Tributes & Reflections: 2024 Retiring Faculty

Matt Cartmill was born in Los Angeles, California and attended Pomona College, graduating Summa Cum Laude. He earned his PhD from the University of Chicago where he had an epiphany that would later shake the way biologists thought of stereoscopic vision in primates. That conviction culminated in his 1970 thesis on The Orbits of Arboreal Mammals, in which Matt showed, through extensive comparisons with non-primates, that living in trees was, by itself, not an explanation of primate anatomy, and he argued that instead, predation on insects was what had selected for many of the distinctive features found in primates.

Matt continued to take his famously comparative approach to his research – drawing from his broad knowledge of other species to test the validity of his ideas and to challenge those who study human evolution to apply the same biological principles as apply to other species. This insistence is also reflected in his generous and inclusive attitude toward the lives and capacities of other animals, expressed in his writings on animal rights and animal consciousness, and above all, in his award-winning 1993 intellectual history of hunting and nature in Western thought, A View to a Death in the Morning.

Matt began his teaching career at Duke University in 1969 where he taught Anatomy and Anthropology. He was the interim Director of the Duke Primate Center in 1977, serving on their advisory committee until 2001. In 2008 he moved to Boston University as a senior professor with he built up the program in Biological Anthropology. Matt was the Department Chair from 2013-2016 and has held many service roles throughout his career. As a teacher, Matt has been deeply committed to his students. So much so that in 2010 they formed a Facebook Page, which you can still find, called “I Love Matt Cartmill.” He has been a staunch supporter of graduate students often advocating being the scenes.

Matt Cartmill is a polymath. He has made a career of thinking outside of the box and introducing ideas and ways of looking at things that others never would have thought of. Matt’s command of many realms of knowledge is reflected in his immense standing in the field. Matt’s research investigations have included anatomy, biomechanics, the ecology of arboreal mammals, and the comparative and functional anatomy of the hands, feet, orbit, and ear region in primates and other mammals. He co-founded the International Journal of Primatology, and served as the journal Editor, as well as Editor of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, and two book series. Since the 1970s his writings have transformed the human evolutionary narrative. His findings are part of all biological anthropology textbooks and his ideas continue to provoke debate. In 2019 Matt was awarded with the Association of Biological Anthropologists highest award, the Darwin Lifetime Achievement Award.

Matt plans to continue to provoke thought and debate in Biological Anthropology as an Emeritus Professor. He has two books in the works, one on the origins, nature, and implications of the uniquely human faculty of drawing and another that re-evaluates the Drake Equation and the probabilities of intelligent life in the universe. Matt Cartmill has left a lasting legacy at BU and the field of Biological Anthropology that will continue to be felt for decades to come.

Cheryl Knott, Professor of Anthropology and Associate Chair

Born into a prominent Iranian family renowned for having both religious and secular scholars, Shahla Haeri is one of the most distinguished scholars of Islam and gender of her generation.  Having earned a BA in sociology at the University of Massachusetts, she went on to complete a Ph.D. in 1985 at the University of California at Los Angeles.  Her books have been translated into Arabic, Urdu and Persian, and have become foundational references in the modern anthropology of Islam, especially with regard to matters of women, gender, and law.  Her single-authored works include The Unforgettable Queens Queens of Islam: Succession, Patriarchy, Gender (a 2021 Finalist for Excellence in the Study of Religion, American Academy of Religion), Law of Desire: Temporary Marriage in Shi’I Iran (published in original and revised editions), and No Shame for the Sun: Lives of Professional Pakistani Women.  She has published seven major articles in Persian.  She has also been featured in a three-episode podcast series on women’s leadership in Islam, as well as You Tube Videos on “Iranian Women’s Demands? Was 1979’s Iranian Revolution Islamic or Popular?”  She also served as director and producer for the award-winning 2002 video, “Mrs President: Women and Political Leadership in Iran.” She was also featured as a commentator in the National Geographic documentary film, “Taboo,” providing commentary for the episodes on “Justice” and “Marriage and Sexuality.”  She has served on more than 25 editorial and advisory boards.  In her scholarship, film-making, and public commentary, Professor Haeri has achieved a rare integration of academic research and publication with an engaged public intellectualism.  Widely known by for her warmth, graciousness, and subtlety of intellect, Professor Haeri was also an outstanding teacher, and a devoted supervisor to graduate and undergraduate students working in the fields of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, as well as the anthropology of gender and sexuality.
-Robert W. Hefner, Professor of Anthropology

