This column offers a sampling of honors and awards recently awarded to UC Davis faculty, staff and units:

John Campbell, director of Campus Recreation since 2005, has been appointed as vice president of region VI for the National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association. He will represent the region, which includes nine Western states and British Columbia, through 2010 and serve on the organization’s national board of directors. Campbell once served as vice president of another region and has provided leadership through committee service and workshop presentations. The association — a resource for collegiate recreational sports — has more than 4,000 members.

Physicists John S. Conway and Steven Carlip have been elected fellows of the American Physical Society, an honor bestowed on fewer than 15 percent of the society’s 40,000 members. The society cited Carlip for his contributions to black hole physics and to the study of gravity in the dimensions of space and time. Conway was recognized for outstanding contributions in the search for a sub-atomic particle known as the Higgs boson and his work using high-energy particle accelerators.

A model car built by students from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science placed 9th out of 29 entries in the annual Chem-E-Car competition in Philadelphia in November. Sponsored by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the contest challenges college students to design and build vehicles powered by alternative fuels. The UC Davis team used a mixture of potassium permanganate and hydrogen peroxide to give off oxygen and water vapor to drive the turbine that powered their vehicle’s electric motor.

Each year the Society for Neuroscience honors a junior faculty member making significant contributions in public communication, outreach and education about neuroscience. This year’s Next Generation Award was bestowed on Karen Zito, an assistant professor in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior and with the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience.Zito received the award at the society’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C. in November.

John Werner, professor in the UC Davis Health System Eye Center, has received the Lighthouse International Pisart Vision Award, a major U.S. prize honoring people who have made an extraordinary contribution to the prevention, cure or treatment of severe vision impairment or blindness.The award was established in 1981 and includes a prize of $35,000 and a glass sculpture created by a blind individual.

A photograph taken at the UC Davis Children’s Hospital has been selected for the National Association of Children’s Hospitals and Related Institution’s 2009 Children’s Hospital Photo Exhibit, which will debut at the organization’s “Creating Connections” conference in Nashville, TN. The photo was taken in 2008 by photographer Jose Luis Villegas. The image shows the hands of nurse Christa Bedford-Mu cradling a tiny infant in the neonatal intensive care unit. The exhibit will be displayed this summer on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

UC Davis’ Asian American Network for Cancer Awareness Research and Training was recently honored by the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities with its Health Disparities Leadership Award. AANCART is led by Moon Chen Jr., a professor of hematology and oncology who specializes in developing linguistically specific, culturally tailored and population-based health interventions.

Professor Bruno Nachtergaele, chair of the Department of Mathematics, was recently elected as vice president of the International Association of Mathematical Physics for a two-year term, 2009-2011.

William B. Lacy, vice provost of University Outreach and International Programs, has been elected president-elect of the Association of International Education Administrators. AIEA provides leadership for internationalizing higher education in the U.S. and abroad. Lacy will serve on the AIEA Executive Committee for three years.

             — Dateline staff