interests are grammatical categories, contact linguistics as well as sociolinguistic issues related to standardization, ideology and identity.

Friedman is president of the U.S. National Committee of the International Association for Southeast European Studies. He is a member of the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Academy of Sciences of Albania, the Academy of Arts and Sciences of Kosova, Matica Srpska and has been awarded the “1300 Years of Bulgaria” jubilee medal. During the Yugoslav Wars of Succession he worked for the United Nations as a senior policy analyst in Macedonia and consulted for other international organizations.

He has taught at UChicago since 1993.

Lenore Grenoble, an expert on Slavic linguistics and language contact and attrition, has been named the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor in Linguistics and the College.

She specializes in Slavic and Arctic Indigenous languages, and is currently conducting fieldwork on Evenki (Tungusic) in Siberia, Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic, Inuit) in Greenland, and Wolof (Niger-Congo) in Senegal. Her research focuses on the study of contact linguistics and language shift, discourse and conversation analysis, deixis and issues in the study of language endangerment, attrition and revitalization.

She is the author of numerous articles and books, including Deixis and Information Packaging in Russian and Language Policy in the Former Soviet Union and co-author of Saving Languages: An Introduction to Language Revitalization and a reference grammar for Evenki. Grenoble has co-edited multiple volumes such as Endangered Languages; Language Documentation: Practices and Values and, most recently, Language Typology and Historical Contingency.

Grenoble has taken an active role in promoting indigenous language vitality as coordinator of the Arctic Council’s Arctic Indigenous Languages Vitality project.

She joined the UChicago faculty in 2007.

Larry F. Norman has been named the Frank. L. Sulzberger Professor in Romance Languages and Literatures, Theater and Performance Studies and the College. He is currently chair of Romance Languages and Literatures.

Norman’s research focuses on French and European literature of the 17th and 18th centuries, and theater across the ages. His interests include theater history, book history, intellectual and cultural history, literary criticism and theory, and the relation between the visual arts and literature.

He is the author of The Public Mirror: Molière and the Social Commerce of Depiction, and The Shock of the Ancient: Literature and History in Early Modern France, which received the Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies from the Modern Language Association in 2012.

Norman was the University’s inaugural Deputy Provost for the Arts and held that position for two terms. His tenure was marked by the development of major new arts facilities, programs and initiatives. These include the planning, construction, programming and operation of the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts; the creation of the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry; and the launch of the Arts and Public Life initiative and its Arts Incubator in the Washington Park community.

He joined the UChicago faculty in 1995.

Physical Sciences Division

Chuan He, who brings a chemist’s perspective to biological problems, has been named the John T. Wilson Distinguished Service Professor in Chemistry. He’s research contribution spans a broad range in epigenetic, RNA biology, chemistry, biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology, structural biology and microbiology.

With colleagues at UChicago, He’s group is mostly known for the discovery of reversible modification on RNA that significantly affects gene expression regulation analogous to similar effects on DNA. His laboratory also is known for developing enabling technologies to label and sequence recently discovered chemical modifications in mammalian DNA that are particularly important for cell differentiation and development. A particular modification is also highly abundant in the brain. He’s work also has shed light on the roles of metals in biological systems, identified bacterial regulators of virulence and antibiotic resistance, and illuminated mechanisms of DNA repair. He continues to work on understanding how the addition and removal of methyl groups on genetic material and RNA affect genetic regulation.

He, who directs the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, joined the UChicago faculty in 2002. He holds a joint professorship with Peking University, and guest professorship at several other universities. The recipient of numerous honors, last year he was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

Wayne Hu, whose research focuses on understanding structure formation in the universe, has been named the Horace B. Horton Professor in astronomy & astrophysics.

Early in his career, Hu gained recognition for his theoretical work on the temperature differences of the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the Big Bang. His work has provided important insights on how to use the CMB temperature differences to test cosmological theories and to determine cosmological parameters.

Hu focuses his research on how structures such as galaxies and clusters of galaxies were seeded at the Big Bang and how they related to dark matter—an unknown force that causes the explanation of the universe to accelerate. Hu also uses gravitational lensing (and effect that distorts images of galaxies) to study the physics of dark energy at large scales.