Merry (Corky) White’s pathbreaking career began when as a PhD student at Harvard she switched her academic focus from European literature to the anthropology and sociology of Japan. Over the course of her career she has published more than fifteen books, beginning with such pathbreaking studies as The Japanese Educational Challenge: A Commitment to Children (1988), Challenging Tradition: Women in Japan (1991), The Material Child: Coming of Age in Japan and America (1994), and Perfectly Japanese: Making Families in an Era of Upheaval (2002). In the United States these contributions were recognized by her receipt of the John E. Thayer III Award from the Japan Society of Boston in 2012 for her “significant contribution to the advancement of understanding between Japan and the United States of America.” In 2013 she was awarded the “Imperial Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays and Neck Ribbon,” the highest order bestowed by the Japanese government issued on behalf of the Emperor himself. In parallel with this work, Professor White has been a pioneer in the study of cross-cultural food cultures, most notably in her book Coffee Life in Japan (2013) that also appears in new Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese translations. The catalogue she wrote to accompany an exhibition at Fuller Craft Museum, Objects of Use and Beauty: Japanese Culinary Tools, was awarded “Best Museum Exhibition Catalogue of 2018” by New England Museum Association Publication. The recognition she has brought to the field and its rising importance is perhaps best illustrated by the republication of her first book, Cooking for Crowds, that was originally published by a trade press in 1974 but reissued in a special 40th Anniversary Edition by Princeton University Press in 2013 that American Library’s Choice Magazine hailed as “a genius book.” Her most recent publication, Ways of Eating: Exploring Food through History and Culture (co-written with her son Dr. Benjamin Wurgaft) is wide ranging and accessible to both academics and more general readers that Current praises as “a love letter to the anthropology and history of food.” While such outstanding achievements mark her as star in the in the field, her colleagues in the Anthropology Department also know her as an excellent teacher (winner of the Gitner Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2004), supportive colleague, and all-around wonderful person. There are some people whose reputation derives from the institution in which they are employed and others whose institution derives its prestige because they are there—Merry White is emphatically the latter and Boston University has been all the better for it.

Thomas J. Barfield, Professor of Anthropology

Alan Marscher, who retires as Professor of Astronomy this year, joined BU in 1981. He previously held postdoctoral apointments at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of California – San Diego. He received his PhD from the University of Virginia. Alan is an observational and theoretical astrophysicist who studies blazars, the most luminous objects in the universe. Blazars are exceptionally dynamic systems powered by super-massive black holes at the centers of galaxies. He monitors and interprets changes in the brightness and polarization of these objects at radio, infrared, optical, uv, X-ray, and gamma-ray frequencies. He has experience using essentially every type of telescope, ground-based and space-based, that exists today. His main effort has been to relate changes in brightness of X-rays and gamma-rays to changes seen in ultra-high resolution images of microwaves from jets of particles moving at near-light speeds. His research group has been supported continuously for over 40 years by NASA and NSF grants. In recent years, he has been a leading member of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, which used a network of radio telescopes to take the first ever image of a black hole, which led to the 2020 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics and other awards that he shared. Alan has been an exceptional classroom instructor who received
the Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2014 and the college’s Gitner Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1998. He is infamous for composing instructive, and often humorous, songs related to astronomical matters, then performing them in his classes and at other venues. Alan has made innumerable contributions to keeping BU running, including serving as director of what is now the Center for Teaching and Learning and as an associate dean, as well as being department chair for about a dozen years. He was one of the architects of the Core Curriculum, and led the physical science component for over a decade. We wish him the best as he advances to join the ranks of the emeriti this summer.

Dan Clemens, who retires as Professor of Astronomy this year, joined BU in 1988. He previously held appointments at the University of Arizona as a prize postdoctoral fellow and an adjunct faculty member. He received his PhD from the University of Massachusetts. Dan Clemens is an observational astronomer who investigates the nature of star formation and the structure of the Milky Way galaxy using ground and space-based observatories at millimeter, infrared, and optical wavelengths. He is also an instrumentalist, having built Mimir, a multi-function near-infrared imager, spectrometer, and polarimeter for the Perkins telescope in Flagstaff, Arizona. With Mimir, he and his students conducted a large-scale survey of the magnetic field of the Milky Way called GPIPS, an acronym for the Galactic Plane Infrared Polarization Survey. Dan Clemens is an exceptional classroom instructor who received the Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2000. He regularly takes groups of majors and graduate students to Arizona to use BU’s observatory assets there and to train them in professional-grade observational astronomy. Remarkably, he has also taken groups from his general education astronomy courses for non-majors. As probably the only opportunity in the country for non-science majors to get hands-on experience using a major astronomical telescope at a premier observator, these educational activities had tremendous impacts on his students. Dan Clemens has made innumerable contributions to keeping BU running, including spirited participation in CAS faculty meetings, serving over the years in every service role available in his department, serving on dozens on CAS and BU standing and ad hoc committees, and serving as department chair during the covid pandemic years. We wish him the best as he advances to join the ranks of the emeriti this summer.

