People: Danishefsky, Yerulshalmi, Cage, Plackenmeyer, Blum, Shahabuddin. Columbia University Record, September 19, 1997

PEOPLE

Danishefsky, Yerulshalmi, Cage, Plackenmeyer, Blum, Shahabuddin

Yerulshalmi.

Samuel Danishefsky, professor of chemistry at Columbia and director of the Laboratory for Bio-organic Chemistry at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, will receive the Arthur C. Cope Award, which is the American Chemical Society's highest award. It includes a gold medal, a $25,000 award and $150,000 for chemical research.
Yosef Hayim Yerulshalmi, Salo Wittmayer Baron Professor of Jewish History, Culture and Society and director of Columbia's Center for Israel and Jewish Studies, has returned to Columbia after a year's sabbatical, during which he received two honorary degrees: from the University of Haifa and the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich.
Cage.
Mary Crystal Cage has been named the new director of communications at Teachers College. She was a writer/editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education for eight years.
Also joining TC is Suzanne Hall, who is now director of alumni services. Previously, Hall had been alumnae director at Spence, an all-girls school in Manhattan.
William F. Plackenmeyer, a former New York City police captain and 30-year veteran of the force, has been named director of security at Barnard.

Blum. Photo by Bachrach.

Barbara Blum is the director of the new Columbia-sponsored National Research Forum on Children, Families and the New Federalism. Blum is director of the School of Public Health's National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia's School of Public Health and is a newly-appointed senior fellow in child and family policy.
Perwez Shahabuddin, assistant professor of industrial engineering and operations research, has been selected to participate in the National Academy of Engineering's Symposium on Frontiers of Engineering Sept. 18-20, an annual event that brings together some of the nation's top young engineers. Shahabuddin conducts simulations of mathematical models of systems that exhibit random behavior, to improve their dependability. He estimates small probabilities of rare events that may have damaging, even catastrophic consequences, for example the failure of an aircraft computer system or the breakdown of a telephone switch.