Hu co-leads the dark energy portion of UChicago’s Physics Frontier Center, a $17 million effort funded by the National Science Foundation. He also is a member of the South Pole Telescope and Dark Energy Survey collaborations, and a senior member of UChicago’s Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics. A member of the UChicago faculty since 2000, his many honors include elected membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Social Sciences Division

Michael Greenstone has been named the first Milton Friedman Professor in Economics.

His research focuses largely on the costs and benefits of environmental quality and energy policy. Over the years, Greenstone has worked extensively on the Clean Air Act and examined its impacts on air quality, manufacturing activity, housing prices and infant mortality. He is currently engaged in a large-scale project to estimate the costs of climate change around the world.

Greenstone now heads the interdisciplinary Energy Policy Institute at Chicago (EPIC). Prior to rejoining the faculty at Chicago, where he began his career as an assistant professor, he served as the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2006 to 2014. He is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and editor of The Journal of Political Economy. From 2009 to 2010, he was the chief economist for the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisors and has been a member of the EPA Science Advisory Board’s Environmental Economics Advisory Committee.

Greenstone joined the UChicago faculty in July.

Ali Hortacsu has been named the Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor.

Hortacsu’s research focuses primarily on how supply actually equals demand and he develops mathematical and statistical methods to model, analyze, and optimize real-world market clearing mechanisms. His methods have been used in many contexts, including government securities auctions, central bank refinancing operations, and wholesale electricity markets.

Hortacsu has written or coauthored some of the first academic papers in leading academic journals on online auctions, online dating/matchmaking, and online consumer search behavior. A fellow of the Econometric Society, and research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Hortacsu is the co-editor of the Journal of Political Economy. He was elected an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow in 2006, and was a recipient of an NSF CAREER grant.

Hortacsu joined the UChicago faculty in 2001.

University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Luigi Zingales has been named the Robert C. McCormack Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance.

His research has covered corporate governance, financial development, political economy, the economic effects of culture and the best interventions to cope with the aftermath of the financial crisis. He developed the Financial Trust Index, designed to monitor the degree of trust Americans have in their financial system, with Paola Sapienza of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

Zingales’ recent works include “The Values of Corporate Culture,” written with Luigi Guiso, of the Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance, and Sapienza and forthcoming in the Journal of Financial Economics, and “Liquidity and Inefficient Investment,” written with Oliver Hart and forthcoming in the Journal of the European Economic Association. He also has two working papers, “Diagnosing the Italian Disease,” written with Bruno Pellegrino of UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, and “Monnet’s Error,” written with Guiso and Sapienza.

Previous works have been published in the Review of Financial Studies, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Finance, American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Financial Economics and Quarterly Journal of Economics, among others. He has published three books—Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists, with Raghuram Rajan, also of Chicago Booth, A Capitalism for the People and Europa o No.

Zingales also serves as American Finance Association president, Control Committee and of the Nominating Committee of Eni Spa board members and American Academy of Arts and Sciences member, and is founding director of the Center for Economic Analysis of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. He joined Booth in 1992, and has been the Robert C. McCormack Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance since 2006.

University of Chicago Law School

M. Todd Henderson has been named the first Michael J. Marks Professor.

Henderson’s research interests include corporate law, securities and financial regulation, and law and economics.

With an engineering degree cum laude from Princeton University in 1993, Henderson worked for several years designing and building dams in California before matriculating at the University of Chicago Law School. He was an editor of the Law Review, and captained the law school’s all-university champion intramural football team.

Upon graduating magna cum laude in 1998, Henderson was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as clerk to the Hon. Dennis Jacobs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He practiced appellate litigation at Kirkland & Ellis in Washington, D.C., and was an engagement manager at McKinsey & Company in Boston, where he specialized in counseling telecommunications and high-tech clients on business and regulatory strategy.

Henderson joined the UChicago faculty in 2005.

Jonathan Masur has been named the John P. Wilson Professor of Law.

Masur’s research and teaching interests include patent law, administrative law, legislation, behavioral law and economics, and criminal law.