Professor Wayne Snyder has had a remarkable career. He has been a cornerstone of Boston University’s Computer Science Department since 1988, just a few years after its inception from the Math department.

Wayne grew up in Yardley, Pennsylvania, where his first career detour was to apprentice in his father’s machine shop. After a second detour at the Berklee School of Music, he found his calling in academia. With a major in Latin and a minor in Greek from Dickinson College, followed by a master’s degree in classics from Tufts University, Wayne seemed destined for a life immersed in the ancient world. However, the Fates had other plans, and he earned his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1988 with a thesis in Artificial Intelligence, focusing on computational approaches to algebraic reasoning.

Upon joining BU, Wayne continued his research in computational logic with colleagues in France and Germany and taught a wide range of courses from introductory computer science to advanced courses in programming languages and automated reasoning, making an indelible mark on generations of students. He was passionate about teaching computer science in the context of the liberal arts, which led to his enthusiastic involvement in the Core Curriculum. In recent years, he developed courses in Computational Audio and Natural Language Processing, demonstrating his versatility and dedication to staying at the forefront of the field.

Wayne’s contributions extended beyond the classroom, as he served in a variety of administrative roles with distinction, from Undergraduate Director to Chairman of the department, and in 2005 he commenced a five-year stint as Associate Dean for Student Academic Life.

His commitment to mentoring students earned him the 2002 CAS Award for Excellence in Student Advising and led to his joining the Faculty-in-Residence program and organizing a weekly math tutoring session in Rich Hall.

Throughout his career, Wayne’s love for the liberal arts remained unwavering. His generosity, kindness, and sense of humor endeared him to colleagues and students alike.

As Wayne embarks on this new chapter of retirement, he plans to continue his educational mission as emeritus. We thank Wayne for his dedication and friendship and wish him more successes for years to come.

Robert (Bob) Lucas grew up in central England. As a teen he played in a symphony orchestra that gave concert tours in Europe. While other members of the orchestra went on to pursue professional music careers, Bob followed a different calling. He studied at the London School of Economics where he received a BSc and MSc, followed by a PhD in economics at MIT in 1973. He joined UCLA’s department of economics in 1973 and moved to Boston University’s economics department in 1975 as an Assistant Professor. He was appointed Associate Chair of the economics department in only his second year as an Assistant Professor. Thereafter he was promoted to Associate Professor in 1977 and Professor in 1985.

Bob’s long and distinguished career at BU is marked by exemplary accomplishments in research, teaching and service. He is a renowned authority on migration and development, culminating in his 2021 book `Crossing the Divide: Rural Urban Migration in Developing Countries’ published by Oxford University Press. He contributed important research in many other fields mostly in the context of developing countries: labor markets and skill formation, trade and industrial policy, inequality and intergenerational mobility. He is the author of four books and editor of three others; he published over 75 papers in leading journals. He won the Gittner award for undergraduate teaching in 1994 and 2016. He served as Director of both MA and Undergraduate programs in the economics department between 1998-2000.

Bob Lucas’ contributions to public policy are numerous and varied. He chaired the Inter-University Committee on International Migration and was a member of the G8 Global Remittances Working Group. He collaborated with and/or provided advice to many country governments (such as Bangladesh, Botswana, Bolivia, Fiji, India and Malaysia) and international organizations (Asian Development Bank, FAO, ILO, UNDP, USAID, World Bank).

Besides his formal achievements, Bob Lucas set high standards for devotion to students and intellectual life within the department. We shall miss his unfailing courtesy and quiet sense of humor. We wish him well and hope he will continue to remain involved as a member of our community.

Professor Michael Manove is a microeconomic theorist. His research has been on banking, labor market, racial discrimination, and bargaining. Michael came to Boston University in 1975. In his almost 50 years of tenure at the Economics Department, Michael had been Chair and Associate Chair, managed office space allocation and computing, and generally been involved in all aspects of departmental life. He was a fellow at the Centro de Estudios Monetarios y Financieros (CEMFI), an education and research institute affiliated with the Central Bank of Spain, for over 20 years.

Michael supervised many Ph.D. students, many of whom have gone on to be professors in prestigious universities. He generously offered his time to help improve students’ research, attended seminars, and gave feedbacks about content and presentation. Michael taught microeconomic courses at all levels: from introductory principles classes, to Ph.D. core courses. He has been an outstanding teacher, winning the Gitner Award and Neu Family Award for teaching excellence. More important, Michael has been a kind listener to students, who would turn to him for advice and regard him as someone they could talk to about anything.

