Tammie Benziger, MD, PhD, assistant professor of radiology, received the 2011 Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award at the 7th Annual Postdoctoral Scientific Symposium March 29 at the School of Medicine. Najla Kfoury, PhD, a postdoctoral research associate in neurology, was awarded Best Poster at the poster session. Five postdoctoral researchers presented research: Ignacio Gonzalez Suarez, PhD; Celeste Karch, PhD; Scott Manson, PhD; Laura Palanker Musselman, PhD; and Ari Rosenberg, PhD. …

John A. Bruegger, JD, a student in the School of Law, authored an article, “Republican Freedom — Three Problems,” that has been accepted for publication in the summer edition of The Journal Jurisprudence. …

Fanxin Long, PhD, associate professor of medicine and of developmental biology, was named to a three-year term as a member of the Skeletal Biology Development and Disease Study Section, Center for Scientific Review of the National Institutes of Health. …

Lauren Woods, graduate student, and Jonathan Chase, PhD, professor and director of Tyson Research Center, both in the Department of Biology in Arts & Sciences, have received a two-year, $14,389 dissertation improvement grant from the National Science Foundation for research titled “The Influence of Metacommunity Size and Habitat Destruction on the Scaling of Species Diversity.”

Speaking of

Margaret Howard, graduate student in social work, gave a special keynote presentation at the Missouri Office of Prosecution Services 5th Annual Multi-Disciplinary Conference on Domestic & Sexual Violence May 5 at the Sheraton Plaza Hotel in Clayton, Mo., on commercial sexual exploitation of children and the sex trafficking of minors in Missouri and the United States. …

Wilmetta Toliver-Diallo, PhD, assistant dean in the College of Arts & Sciences and senior lecturer in African & African-American Studies, participated in the second conference of the Mediterranean Meetings on Cinema and Human Rights in Rabat, Morocco, April 6-9, 2011. The conference brought together filmmakers, actors, activists, international organizations and academics. Toliver-Diallo, who for the past six years has organized the African Film Festival at WUSTL, presented a paper on West African cinema and historical memory on a panel titled “Cinema and History” that included filmmakers as well as other historians from the Francophone world.