Masur clerked for Judge Richard Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and for Chief Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

Masur taught at the Law School as a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law before joining the faculty as an assistant professor in 2007. He served as deputy dean from 2012 to 2014 and as the Herbert and Marjorie Fried Teaching Scholar from 2011 to 2013.

Institute for Molecular Engineering

Andrew N. Cleland, who specializes in quantum computing, quantum communication and quantum sensors, has been appointed the first John A. MacLean Sr. Professor for Molecular Engineering Innovation and Enterprise.

Cleland led the team that built the first quantum machine—a device whose motion can only be described with the peculiar laws of quantum mechanics. That feat earned Cleland’s team “Breakthrough of the Year 2010” honors from Science magazine. The same work was named a top-ten discovery of 2010 by Physics World.

He also has been developing a quantum computer based on superconducting quantum circuits. Such a computer would be able to process many complete sets of input data at the same time—far exceeding the parallel processing capabilities of modern classical computers.

In the quantum-communication arena, Cleland seeks to provide a means for the completely secure transmission of information, without relying on conventional encryption methods, instead relying on the principles of quantum mechanics.

A member of the UChicago faculty since July, Cleland formerly served as a professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and as associate director of the California Nanosystems Institute at UCSB. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Physical Society.

Jeffrey A. Hubbell, who develops a variety of biomaterial and molecular therapeutics, especially for regenerative medicine and immunological interventions, has been appointed the first Barry L. MacLean Professor for Molecular Engineering Innovation and Enterprise.

Hubbell is an entrepreneurial chemical and biological engineer who has founded three companies based on his academic research: Kuros Biosurgery in Zurich, Switzerland; Anokion in Lausanne, Switzerland; and Focal Inc., of Lexington, Mass. Along with his associates, he holds 88 U.S. patents. Recently he has been designing biomolecules and biomaterials to turn on immune responses to fight infection and cancer, and on the other hand, specifically turn off immune responses in auto-immune diseases such as Type 1 diabetes. He coined the term “immune-modulatory materials” to describe this newly emerging field of research.

Hubbell formerly served as the Merck-Serono Chair in Drug Delivery and acting dean of the School of Life Sciences at Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, where he also had served as founding director of the Institute of Bioengineering. He joined the UChicago faculty in July.

He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and an elected fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Melody A. Swartz, who studies how lymphatic vessels and their transport functions contribute to immunity and cancer, has been appointed the William B. Ogden Professor in Molecular Engineering.

Biomedical scientists typically regard the fluid drainage function of the lymphatic system as mostly important for maintaining tissue fluid balance. Cell transport functions, which regulate immunity, are considered separately. Swartz’s team has revealed new immune functions of lymphatic endothelial cells that are strongly linked to the transport functions of lymphatic vessels.

Her team also is trying to target lymphatic vessels for improved cancer immunotherapy because this is one aspect of the tumor microenvironment that seems to contribute to therapeutic failure. With these new insights, she is attempting to build a new picture of the lymphatic function in which the fluid and cell transport functions of the lymphatic vessels are intrinsically involved in regulating immune responses.

Schwartz previously held joint appointments as a professor of bioengineering and cancer research at Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lusanne and served as director of its Institute of Bioengineering. A 2012 MacArthur Fellow, Schwartz also has received an Arnold and Mabel Beckman Young Investigator Award, and the Wenner Prize, Switzerland’s largest prize for cancer research. She joined the UChicago faculty in July.

Profs. Lars Peter Hansen, Kevin Murphy to lead Becker Friedman Institute

Thu, 14 Aug 2014 15:37 -0500

Two acclaimed University of Chicago economists, Lars Peter Hansen and Kevin M. Murphy, have been appointed co-chairs of the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics. Hansen, formerly the research director for the Institute, will become its director.

Their appointments are effective immediately.

In his joint role, Hansen, a Nobel laureate and the David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor in Economics and Statistics, will guide the Institute’s scholarly direction. He also will develop programming and oversee operations.

Murphy, a MacArthur fellow, winner of the John Bates Clark Medal and the George J. Stigler Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, will focus on the Institute’s outward-facing activities, including public outreach programs and development.