Michael served in many committees at CAS. Most notably, he was at the College Appointment, Promotion and Tenure Committee. Faculty, staff, and students think of Michael as a beloved friend, a pillar of the department, and a resourceful helper. His dedication to the Economics Department and Boston University will surely be missed. Michael’s dear friendship to his colleagues will be most cherished.

Christopher Martin joined the English department at BU as an assistant professor in 1987, after completing his doctorate at the University of Virginia in 1986.   Chris’s two monographs and dozens of articles and essays focus on European Renaissance literature, exploring the work of English poets and writer and their complex relationships to continental and classical traditions, including Petrarch and Ovid. His 1998 anthology for Penguin Classics, Ovid in English, for example, offers a rich sampling of English translations of Ovid by writers from Chaucer to Seamus Heaney. More recently, Chris’s work has focused on age studies or “literary gerontology” – in “how old age was understood, misunderstood, and depicted in early modernity, amid the intergenerational politics that shaped period attitudes,” a topic central to his monograph Constituting Old Age in Early Modern English Literature, from Queen Elizabeth to King Lear, and in his work as an editor of Bloomsbury’s Cultural History of Old Age in the Early Modern Era (1400-1650), which will appear later this year. In the last few years, Chris has returned to the topic of lyric poetry’s societal contexts which informed his first book, Policy in Love: Lyric and Public in Ovid, Petrarch, and Shakespeare, working now on a project titled Poems for Men: Gender Dynamics in the Secular Lyric of Seventeenth-Century England that explore the “self-conscious gendering that shapes the era’s lyric performativity.”

Over his career, Chris has served BU in ways too numerous to rehearse here, in leadership roles including Director of Undergraduate Studies and the Director of Graduate Admissions in the English department; as the Core Curriculum Humanities Coordinator in CAS; and serving on multiple university committees, including the University Counsel General Education Committee and the Provost’s Advising Network Committee. In our department, Chris is well known as an innovative and resourceful teacher, popular with both undergraduates and graduates, who filled his courses on early British Literature, surveys of European authors from Homer to Dante, on early modern women writers, and the history of western criticism. The high praise he consistently wins from his students who have taken his classes is echoed in the multiple awards recognizing the excellence of his teaching and work with advisees, including the NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor (2005-2008), College Prize for Excellence in Advising (2005) and the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (2000). Those of us in English know Chris as a warm and learned colleague, whose insights and generosity have helped sustain our intellectual community across the several decades he’s been at BU. We thank Chris for all he’s given us and wish him the very best for all his future ventures beyond Boston University.

–Amy Appleford, Chair, English

Charles Dellheim came to Boston University in 2001 and served as Chair of the History department for eight years. Over the past twenty-three years, he has been an extraordinary leader, scholar, teacher, and human being. He brought energy, imagination, vision, and an inimitable sense of humor to the department. His puns, deadpan wit, ability to lampoon self-important university administrators, and ability to laugh at himself lightened and enlivened faculty discussions. He oversaw new hiring, revitalized curriculum, and worked closely with university leaders to advance the best interests of the History department.

In 2010, Professor Dellheim became Director of Kilachand Honors College, overseeing virtually every aspect of its creation. He was instrumental in fundraising, curricular structure, course content, and faculty recruitment. KHC is now a thriving and essential presence at the University.

In the midst of this institution-building administration, Professor Dellheim continued his work as a teacher and scholar, offering a wide array of courses in European Cultural History, with expertise and deep knowledge in British History and Central European thought and culture. He is the author of three important books, including most recently Belonging and Betrayal: How Jews Made the Art World Modern (2021).

Cathal Nolan is renowned among students for his mesmerizing lectures on the International History and the History of War. Course titles reflect the range and ambition of his classes. Among them are U.S. Diplomatic History, American Foreign Policy, the American Presidency, Great Tyrants, Total War, and Ethics in International Relations. Students report his inexhaustible knowledge of even the most minute details about battlefield strategies or negotiating positions.

Professor Nolan joined BU in 1995 and soon had affiliations with both History and International Relations. He helped found BU’s International History Institute and was its Director from 2012 to 2023, organizing talks, conferences, and interdisciplinary events. His wider academic affiliations include George Mason University, Israel’s Shalem College, and the Quincy Institute.

As a public lecturer, he is in high demand, with guest appearances across this country and abroad. He is the author of twelve books–most recently Mercy: Humanity in War (2022)–and the editor or co-editor of seven more. His numerous prizes include the Gilder Lehrman Prize in Military History and Finalist for the Book of the Year awarded by Military History Matters.

