Karima Bennoune, professor of international law, is making news for 1-million-plus clicks on her TEDx video. But let’s not forget there’s a book behind that video — a book that last week won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for nonfiction.

Bennoune

The award, for Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism (published in 2013), comes with a $10,000 prize.

Judge Rubén Martínez wrote: “The portraits in Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here find Muslims on the front lines against the fundamentalists. … And though she does not claim to be a protagonist herself, by writing this book Bennoune does indeed join the brave company of those she writes about.”

Bennoune commented on “the unfathomable courage shown by so many people of Muslim heritage around the world — from Iraq to my father’s home country, Algeria, and beyond — in their often life-threatening struggles against extremism.

“These are the stories told in the book, and in our turbulent times such critical voices of tolerance and hope from Muslim majority societies must be heard internationally, but often are not.”

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize makes an invaluable contribution to changing that, she said.

“Given the mission of the prize, there is no other award that would mean more to me or to so many of those in the book — victims of terror who organized against its perpetrators, women who filled bomb craters with flowers, journalists who defied machine guns armed only with pens, artists who could not be censored by death threats (or worse), feminists who demanded the right to have human rights, secularists who spoke out, mullahs who risked their lives to revive the enlightened Islam of our grandparents.

“I share the prize with all of them.”

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Professor Michael Siminovitch, director of the California Lighting Technology Center, has received a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Thailand.

The visitor’s duties will include teaching a graduate class on luminaire design and LED technologies.

Earlier this month, President Sakarindr Bhumiratana and other academic leaders from King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi visited UC Davis to tour the California Lighting Technology Center and to see work done on campus as part of the UC Davis Smart Lighting Initiative, and to meet Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Ralph J. Hexter.

The universities signed a memorandum of understanding in support of further collaboration between their respective lighting research centers, both of which are dedicated to improving the sustainability and energy efficiency of lighting. Read more about the relationship between the two universities.

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Professor Emeritus Michael Barbour, an internationally accomplished plant ecologist in the Department of Plant Sciences, has been named a foreign member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Pharmacy.

The recognition follows the honorary degree he received last year from Madrid’s Complutense University. It awarded Barbour a Doctor Honoris Causis, the university’s highest academic distinction.

Both honors stem from Barbour’s collaborative research and teaching efforts, which began in the late 1990s with Professor Daniel Sánchez-Mata, an internationally recognized Spanish botanist and plant ecologist at Complutense.. Their partnership grew out of a UC Davis-Complutense agreement that fosters joint projects and programs in research and education.

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Eduardo Blumwald, professor, Department of Plant Sciences, is a new fellow of the American Society of Plant Biologists.

The award recognizes distinguished and long-term contributions to plant biology and service to the society by current members in areas that include research, education, mentoring, outreach, and professional and public service.

The society cited Blumwald’s extensive contributions to the understanding of ion transport mechanisms involved in abiotic stress tolerance. His work exemplifies the importance of basic plant biology in developing strategies to improve crop performance.

Blumwald served on the society’s International Affairs Committee (2008-10) and chaired the Western Region Section (2010-13), and has organized international and western regional conferences.

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Adel Kader has been named a fellow of the International Society for Horticultural Science, posthumously. Kader, who died in 2012, was a longtime UC Davis research scientist, a champion of the Postharvest Technology Center who worked tirelessly to improve the postharvest quality of horticultural products and to reduce postharvest losses worldwide.

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Exceptional Women of Color honorees for 2014 include three from UC Davis:

• Angela Courtney, recognized in the category of education and research — She’s a research scientist in the Department of Comparative Pathology.
• Tonya Fancher, health, sport and fitness — She’s an associate professor of medicine.
• Aretha Gillis, management and the professions — She’s the chief administrative office in the School of Medicine.

Sac Cultural Hub presents the awards annually during the its Exceptional Women of Color conference.

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The campus police chief has won an international award, and our other chief has made news of his own, in the fire service.

• Matt Carmichael, police chief — Recipient of the second annual David H. Lord Award for Exemplary Community Service, given by the National Association of College Auxiliary Services, which draws members from the United States, Canada and elsewhere in the world.
• Nate Trauernicht, fire chief — Appointed by the president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs to RESCUES, or Researchers Creating Usable Emergency Solutions, bringing together researchers and first responders to transform research into operational practice. Trauernicht also serves as a board member for the National Fire Service Research Center and Policy Institute.

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The American Society for Enology and Viticulture recently presented its Merit Award to Professor Linda Bisson for outstanding contributions to the study of wine and winemaking (enology) or grapes (viticulture).

Bisson, a geneticist in the Department of Viticulture and Enology,

recently co-published a paper on the role of abnormally shaped proteins — called prions — in “stuck” fermentations. She suggests the discovery may also have implications for better understanding metabolic diseases, such as Type 2 diabetes, in people.

Bisson regularly teaches courses in wine production and genetic analysis.

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Entomology professor Diane Ullman is being honored for the second time this year for teaching excellence.

First, the Entomological Society of America’s Pacific Branch recognized her. Now the 7,000-member national society is joining in, by presenting her the society’s highest honor for teaching.

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Professor Aaron Smith of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics has been honored for communication in his field.

Smith and three other scholars received a Quality of Communication Award from the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, for three papers addressing recent events in which futures markets dramatically mispriced agricultural grains and oilseeds. The researchers contradicted claims that speculative trading was the underlying cause.

Smith’s research addresses trading and price dynamics in commodity and financial derivatives markets. Fields of interest include econometrics, commodity markets, finance and energy.

He joined the faculty in 2001.

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Dateline UC Davis welcomes news of faculty and staff awards, for publication in Laurels. Send information to dateline@ucdavis.edu.

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