As co-chairs, Hansen and Murphy will work together in structuring the scholarly ambition of the Institute.

“It is a tribute to Chicago economics that two scholars as distinguished as Lars Hansen and Kevin Murphy can step into this important role,” said Provost Eric D. Isaacs. “Their commitment and joint leadership will ensure that the Becker Friedman Institute continues to grow as a home for innovative research and a destination for outstanding economists from around the world.”

'powerful economic thinking'

The Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics was created in June 2011, joining the Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics and the Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory. In collaboration with Chicago Booth, the Department of Economics, the Law School, and the Harris School of Public Policy, the Becker Friedman Institute supports interdisciplinary scholarship on a wide variety of topics and attracts visiting scholars and students at all levels.

Hansen was the founding director of the Milton Friedman Institute before it merged with the Becker Center in 2011, and continued as research director of the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics. Gary S. Becker, AM'53, PhD'55, who passed away in May, was the first chair of the Becker Friedman Institute.

“Steering this Institute through its startup years has been a terrific experience. I am proud of what we have accomplished, and pleased to have the opportunity to continue expanding its ambitions and impact,” said Hansen. “I look forward to working closely with Kevin to amplify the Institute’s role as a catalyst for collaboration and a recognized source of powerful economic thinking.”

“The Becker Friedman Institute is dedicated to the proposition that economics is not an academic exercise; economics is an analytical tool that can provide insight into and solutions to important economic and social issues, said Murphy. “Sound economic policies need to be firmly grounded in economic analysis and informed by careful and rigorous empirical research. Scholars at the Institute follow in the footsteps Milton Friedman and Gary Becker and apply economic analysis to many of the important issues of our day, including income inequality, health, macroeconomic policy and early childhood education. We are excited about the future of the Institute and look forward to working with our colleagues to set its direction.”

lars peter hansen

Hansen received the 2013 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for his pioneering work in assessing economic models, specifically in developing time series statistical methods and applying them to understand the linkages between financial markets and the macroeconomy.

Hansen’s recent work focuses on uncertainty and its relationship to long-run risks in the macroeconomy. Hansen is co-principal investigator on a research initiative with the Macro Financial Modeling Group that develops macroeconomic models with enhanced linkages to financial markets to provide better policy tools for monitoring systemic risks to the economy.

He received the 2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance and Management in 2010, the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics from Northwestern University in 2006, and the CME Group-MSRI Prize in Innovative Quantitative Applications in 2008. Hansen received a BS in mathematics in 1974 from Utah State University and a PhD in economics in 1978 from the University of Minnesota.

Under Hansen’s leadership, the Institute has developed active research initiatives addressing knowledge gaps and key economic issues. Topics include human capital development, inequality, the economics of health care, fiscal challenges, and linkages between financial markets and the macro-economy.

“Lars is a brilliant and creative economic scientist who understands the value of collaboration across fields within and outside economics,” said James Heckman, a Nobel laureate and the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor in Economics. “He has made intellectual engagement of leading scholars with diverse points of view a cornerstone of the institute’s activities, and championed successful programs to engage and support young researchers. In its seminars and conferences, the institute lays the foundations for innovative scholarship on important economic and social questions. Under his leadership, rigorous, empirically-based and policy-relevant economic science will flourish.”

kevin murphy

Murphy’s research focuses on the empirical analysis of inequality, unemployment and relative wages; the economics of growth and development; and the economic value of improvements in health and longevity. In 2005, Murphy became the first professor at a business school to be chosen as a MacArthur fellow, cited for “revealing economic forces shaping vital social phenomena” in his areas of interest.

At the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics, Murphy serves as co-director of the Rosenfield Program in Economics, Public Policy and Law, a role he will continue to play. In addition to his position at UChicago, he works as a faculty research associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research.

More than 60 of his research papers have been published in academic journals, including the Journal of Law and Economics, the Journal of Political Economy and American Economic Review.