Dean Scott Taylor:
“Professor Eckstein has taught both in the Sociology Department and International Relations Department for many decades. She has held appointment in the Pardee School since 2008 and during that time she has been an outstanding mentor both to students and to faculty. And she has particularly influenced the careers of women faculty. She has tirelessly promoted the study of Latin America, particularly social movements, immigration policy and political economic development in Cuba especially. Her contributions to Pardee through teaching and scholarship have made our community a better place. And we are grateful for her years of dedicated service and her many contributions to the Pardee school and to the BU community.”

Zophia Edwards, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University and a former PhD student (BU ’15) and TA of Professor Eckstein, shared personal reflections on her mentor’s impact. “Susan both supported my interests and pushed me intellectually throughout my time here,” Edwards said. “She showed me how to be a great teacher and was always interested in how I was doing as a person.”

Rachel Nolan, Assistant Professor of International History at the Pardee School, highlighted Professor Eckstein’s fearless approach to tackling the most pressing issues in Latin America. “Susan is a scholar-scholar in that sense. So she’s finding these big picture answers and often very surprising answers, but she has all the research,” Nolan remarked.

She finally noted, “Susan is a full person, and when she is mentoring us, her students, her junior faculty members, everyone in her life, you know, she wants us to be whole people as well.”

Words from Dean Scott Taylor:
“Professor Schmidt came to BU in 1998 after starting her career at UMass Boston. She came as a full professor and if I’m not mistaken the first woman full professor in what became the Pardee School. In her 25 years, more than 25 years at BU and throughout her illustrious career, she has written and edited more books and articles than one can count. I encourage you to look at her CV; it is an amazing and daunting career of remarkable and deeply impactful scholarship. She’s a much beloved and sought-after teacher and served as the founding director of BU, now Pardee’s, Center for the Study of Europe. Vivien Schmidt will be sorely missed at the Pardee School and at BU and in this academic community as a scholar, as a teacher, as a colleague. She is quite frankly irreplaceable. I am personally grateful that over the 15 months I have had the pleasure of serving as Dean and being at BU to have had the opportunity to work with her, and my only regret is that it was only 15 months.” – Dean Scott Taylor

The Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences would like to honor Professor Kathleen Kantak for her many contributions to Boston University over the course of her career. Prof. Kat Kantak has been a vital member of our department, and she has an influential national and international profile based on her important contributions to research on the neural mechanisms of addiction and the treatment of addiction. She has published over 100 research publications and obtained continuous NIH funding for most of her career at BU. She has also made essential contributions to teaching and numerous organizations at BU.

Professor Kantak began as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Boston University in 1982 and founded her Laboratory of Behavioral Neuroscience. She received tenure in 1988 and became a Full Professor in 1998. She was also affiliated with and taught in the Graduate Program for Neuroscience, the Undergraduate Programs for Neuroscience, the Biomolecular Pharmacology Graduate Training Program, and the Transformative Training Program in Addiction Science at Boston University. She also holds an appointment as Lecturer at Harvard Medical School, Department of Psychiatry (Psychobiology) in conjunction with the Division of Behavioral Biology at the New England Primate Research Center.

Before coming to BU in 1982, Professor Kantak did her undergraduate work at SUNY Potsdam, then graduate work at Syracuse University with Matthew Wayner, followed by post-doctoral work at Univ Wisconsin Madison with Burr Eichelman, and at Tufts University with Klaus Miczek.

Professor Kantak has a national and international profile. She has been invited to give numerous invited talks and seminars at a range of locations including Mexico City, Antwerp and Quebec City and has served on numerous NIH grant review committees. She is on the Editorial Board of the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, where she has been guest editor on special issues on Cognitive Enhancement for the Treatment of Neuropsychiatric Disorders. She is also on the Editorial Board of the journal Behavioural Pharmacology. She has been an important member of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence (CPDD), organizing many symposia at the annual meeting of the CPDD, and serving on many different committees. Kat was also Secretary/Treasurer of the Behavioral Pharmacology Division of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, and has been a member of the Behavioral Pharmacology Society and the Society for Neuroscience for many years.

It is very impressive that Kat has received continuous grant funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse since 1987 to study various aspects of drug addiction. This research includes work on medication development as well as other treatment modalities focused on using behavioral models of cognition and drug abuse in rodents to understand mechanisms of addiction relevant to clinical work to improve drug addiction treatment outcomes.

Kat has published over 100 papers in a broad range of prestigious journals including Neuropsychopharmacology, Journal of Neuroscience; Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior; Behavioral Brain Research; Hippocampus; Behavioral Neuroscience; Psychopharmacology; Trends in Genetics, etc. She has also made over 100 presentations in conference proceedings.

