Aaron Beck, Ph.D., University Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, has received this year’s Heinz Award for the Human Condition from the Heinz Family Foundation. The $250,000 cash prize is one of six awarded each year to recognize outstanding leaders in areas where the late Sen. H. John Heinz III had active interests. Beck’s groundbreaking research in the 1960s created the field of cognitive therapy, which is now the fastest-growing and most extensively studied form of psychotherapy in the United States.
Influential Hispanist honored

Russell P. Sebold, Ph.D., emeritus professor of Romance languages, has been awarded the International Elio Antonio de Nebrija Prize for 2001. The prize is awarded annually by the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain to a non-Spanish scholar who has made outstanding contributions to Hispanic studies.

Sebold was recognized for his lifetime achievements in the field of Spanish literature. Considered one of the outstanding scholars of 18th- and 19th-century Spanish literature, Sebold has written numerous books, all in Spanish, including “The Rapture of the Mind: Poetry and Poetics in 18th Century Spain,” “Cadalso, Europe’s First Romantic” and “The Evolution of Spanish Romanticism.” He has also produced scholarly editions of works by many notable Spanish authors, including José Cadalso, Ignacio López de Ayala, Diego de Torres Villaroel and Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer.

Romance Languages Chair Ignacio Javier López said, “Sebold is without doubt the world’s leading expert on Spanish Enlightenment and Romanticism. Simply put, the field did not exist prior to Sebold’s seminal contributions.”

Robert W. Doms, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and chair of the department of microbiology, has been given the annual Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis Award by the Society for Investigative Pathology. The award, the society’s most prestigious award for young scientists, recognizes “meritorious research in experimental pathology” by a scientist under 44 years of age. As director of pathogenesis at Penn’s Center for AIDS Research, Doms, 41, has led a team of scientists who have made significant discoveries in the field, including the finding that cell receptor molecules known as cofactors are required for HIV infection to progress into AIDS.