He is the coeditor of Measuring the Gains from Medical Research: An Economic Approach, and has coauthored Social Economics: Market Behavior in a Social Environment with the late Gary Becker. He earned his PhD in 1986 from the University of Chicago after graduating from the University of California at Los Angeles with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1981. He joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 1984.

A fellow of the Econometric Society and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Murphy was a John Bates Clark Medalist in 1997 and has received fellowships from the Earhart Foundation, the Sloan Foundation and the Friedman Fund. In 2007, Murphy and fellow Chicago Booth faculty member Robert Topel won the Kenneth J. Arrow Award for the best research paper in health economics for “The Value of Health and Longevity.”

"It is fitting that Kevin Murphy has assumed a leadership role in the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics. He embodies the intellectual tradition that Milton and Gary helped to build,” said Robert H. Topel, the Isidore Brown and Gladys J. Brown Distinguished Service Professor in Urban and Labor Economics. “There is no better price theorist in the world today than Kevin. His abilities to apply economic theory and to explain its implications to non-economists are without equal. He is a perfect representative of the Institute and of the Chicago Economics tradition.”

growing institute beyond traditional boundaries

The Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics is named for two Nobel laureates in Economic Sciences, Gary Becker and his mentor, the late Milton Friedman—Chicago iconoclasts who became icons in the field. While they pursued very different paths, Becker and Friedman shared a fundamental belief that economics is a powerful tool to help understand human behavior. They were devoted to rigorous research grounded in both empirical data and theory, which shaped their approach to their work.

The Institute hosts visiting scholars from around the world, including three distinguished research fellows who visit Chicago for extended periods and play leadership roles in research initiatives. It also supports promising young faculty and provides advanced professional training for outstanding postdoctoral fellows. In 2013-14, the Institute hosted 32 visiting scholars of various disciplines

That same year, the Institute organized 11 research conferences, and sponsored 27 student-led events and 13 outreach events. These activities reached an estimated audience of nearly 3,400 researchers, faculty, students, alumni and economics enthusiasts.

In the future, Hansen and Murphy said the Institute will continue to move beyond traditional boundaries, and create opportunities for fruitful collaborations across disciplines. This fall, the Institute will jointly host two conferences with the Law School and Chicago Booth—one on creditors and corporate governance, and the other on normative ethics and welfare economics that brings together economists and philosophers.

In addition, the Institute has expanded its outreach to students with programs that increase their exposure to economics and expand their learning opportunities outside the classroom.

Graduate students at the University of Chicago take part in the Institute’s multi-year initiatives on key economic issues, fields and approaches. They pursue research with financial support from the Institute, present their work at the Institute’s rich array of academic conferences and take part in less formal discussion forums.

For undergraduates, the Institute offers programs that introduce advanced economic thinking and show students them how to apply it in research and practice. The Friedman Forum Lecture Series gives undergraduates first-hand access to distinguished economists who share their ideas and perspectives in informal discussions. A summer Research Experience for Undergraduates offers student working as research assistants access to software tutorials and lectures that broaden and deepen their economic knowledge and research skills.

This summer the Institute moved into the newly renovated Saieh Hall for Economics, a Gothic-influenced building that stands at the heart of the UChicago campus. Blending historic architecture with a fully updated facility, the building accommodates the instructional, research and conferencing needs of the Institute and Department of Economics. Hansen and Murphy said Saieh Hall will allow the Institute to increase the number of visiting scholars it hosts, better support Institute programming, and provide an excellent setting for scholars to meet informally to exchange ideas and build collaboration.

University Trustee Emeritus Steven G. Rothmeier, 1946-2014

Wed, 11 Jun 2014 11:05 -0500

Steven G. Rothmeier, MBA’72, was a risk-taker as a businessman, a decorated Vietnam-era veteran and a Trustee Emeritus at the University of Chicago. Rothmeier died on May 14 at age 67 in a Florida nursing home after a long illness.

Rothmeier was elected to the University’s Board of Trustees in 1987. He served on the audit, development, financial planning, investment, and trusteeship committees, and in 2007 he was made a Trustee Emeritus. He served as board chair of the ARCH Development Corporation, a UChicago entity that provides seed money for venture capital projects. He also was a life member of the Booth Council and a member of the Harper Society Founder’s Circle.

