The School of Medicine’s Alison M. Goate and the School of Law’s Stephen H. Legomsky are the recipients of the University’s 2005 faculty achievement awards, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton announced.
Goate, D.Phil., the Samuel and Mae S. Ludwig Professor of Genetics in Psychiatry, and professor of genetics and of neurology, will receive the Carl and Gerty Cori Faculty Achievement Award.
Legomsky, J.D., D.Phil., the Charles F. Nagel Professor of International and Comparative Law, will receive the Arthur Holly Compton Faculty Achievement Award.
“I am just delighted with the selection of professors Goate and Legomsky as this year’s winners of the faculty achievement awards,” Wrighton said. “Each of these distinguished faculty members has contributed enormously in their area of scholarly activity, and they have brought great visibility and impact to the University.
“It is rewarding to see such outstanding faculty receive the highest level of recognition from their peers.”
Goate and Legomsky will receive their awards and give presentations of their scholarly work during a ceremony at 6 p.m. Dec. 3 in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom in Anheuser-Busch Hall. The program will be followed by the Chancellor’s Gala at the Charles F. Knight Executive Education Center.
The selection committee for the faculty achievement awards includes three members from both Arts & Sciences and the medical school and one member from each of the University’s other schools.
Criteria for selection are:
• Outstanding achievement in research and scholarship;
• Recognized prominence within the community of scholars;
• Service and dedication to the betterment of the University; and
• Respected accomplishment in teaching.
The awards include a $5,000 honorarium.
Goate rose to international prominence as the principal investigator for two major studies involving genetic abnormalities linked to Alzheimer’s disease. In 1989 in the Lancet and a 1991 study published in Nature, she described the first genetic mutation involved in cases of familial Alzheimer’s disease with onset before the age of 60.
Goate joined the WUSTL faculty in 1992, where she has continued working on the genetics of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias in collaboration with members of the University’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.
Since joining the faculty, she has also begun work on the genetics of other psychiatric disorders, with a focus on alcohol dependence and nicotine dependence. Last year, Goate and her colleagues reported evidence for a gene that influences risk for both alcoholism and depression.
She has been the recipient of several prizes for her research, including the MetLife Award for Medical Research and the Potamkin Prize from the American Academy of Neurology.
Legomsky, a former actuary, is an internationally renowned scholar in immigration, refugee and nationality law and policy, and the founding director of the Whitney R. Harris Institute for Global Legal Studies at the law school.
The Oxford University Press has published his books Immigration and the Judiciary — Law and Politics in Britain and America and Specialized Justice. Legomsky also is the author of the course book Immigration and Refugee Law and Policy (now in its fourth edition), which has been adopted as the required text for immigration courses at 146 U.S. law schools.
He has testified before Congress and advised President Clinton’s transition team, President George H.W. Bush’s commissioner of immigration, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees in Geneva, the Administrative Conference of the United States, the immigration ministers of Russia and Ukraine and several foreign governments.
Legomsky has had visiting appointments at many overseas universities, including Oxford and Cambridge.
A member of the American Law Institute, he has chaired several national immigration law committees. He has received the University’s Distinguished Faculty Award and the law school’s triennial teaching award.