Some of her most influential publications concern extensive studies using an intravenous drug self-administration procedure in rats, to investigate how multiple memory systems regulate drug-seeking and drug-taking behavior as well as how drug exposure influences the neurocognitive functioning of multiple memory systems. In some of her most highly cited articles, she studied how neurocognitive circuitry of the amygdala, hippocampus and prefrontal cortex interact in regulating the learning and extinction of response to cues that trigger cocaine self-administration behavior (Kantak et al. 2002). This study used a second order schedule in which light or sound cues could be associated with the subsequent self-administration, allowing analysis of circuit effects on cue-induced drug seeking behavior compared with maintenance of drug taking behavior. These studies are relevant to exposure therapy targeting drug-related cues in clinical populations. This work included collaboration with Howard Eichenbaum in our department and with Camron Bryant at the BU School of Medicine.

In another line of research, Dr. Kantak evaluated frontostriatal and medial temporal lobe neurocognitive deficits in rats with an Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder phenotype. Focusing on the adolescent developmental period, she evaluated the response of rats with an ADHD phenotype to stimulant and non-stimulant medications, particularly in terms of comorbidity between ADHD and later vulnerability to drug addiction.

Prof. Kantak also worked on intriguing efforts to develop a vaccine to trigger anti-cocaine antibodies for prevention of relapse (Kantak et al. 2000). In recent work she analyzed the effect of distinct serotonin neuronal subtypes on cocaine reward and memory (Baskin et al., 2020).

She incorporated cognitive-enhancing pharmacotherapy and brief interventions with environmental enrichment or targeted cognitive training to improve extinction learning for relapse prevention. She collaborated with other faculty, including Professor Michael Otto in our department and Prof. Hengye Man in Biology in studying efficacy of cognitive enhancers including D-cycloserine and other drugs for accelerating extinction of addiction and treatment of anxiety disorders (Nic Dhonnchadha et al., 2012; Otto et al., 2010). This work shows the neural plasticity associated with these therapeutic strategies that could translate to clinical translational approaches in nonhuman primates and human subjects.

In addition to her national and international role in research, Professor Kantak has played vital service roles in our Department and in the University. In the PBS department, she was the Director of Graduate Studies, and played a central role on many search committees and undergraduate and graduate committees. At the University level, she has participated in important processes such as the 7-year medical admissions interviewer and program oversight committee, the graduate and undergraduate committees on academic conduct, the Appointment Promotions and Tenure Committee (APT), and UAPT. She also served the university on the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) and search committees for director of Laboratory Animal Care Facilities.

We in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences have been deeply impressed by the rigorous and productive work that Professor Kat Kantak has done during her tenure at Boston University on the neural mechanisms of addiction and treatment of addiction. We wish her all the best in her retirement.

Professor Timothy Brown’s academic work is extensive and can be summarized as investigating the nature of emotional disorders, their classification, their comorbidity, and the impact of these distinctions on treatment. He is known for elucidating the role of negative affectivity as accounting for the much of the shared variance among emotional disorder symptoms.

In pursuing this work, Professor Tim Brown has been PI of a particularly longstanding NIMH RO1 dedicated to improving the understanding of anxiety and depression classification, comorbidity, expression, and longitudinal course.

Professor Brown is especially well published and well known for this work. He has a Google H index of 87, representing 75,338 citations of his work. Accordingly, it is no surprise was a member of the DSM-IV and DSM-5 anxiety disorders workgroups and has been involved in the development, refinement, and/or validation of dozens of assessment tools commonly used in studies of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) outcome. He is the author of the Anxiety Disorder Interview Schedule (ADIS), a gold-standard research instrument for the differential diagnosis of anxiety and related disorders. Tim also has conducted psychometric studies of numerous self-report questionnaires to determine appropriateness of use in clinical samples (e.g., Penn State Worry Questionnaire, Anxiety Sensitivity Index, Depression Anxiety and Stress Scales).

Attention to his psychometric work provides an excellent segue to underscoring Professor Tim Brown’s statistical skills and scholarly work. He has written extensively on best practices for statistical analysis in applied clinical research, including a highly cited book on confirmatory factor analysis:

Brown, T.A. (2015). Confirmatory factor analysis for applied research (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press. Citation count: 16,617

He has been a statistical co-investigator on over 25 federally funded projects, including many randomized controlled trials of CBT.

Given his expertise in research design and statistics, it is no surprise that Tim also has had a major impact on the field through his role as a journal editor. He was an Associate Editor of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology for 14 years, and of Behavior Therapy for four years. He also has served as the Statistical Editor for Behaviour Research and Therapy since 2016. In these roles, has shaped the science of thousands of empirical studies of emotional disorder psychopathology and their cognitive behavioral treatments.

