The Center for Research in Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy in the Medical Center has received a five-year, $8 million grant from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine of the National Institutes of Health.

Penn is one of only two institutions nationwide to receive this NIH grant; the other is the Johns Hopkins Center for Cancer Complementary Medicine.

The grant will fund four research projects to test the safety and efficacy of hyperbaric oxygen therapy as a treatment for head, neck and lung tumors.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is an emerging medical specialty that uses oxygen at greater-than-atmospheric pressure to treat a variety of diseases.

The center was established in 1968 to study the physiological changes that occur when people enter high-pressure environments; from these studies, the center developed its clinical research program. The center now also serves as a specialty-care facility for patients interested in exploring alternative treatments for cancer and other illnesses.

More grants

Barry G. Silverman, Ph.D., professor of systems engineering, has received a $1.4 million grant from the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office to improve computer simulations used to train military personnel by enabling model builders to more accurately represent character traits and the effects of outside stresses on the virtual people in the simulations.

The Institute of Contemporary Art has received a two-year, $150,000 grant from the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation. The grant, which is a first-time award to the ICA, will support the lectures and educational programs that accompany ICA exhibits.

Books recognized

Victoria Kirkham, Ph.D., professor of Romance languages, has been awarded the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Publication Award by the Modern Language Association (MLA) for a manuscript in Italian studies entitled “Fabulous Vernacular: Boccaccio’s Filocolo and the Art of Medieval-Fiction.” She will receive the award at the MLA convention in December in Washington, D.C.

Jeffrey Kallberg, Ph.D., professor of music, was awarded the inaugural Stefan and Wanda Wilk Prize for Research in Polish Music for his book “Chopin at the Boundaries: Sex, History, and the Musical Genre.” The prize, sponsored by the Polish Music Center at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, is intended to stimulate research on Polish music in academic circles outside Poland.

The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania was awarded a Consumer Choice Award by the National Research Corporation, a leader in healthcare performance measurement. HUP was one of 122 hospitals out of 2,500 nationwide to be recognized for the quality of its health-care services; the awards were based on a survey of 400,000 consumers.

David Ruderman, Ph.D., the Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish History and Director of the Center for Judaic Studies, has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Foundation for Jewish Research. The award honors Ruderman’s work in Jewish historical studies over more than a quarter century. Ruderman has also been elected president of the American Academy of Jewish Research, a senior honor society for Judaic studies scholars.