“Steve and I met the very first day of school at orientation for the graduate students in 1971,” recalled John Edwardson, MBA’72, a University of Chicago Trustee and the retired chairman and CEO of CDW. “He was freshly back from Vietnam, and we just hit it off and became good friends and stayed good friends. He was a vigorous, tough, but fun-loving guy. We enjoyed our time together at Booth.”

In the business world, Rothmeier was known as a no-nonsense executive who remade Northwest Airlines in the 1980s. He joined Northwest Airlines in 1973 as a corporate financial analyst and five years later, Rothmeier was promoted to vice president for finance, treasurer and CFO. At age 32, he was the youngest CFO in the history of the company and the youngest in the U.S. airline industry. A few years later, Rothmeier was named Northwest Airlines’ president and chief operating officer.

Rothmeier engineered the $884 million acquisition of Republic Airlines by Northwest in 1986—at that time, the largest-ever airline deal. In 1989, he successfully negotiated the sale of NWA, Inc., the parent company of Northwest Airlines, for $3.6 billion. He described himself as developing a reputation as a “risk-taker” during this merger, as he steered the company through difficult times in the late 1980s.

Edwardson worked with Rothmeier at NWA as CFO for a few years before moving on to become president of United Airlines and chairman and chief executive of CDW.

“I’d describe his management style as tough, but fair,” Edwardson said of Rothmeier. “He was very demanding, but the airline industry is a very demanding one that requires leaders to be tough and forceful in their jobs. He was never mean-spirited or vindictive. What most people didn’t know was that he had an absolutely wicked sense of humor.”

Following his time at NWA, Inc., Rothmeier became president of IAI Capital Group. In 1993, he founded and served as chairman and CEO of Great Northern Capital, his own merchant banking, consulting and investment-management company. He retired in 2012.

He also served as a director on the boards of more than a dozen New York Stock Exchange-traded corporations. In 2011, The Wall Street Journal named him one of America’s eight most effective corporate directors. Rothmeier also co-founded and directed the Lumen Christi Institute in Chicago. He was the past director of the American Council on Germany, a former trustee for the German Marshall Fund of the United States and former vice-chairman of the U.S.–China Business Council.

Rothmeier was born in Mankato, Minn., and raised in Faribault, Minn. In 1968, he received his BA in Business Administration from the University of Notre Dame, where he also played varsity football. After graduation, Rothmeier served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal and Bronze Star Medal. He then came to UChicago to earn his master’s degree.

He is survived by his mother, Alice; two brothers, Michael and Jay; three nephews and two nieces. A requiem mass was held in St. Paul on May 28.

Gary S. Becker, Nobel-winning scholar of economics and sociology, 1930-2014

Sun, 04 May 2014 11:35 -0500

Nobel Laureate Gary S. Becker, AM'53, PhD'55, made historic changes to the study of economics and the social sciences, combining disciplines to understand decisions in everyday life, while spawning rich new questions for scholars in diverse fields to pursue.

Becker, 83, University Professor of Economics and of Sociology at the University of Chicago, died on May 3 following complications from a recent surgery. He won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992 “for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behavior and interaction, including non-market behavior.”

Becker pioneered study in the fields of human capital, economics of the family, and economic analysis of crime, discrimination, addiction, and population. University of Chicago President Robert J. Zimmer said Becker will be remembered as one of the foremost economics scholars of the 20th century.

"Gary was a transformational thinker of truly remarkable impact on the world and an extraordinary individual,” Zimmer said. “He was intellectually fearless. As a scholar and as a person, he represented the best of what the University of Chicago aspires to be."

In 2011, the University recognized Becker’s contributions by naming a research institute in honor of him and his mentor, Milton Friedman, also a Nobel Prize-winning economist at UChicago. The Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics brings together many of the world’s outstanding economists to advance and disseminate innovative research. Becker was named chair of the institute.

