Awards, Mar 12, 2009

The following awards have been presented for work in advocacy, fund raising, nonprofit leadership, philanthropy, and other areas:

Arts. The Council for the Arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge) has presented the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts to Bill Viola, a video artist from Long Beach, Calif. The award, which carries a $75,000 cash prize, recognizes the highest standard of creative achievement at the national level.

Children. The Child Welfare League of America (Arlington, Va.) has given its 2009 Champion for Children Award to the United Way for the Greater New Orleans Area.

Direct marketing. The Direct Marketing Association Nonprofit Federation (Washington) has presented its 2009 Max L. Hart Nonprofit Achievement Award to Mal Warwick, founder and chairman of Mal Warwick Associates (Berkeley, Calif.).

Disabled. The American Association of People with Disabilities has announced the winners of the Paul G. Hearne Award, which recognizes emerging disability-rights leaders. Stephanie Enyart (Berkeley, Calif.) is founding president of the National Association of Law Students with Disabilities; Maureen McKinnon-Tucker (Marblehead, Mass.) is an adaptive-sailing coordinator at Piers Park Sailing Center in East Boston; and Victor Santiago Pineda (Los Angeles) is founder of the Victor Pineda Foundation, a nonprofit organization that promotes the rights of young people with disabilities. Each winner will receive $10,000 to further their work.

Immigrants. The Vilcek Foundation (New York) has announced the winners of its annual awards to honor the achievements of foreign-born individuals in science and the arts. The biomedical-science prize was given to Huda Zoghbi, a professor of pediatrics and molecular and human genetics at Baylor College of Medicine (Houston). Dr. Zoghbi, who is originally from Lebanon, conducted research that has increased our understanding of Rett syndrome and other autism-spectrum disorders. The arts prize was given to Mike Nichols, an immigrant from Germany who has won numerous awards for his work as a theater and film director, including an Academy Award for 1967’s The Graduate. Both winners will receive $50,000. The foundation also presented the Creative Promise Prize to two foreign-born individuals in the early stages of their careers: Ham Tran, a filmmaker who was born in Vietnam, and Howard Chang, an associate professor of dermatology at Stanford University (Calif.) who was born in Taiwan, will each receive $25,000.

Leadership. Austin College (Sherman, Tex.) has presented the 2009 Austin College Leadership Award to Greg Mortenson, co-founder of the Central Asia Institute and Pennies for Peace (Bozeman, Mont.). The award, which comes with a $100,000 prize, was created to honor an individual who has used his or her leadership skills to make a positive impact on society.

Research. The Dan David Foundation (Tel Aviv) has announced the recipients of its 2009 Dan David Prizes, which recognize individuals for innovative work in the arts, humanities, science, or technology related to the past, present, and future. Each year the foundation chooses a field within each of the three time periods; this year’s selections are astrophysics and the history of the universe (past), leadership (present), and global public health (future). Each prize carries a $1-million cash award, of which $100,000 goes to support scholarships for young researchers in the winner’s field. The recipients:

— Past. Paolo de Bernardis, a professor of physics at the University La Sapienza (Rome); Andrew E. Lange, a professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena); and Paul Richards, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of California at Berkeley, for their discoveries concerning the makeup and geometry of the universe.

— Present. Tony Blair, former prime minister of Britain, for several accomplishments during his tenure, including brokering an agreement between the Unionists and Republicans in Northern Ireland.

— Future. Robert C. Gallo, director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (Baltimore), for his work on retroviruses, including his development of a blood test that led to the discovery that HIV is the cause of AIDS.