ForeverDuke Duke’s professional schools also recognize and honor the great work being done by alumni.
Isela Bahena M.B.A. ’04 Fuqua School of Business
May-Penn Award of Excellence
Bahena may have graduated from Fuqua, but she’s never far from returning. That’s because Bahena regularly visits to advise Fuqua students along their Duke journey and to recruit Latino and Hispanic students to business-school programs to help ensure Duke remains a diverse community of the best and brightest. Bahena’s commitment to Latino and Justin Cook Hispanic students—and her active volunteerism with the Duke University Hispanic and Latino Alumni Association (DUHLAA)—makes her an ideal choice for the May-Penn Award of Excellence, given every year by Fuqua’s Black and Latino MBA Organization to honor alumni who exhibit extraordinary leadership and service to students and alumni. n Jared Lazarus
Roger Coke Barr ’64, Ph.D. ’68 Engineering Alumni Association
OTHER FUQUA AWARDEES: Alumni Impact Award Laurie Gomer M.B.A. ’13 | Award for Exemplary Service Terry Sobolewski M.B.A. ’03 and Mike Wade M.B.A. ’03 | Leader of Consequence Award Tom Mitchell M.B.A. ’07 and Peter Warlick M.B.A. ’94
Distinguished Service Award
Barr broke ground at Duke as one of the first students to pursue study in the biomedical engineering field. As both a professor of biomedical engineering at the Pratt School of Engineering and an associate professor of pediatrics at Duke’s School of Medicine, Barr has focused his research on developing computer systems for understanding the “bioelectricity” of human tissues. Nerves, the brain, and the heart are all electrically active tissues, and Barr has devoted his research to developing platforms for the heart, in particular, that simulate how it works and that record voltages of the tissue to better understand how the heart functions. n OTHER DUKE ENGINEERING AWARDEES: Distinguished Alumnus Award Philip J. Hawk ’76 | Distinguished Young Alumnus Award Max D. Cohen ’03
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Sara Danius Ph.D. ’97 The Graduate School
Few-Glasson Alumni Society
When the Nobel Prize in Literature was announced in Stockholm, Sweden, last year, Danius was there. That’s because she was making the announcement. As permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which selects the Nobel laureate each year, Danius not only had the honor of being the voice of the Academy that day, but is the first woman to do so in her role. Until Danius’ post in 2015, the permanent secretary had been a man since the role was established in 1786. A native of Sweden, Danius is a professor and a scholar who earned a Ph.D. in literature. n OTHER GRADUATE SCHOOL AWARDEES: Distinguished Alumni Award Kenneth Gergen Ph.D. ’63 | Other Few-Glasson Alumni Society Inductees
Penka Kouneva Ph.D. ’97 and Nathan Kundtz M.S. ’08, Ph.D. ’09