Tim’s accomplishments were recently lauded by his 2021 outstanding researcher award from his primary professional affiliation, the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT).

The PBS department recognizes Professor Tim Brown’s profound accomplishments and his international reputation in his area of study. We wish him all the best in his retirement.

Helen Tager-Flusberg for her continuing dedication to her field of research and her many contributions to our department and Boston University over the course of her career. In academia internationally, Helen’s name is pretty much synonymous with early autism research. She is not just a star of the field, she is one of the originators of the field and in recognition of this in 2021 she was the recipient of the lifetime achievement award from the International Society for Autism Research, a society for which she also served as President back in 2011-2013. She has also been elected to fellowship in APS and AAAS.

For over 40 years, Professor Tager-Flusberg has conducted research not only on autism but other neurodevelopmental and genetic disorders such as developmental language disorders, Williams , Prader Willi, and Downs syndrome, adopting the unique perspective of a developmental psychologist in attempting to understand the emergence and developmental trajectories of these disorders, variability in their phenotypic expressions and what predicts this variability—with particular emphasis on the familial risk factors that might aid early detection and thus also, very importantly, emphasis on early intervention.

Professor Tager-Flusberg is an author or coauthor of over 250 journal articles, editor of 6 books including the classic and republished volume with Simon Baron-Cohen, “Understanding other minds” and awardee of more than 50 grants. Her work in autism has spanned all levels of analysis: behavioral, neural, genetic, and thus has adopted a range of techniques: experimental and observational, eye tracking, imaging, in the home and in the CARE lab to understand motor, cognitive, social-cognitive, linguistic communicative profiles in some of the most challenging populations, for example low verbal autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Helen’s capacities to form intellectual synergies and engage in cross-disciplinary cross-institutional collaborations is well-renowned as is her striking range of service to the field. Her capacity to galvanize action is astonishing and is perhaps encapsulated by the recognition represented by the award she received in 2012 for one of only three NIH Autism Centers for Excellence (ACE)–ACE, the CARE Center that she established in our department not long after she joined our department in 2010 from the BU Medical School.

It is worth noting that before Helen joined our department there was no Developmental Science Program at Boston University. With Helen’s leadership, organizational prowess, and acute political sense, Helen and the developmental faculty have grown what is now recognized as one of the largest, strongest, and most coherent Developmental Science Programs in the country today. Professor Tager-Flusberg has mentored scores of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and she is well respected and valued for also mentoring junior faculty and her developmental science colleagues.

The Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences faculty are deeply impressed and extremely grateful for everything that Professor Tager-Flusberg has accomplished during her tenure at Boston University. We wish Helen all the best in her retirement, while recognizing that retirement means different things to different people. While Professor Tager-Flusberg has retired from teaching, she remains very research active, with eight active grants totaling over 16 million dollars in funding through 2028. Given the extent to which Helen remains research active, we expect we will continue to see Helen’s contributions to the field of autism for many decades to come.

Cathie Jo Martin started teaching at BU in September 1990 and has built a distinguished career in her 34 years at the university. Her research and teaching have focused on European and American political economy, particularly the politics of business, education, and social policy. She is author or co-author of five university press books, including one in Danish, and many peer-reviewed articles in some of the discipline’s top journals, including American Political Science Review and World Politics. She has held numerous prestigious fellowships, including at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and Russell Sage Foundation, and she has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and National Science Foundation, among others. She has served as chair of the Council for European Studies, president of several organized sections of the American Political Science Association, director of BU’s Center for the Study of Europe, and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Political Science.

While many faculty are content to take a victory lap as their retirement approaches, Cathie Martin has been remarkably productive in her final years as a professor. Her latest book, Education for All? Literature, Culture and Education Development in Britain and Denmark, was published by Cambridge University Press in September 2023, and her retirement celebration this past February took the form of a book launch, a rare feat! Moreover, her most recent work breaks new ground in terms of research methodology. With support from the Hariri Institute, she used computer-based natural language processing methods to analyze a large body of classic coming-of-age novels in Britain and Denmark, examining differences in the portrayal of education and its purpose in society. Her persistent pursuit of inquiry and innovation stands as an inspiration to her many colleagues in Political Science and other departments.

Cathie Martin has also been a dedicated teacher, advisor, and colleague. Her current department chair and office neighbor can attest to the long lines of students routinely queueing outside of her door and her patience and good cheer when offering guidance on their work. She has advised many PhD students in Political Science over the years, some of whom currently hold positions at Harvard Kennedy School, Georgetown University, Catholic University of Belgium, University of Milan, Miami University, and the Technological Institute of Monterrey, Mexico. With the Department, she has been a mentor and tireless champion for many junior faculty who now seek to “pay it forward” as they move into more senior roles. We wish her the best as she moves on to the next stage of her career as Professor Emerita.