“Gary Becker was an exceptional intellectual leader,” said Lars Peter Hansen, the David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor in Economics, Statistics, and the College, research director of the Becker Friedman Institute and a fellow Nobel laureate in economics. “His pathbreaking research was remarkable in terms of its breadth, importance and creativity. For years he has been the personification of Chicago economics with his penetrating insights and analyses focusing on important economic and social challenges. His dedication to the University of Chicago and to Chicago economics was truly unique.”

His friend, colleague, and fellow Nobel Laureate James J. Heckman remembered Becker as a brilliant and tough-minded thinker.

“He was a creative mind, and he ranged in his thinking across a large set of issues—the economics of education and skill formation, economics of discrimination, law and economics, the economics of social interactions, and economics of the family,” Heckman said.

“He kept a finger on the pulse of American public policy [and] analyzed ‘relevant’ problems in a much deeper way than is usually associated with public policy,” Heckman said. “It was not a ‘quick answer’ kind of analysis. He laid the framework for discussing social problems.”

Fellow Nobel-winning economist Robert E. Lucas Jr., the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor in Economics and the College, noted Becker's influence on his own research. “Gary was a good friend and colleague and a very great economist. I find myself building in some way on his work in almost everything I do."

Longtime Becker collaborator Kevin Murphy recalled his senior colleague’s love of economics and the University.

“He was devoted to and helped define Chicago Economics, a rich tradition that uses economics to understand and shape the world around us," said Murphy, the George J. Stigler Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the Chicago Booth School of Business. “Gary was an inspiration to several generations of Chicago students—instilling in them the love for economics that he lived and breathed.”

"Gary was an outstanding scholar and a beloved professor. The Booth community has suffered a great loss," said Chicago Booth Dean Sunil Kumar, the George Pratt Shultz Professor of Operations Management.

Breaking new ground in economics

Becker broke new ground by approaching economics as the study of human behavior. He crossed disciplinary boundaries to apply core economic tenets—maximizing behavior, market equilibrium, stable preferences, and rational choice—to subjects thought to be the domain of sociology, psychology, law, and other fields.

Much of his work illuminates diverse aspects of human behavior that were previously considered to be largely irrational.  

The Economics of Discrimination (1957) applied economic analysis to the study of prejudice against minorities. His 1964 book, Human Capital, examined how investments in a person’s education and training pay off. In his 1981 book, A Treatise on the Family, he expanded that work to a study of the interactions within a family, including those between parents and children, husbands and wives, and among siblings. Becker concluded that women’s entry into the work force and their increased earning power have reduced demand for children, because women’s time has become more valuable.

Becker became one of the most-cited economists, yet his early career was fraught with controversy. Early on, economists questioned the value of his analysis of social problems. “For a long time, my type of work was either ignored or strongly disliked by most of the leading economists,” Becker wrote in his autobiography. “I was considered way out and perhaps not really an economist.”

Those early challenges only strengthened Becker’s work, according to Heckman.

“He persevered in a scholarly way,” said Heckman, the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor in Economics. “He didn’t just listen to the critics—he responded to the critics. It always enriched him.”

From Chicago to New York and back

Born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, Becker completed his undergraduate work summa cum laude in mathematics at Princeton University, where he “accidentally took a course in economics” as a freshman and was “greatly attracted by the mathematical rigor of a subject that dealt with social organization.” He earned a master's degree and a PhD from the University of Chicago, where Milton Friedman became his enthusiastic mentor.

“Friedman considered him the best student he ever had,” Heckman said. In later years Friedman would call Becker “the greatest social scientist who has lived and worked in the last half century.”

After serving as an assistant professor in economics at UChicago from 1954 to 1957, Becker joined the faculty at Columbia University, where he conducted research at the National Bureau of Economic Research in New York.

At Columbia he started a workshop on labor economics and related subjects. He was joined after a few years by Columbia economist Jacob Mincer. “We had a very exciting atmosphere and attracted most of the best students at Columbia. Both Mincer and I were doing research on human capital before the subject was adequately appreciated in the profession at large, and the students found it fascinating. We were also working on the allocation of time and other subjects at the forefront of research,” Becker wrote in his autobiography.

