Notables

Toby Berger, the Irwin and Joan Jacobs Professor of Engineering, was given the 2002 Claude E. Shannon Award, the highest honor accorded by the Information Theory Society of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers on July 4 in Switzerland. Named for the man who laid the foundation for today's Internet, the Claude E. Shannon Award honors consistent and profound contributions to the field of information theory.

Berger earned his bachelor's degree from Yale in 1962 and his master's (1964) and doctoral degrees (1966) from Harvard. He joined the Cornell faculty in 1968. He was a Guggenheim fellow in 1976, a Japan Society for Promotion of Science fellow in 1980 and a fellow of the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China in 1981. In 1982, he received the Frederick E. Terman Award (which recognizes an outstanding young educator in electrical engineering) from the American Society for Engineering Education. In addition to information theory, Berger conducts research in communication networks, random fields, video compression, signature verification and coherent signal processing.

Nimat Hafez Barazangi, a research fellow at the Cornell Women's Studies Program, was awarded a scholarship to the New York University Summer Faculty Resource Network Programs held this June in New York City. She attended the seminar series "Women in the Middle East: Histories, Feminisms and Fictions" and presented her recent action research findings with a grass-roots women's movement in Damascus, Syria, during a discussion on "Gender, Citizenship and the State, and Family Law." Barazangi's participation in the summer faculty enrichment program was sponsored by Cornell's Office of Vice Provost for Diversity and Faculty Development.

Scott Thompson, former head coach of the Cornell men's basketball team and now a special assistant to the university's director of athletics, has been named the American Cancer Society's 2002 Man of the Year. He received the award for his continuing leadership in the battle against cancer and for his participation in the national Coaches vs. Cancer program. The national program is a partnership between the National Association of Basketball Coaches and the American Cancer Society. It seeks to eliminate youth cancer and support cancer research, public education and services to cancer patients and their families. The group has raised more than $18 million since 1993.

"Coach Thompson has been extremely involved in Coaches vs. Cancer and is dedicated to saving lives from the disease," said Jim Satalin, national director of the group. "His leadership, commitment and support are instrumental in strengthening our cause."

A colon cancer survivor, Thompson is a graduate of the University of Iowa, with a B.A. degree in political science. He was an All-Big 10 player and academic-team member. Thompson was drafted by the Detroit Pistons in 1976. He served as an assistant coach at the University of Notre Dame (1977-80), was an assistant coach at the University of Arizona (1983-87) and held head basketball coaching jobs at Rice University (1987-92) and Wichita State University (1992-96).

Donald Schnedeker, director of the Management Library at the Johnson Graduate School of Management, received the 2002 award for Outstanding Achievement in Business Librarianship from the Business and Finance Division of the Special Libraries Association in Washington, D.C. The award recognizes his work since 1988 in gathering and disseminating samplings of statistics about top U.S. business schools and their library collections for the College and University Business Libraries group, which is part of the division.

"The prominence and prestige of this series continues to grow among academic business librarians," said Brent Mai, chair of the 2002 awards committee and director of Vanderbilt University's Walker Management Library. "Each year Don has revised the survey questions and disseminated them to project participants that include most of the top 30 business schools in the United States. Data are then tabulated by Don to produced a statistical report that covers a plethora of topics, such as collection size, acquisitions budget, staffing, computer use, b-school enrollment by MBA program, faculty size, facilities, space use, circulation, reference and instruction statistics and database subscriptions. Don used some of this data as the basis for a 1999 article he authored for the Journal of Business and Finance Librarianship. The Business and Finance Division of SLA is honored to have among its membership such a dedicated librarian."