There is a word in my native language of Telugu that exemplifies Professor Claudio Rebbi – Mahaguru, a term rooted in Sanskrit for a Great Teacher and scholar.

Long before he joined Boston University in 1986, he was already renowned for seminal contributions to Theoretical Physics, featured in Scientific American and major national and international magazines.

Professor David Campbell writes: “I have known and admired Claudio and been inspired by his research since my days as a post-doc in the 1970s. Thus, it was a wonderful occasion when I joined BU in 2001 and could claim him as a colleague. His leadership in high energy theory and computational science helped build our outstanding groups in both these areas and will be difficult to replace.”

Professor Martin Schmaltz adds: “Prof Rebbi is a gentleman (a true cavaliere) and a wonderful colleague in the Theoretical High Energy physics group. Claudio was never one to promote his many accomplishments in the derivation of new results and methods in non-perturbative quantum field theory, preferring instead to mentor, nurture and promote his younger colleagues and students. When I first joined Boston University as a postdoc in 1995, he proposed that we collaborate on a project that imagined the three dimensions of space to be on the edge of a 4-dimensional universe. At the time, the idea seemed crazy to me but in fact it was brilliant and ahead of its time; and after decades of research into what is now known as “holography” it has transformed how we think about quantum mechanics, gravity and space itself. Continuing to today one can always count on Claudio for a stimulating conversation over an Italian espresso from our group’s Gaggia Classic.”

And long before anyone else in the world, Professor Rebbi had a vision of how to train Physicists of the next millennium – in a different way of thinking, a radically different skill set that must include rigorous computational methods. His vision marked the beginning of a new movement that Nobel Laureate Ken Wilson called “a new paradigm in Physics”. The Physics department at Boston University was among the very first Universities in the world that introduced a dedicated new course in Computational Physics. Generations of our students – both undergraduate and graduate – have been trained in this new paradigm thanks to Professor Rebbi. His courses are known for meticulous preparation considering the needs of struggling students to ensure that no one is left behind. In 2013, Professor Rebbi received the Gitner Award for Distinguished Teaching in our College of Arts and Sciences.

Professor Rebbi has been a Thought Leader. As the Chair of our Physics department, he nurtured diverse areas in Physics, helping to build our strength in Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics, in my own field of Biological Physics, and in reaching out to other departments that include Chemistry, Biology and in Engineering. He is Founding Director of our University’s (CCS). Professor Brower writes about Professor Rebbi’s leadership of CCS: “As a generous leader of the Center for Computational Physics his contributions  large scale computing for theoretical physics is vast. BU was the first university to host the massively parallel Thinking Machine leading to the more recent  first serious us of GPU in lattice QCD at hart of Exascale AI with 4 of our student/postdocs now at NVIDIA.”

Working with colleagues in CS, Professor initiated a new joint Major in Physics and CS. Our Physics department, our College, and our University are all poised to benefit from what Professor Rebbi has worked so hard to build. All of us who have been privileged to work with him have admired Professor Rebbi for his humanity and compassion and the love he has shown to his students. Professor Karl Ludwig, also a former Chair of our department, adds: “In an environment in which emotions can sometimes run high, as Department Chair and as a senior faculty member, Claudio always projected a calming, soft-spoken demeanor while working to ensure that all voices were heard and valued. He was always a true gentleman. Moreover, his consistent dedication to teaching through the years was an example for his colleagues.”

A Mahaguru indeed!

It is impossible to do justice to all of Dorothy Kelly’s (Dottie’s) accomplishments during her many years at BU. Her scholarly endeavors, as well as her teaching and extensive service in a range of capacities, including Director of the Women’s Studies Program, Associate Chair of the Department of Romance Studies, DUS, DGS, and Chair of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures (as the department used to be called), are indeed impressive. Aside from the dozens of articles and reviews she published in the foremost journals in French Studies, her publication record includes such outstanding titles as Fictional Genders: Role and Representation in Nineteenth-Century French Narrative, Telling Glances: Voyeurism in the French Novel, Reconstructing Woman: From Fiction to Reality in the Nineteenth-Century French Novel, and The Living Death of Modernity: Balzac, Baudelaire, Zola. Needless to say, Dottie’s impact on the Department of Romance Studies and its faculty, staff, and students over the years was immense and strong enough to leave an indelible mark. Her collegiality and appreciation of others, as well as her outstanding leadership and boundless generosity, have made all the difference. She will be sorely missed by all.

-Professor Nicolás Fernández-Medina, Chair, Romance Studies