Biliana Cicin-Sain, director of UD’s Gerard J. Mangone Center for Marine Policy and professor of marine policy, has been awarded the Elisabeth-Mann-Borgese Meerespreis (“Prize of the Sea”) by the Ministry of Science, Economics and Transport of the Land Schleswig-Holstein in Germany. The prize is awarded to prominent individuals who advocate the protection and preservation of the sea in politics and society.

Two researchers have won major awards from the American Society for Composites. Jack R. Vinson, H. Fletcher Brown Professor Emeritus of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, is the recipient of the 2007 Outstanding Research Award, and Erik T. Thostenson, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, is the winner of the Elsevier Young Composites Researcher Award.

Vimalin Rujivacharakul, assistant professor of art history, has received a highly competitive Andrew J. Mellon Foundation Fellowship to be scholar in residence at the Needham Research Institute of the University of Cambridge, beginning in January. Her research focuses on modern architectural history, particularly Chinese architectural historiography.

James M. Jones, professor of psychology and director of the Black American Studies Program, is the co-recipient of the 2007 Association of Black Psychologists Distinguished Psychologist Award. Founded in 1968, the association has more than 1,400 members and focuses its collective skills and abilities to influence necessary changes and address the significant social problems facing the black community.

Anna O. Marley, an art history doctoral candidate specializing in 18th- and 19th-century American art and material culture, recently was awarded a Henry Luce Foundation Fellowship for the 2007-08 academic year by the New York City-based American Council of Learned Societies. Marley recently completed a predoctoral fellowship from the Smithsonian Institution.

Babatunde A. Ogunnaike, the William L. Friend Professor of Chemical Engineering, has been honored with the Donald P. Eckman Education Award from ISA, an international organization that sets standards for automation and helps professionals solve difficult technical problems.

Betty Paulanka, dean of the College of Health Sciences, has received the Delaware Excellence in Nursing Practice Award, administered by the Delaware Nurses Association and the Delaware Organization of Nurse Executives and given to nurses who “exemplify the profession as selected by their peers.”

Sandeep Patel, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, has been selected as one of four recipients of the Hewlett-Packard Outstanding Junior Faculty Awards, which are presented to outstanding tenure-track junior faculty.

Jennifer Righman McConnell, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, was selected to give the 2007 Robert K. Dexter Memorial Lecture at the annual convention of the American Iron and Steel Institute’s Steel Bridge Task Force. Her research focuses on the ultimate strength of steel structures and more recently on blast resistance of bridges and other structures.

Joyce Dennis Henderson, assistant director for employer outreach and multi-ethnic programming at UD’s Bank of America Career Services Center, was awarded a Fulbright scholar grant by the U.S.-Germany International Education Administrators Program to attend a seminar on German higher education and society this fall in Germany. The seminar included briefings, campus visits and cultural events for the 25 participants.

Benigno E. Aguirre, professor of sociology and criminal justice, has received a Fulbright Fellowship to teach and study at the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales of the Universidad Austral de Chile, in Valdivia, Chile. A specialist in the social science of disasters, Aguirre will be in Chile for four months teaching and also studying Chile’s emergency management system, reputedly the best in Latin America. He also will work in the city of Valdivia to study its reconstruction and recovery from a massive earthquake in 1960.

Three nurses associated with UD’s School of Nursing have received awards from Sigma Theta Tau International, the profession’s honor society. Kathleen Schell, assistant professor, received the Research Dissemination Award; Linda Laskowski Jones, CHS ’83, ’88M, a vice president at Christiana Care Health System, won the founder’s Marie Hippensteel Lingemen Award for Excellence in Nursing Practice; and Lauren Bieri, CHS ’06, won the society’s Pillar of Service Award.