Upon returning to Chicago in 1970, Becker resumed his contact with leading economists on the faculty. In particular, he collaborated with George Stigler, also a Nobel Prize winning economist, with whom he wrote influential papers on the stability of tastes and an early treatment of the principal-agent problem, while pursuing his interest in the family.

Economics pervaded every aspect of Becker’s life—even his marriage to University of Illinois at Chicago historian Guity Nashat Becker. The two met haggling over the price of a dining room set Becker had advertised. Becker refused to lower the price, but said he would allow her to take the furniture and pay for it later.

“I asked how come he wouldn’t come down on the price, but he trusted me with the table before paying for it,” she later recalled. He said: ‘I didn’t care about getting the money. But it was the principle, I did not want to sell it below what it was worth.’ What surprised me even more was when he asked me to dinner.”

The two married in 1980.

Interdisciplinary interests

Reflecting his multidisciplinary interests, Becker was appointed professor in sociology in 1984 and held appointments at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the Law School in addition to serving on the economics faculty.

He worked with noted sociologist James Coleman, and the two taught an interdisciplinary faculty seminar on rational choice in the social sciences. He also taught a workshop for many years with Richard Posner, a federal appeals court judge and member of the University’s Law School faculty. The two started the popular Becker-Posner blog in 2002. Becker was to remain active as a scholar and as a public intellectual until shortly before he died. His last two blog posts this year presented arguments in favor of legalizing marijuana and ending the U.S. embargo of Cuba. The blog led to a book based on their exchanges, Uncommon Sense: Economic Insights, from Marriage to Terrorism.

Becker was a founding member of the National Academy of Education and a fellow in the American Statistical Association, the Econometric Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population.

He also was a member of the American Economic Association, serving as its president in 1987.

In 1967, Becker was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, then given once every two years to the most outstanding American economist under the age of 40. He also won the Seidman Award and the first social science Award of Merit from the National Institute of Health. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2000 for his work in social policy and the Presidential Medal of Honor in 2007. He received the University’s Alumni Medal, the highest award the Alumni Association bestows, in 2010.

Gary Becker is survived by his wife Guity; two daughters, Catherine Becker and Judy Becker; a sister, Natalie Becker; two stepsons, Cyrus Claffey and Michael Claffey; two step-grandchildren; and two grandchildren.

The University of Chicago will plan a memorial service to honor Becker’s life and work, with details to be announced at a later date.

Chicago Booth’s Gentzkow awarded 2014 Clark Medal

Fri, 18 Apr 2014 12:13 -0500

The American Economic Association has named University of Chicago Booth School of Business Professor Matthew Gentzkow winner of the 2014 John Bates Clark Medal, awarded to an American economist under the age of 40 who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge.

The Clark Medal is considered one of the two most prestigious awards in the field of economics, along with the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, and is named after the American economist John Bates Clark (1847–1938).

“Matt is an exceptional researcher, and it’s great to see him receive this well-deserved recognition,” said Sunil Kumar, dean and George Pratt Shultz Professor of Operations Management at Chicago Booth. “Matt is the most accomplished of a set of rising stars at Booth who are truly outstanding economists. We have the greatest expectations of him going forward.”

Gentzkow, the Richard O. Ryan Professor of Economics and Neubauer Family Faculty Fellow, studies empirical, industrial organization and political economy, with a specific focus on media industries.

Gentzkow’s recent studies include a set of papers that looks at political bias in the news media; a second set of studies that examines the impact of television on society from several perspectives; and a third set that explores questions of persuasion. A full list of those studies is available here.

“Matthew Gentzkow has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the economic forces driving the creation of media products, the changing nature and role of media in the digital environment, and the effect of media on education and civic engagement,” according to the American Economic Association’s Honors and Awards Committee.

“He has been a pioneer in the area of media economics, defining questions appropriate to the changing media landscape. His work is creative without sacrificing quality. He has established himself as a role model in both substance and execution.”

Other members of the University of Chicago community to win the award include Kevin Murphy, Gary Becker, James Heckman and Steven Levitt. Some 40 percent of Clark Medal recipients go on to win the Nobel in Economic Sciences. Past Clark medalists who also won a Nobel include Milton Friedman, Paul Krugman and Kenneth Arrow.