The 2018-2019 academic year saw Yale faculty members honored with some of the world’s and the nation’s highest accolades — from Nobel and Pulitzer prizes, to a MacArthur award, and more — and with election to renowned national and international academies.

As President Peter Salovey and Provost Ben Polak emphasized in September: “Yale’s faculty members define new frontiers of scholarship, and inspire our students, our alumni, and the world.”

Here are just some of the Yale faculty honors in 2018-2019, listed in the order they were announced:

Awards

lasker-koshland special achievement award in medical science

Joan Steitz

2018 nobel prize in economic sciences

William Nordhaus (co-recipient)

macarthur fellowship

Gregg Gonsalves

benjamin franklin medal in computer and cognitive science

Marcia Johnson

grammy award (best contemporary classical composition)

Aaron Jay Kernis

paul ehrlich and ludwig darmstaedter prize (germany)

Arthur Horwitz (co-recipient)

ho-am prize for science (korea)

Marvin Chun

2019 connecticut medal of science

Pasko Rakic

pulitzer prize

David Blight (History)
Jackie Sibblies Drury (Drama)

camille dreyfus teacher-scholar award

Timothy Newhouse

berlin prize

Moira Fradinger

sigourney award

Dr. Rosemary Balsam

Election to Academies

national academy of medicine

David Haffler

american association for the advancement of science

Charles H. Ahn
Richard G. Bribiescas
Christopher G. Burd
Dragomir Radev

national academy of inventors

Susan Baserga

american academy of arts and sciences

Emily Bazelon
Derek E.G. Briggs
Xiaohong Chen
Brad Inwood
Donald Margulies
Tracey L. Meares
Konstantinos E.D. Meghir
Paul E. Turner
Steven I. Wilkinson

royal society (united kingdom)

James Rothman

national academy of sciences

Pinelopi K. Goldberg
Paul E. Turner

Fellowships

sloan research fellowships

Meng Cheng
Nir Navon
Hailiang Wang
Yang Cai
Philipp Strack

guggenheim fellowships

Joseph G. Manning
John Durham Peters
Aki Sasamoto
Ann McCoy
Janine di Giovanni

andrew carnegie fellowship

Zack Cooper

vannevar bush faculty fellowship

Jack Harris

 ‘The best in every field’

Enhancing faculty excellence and diversity by “recruiting and retaining the very best in every field” has been a key goal of Yale’s president. The $50 million Faculty Excellence and Diversity Initiative is now in its third year, and a five-year $50 million faculty recruitment and retention initiative was announced in the fall.

“We will be looking for scholars who redefine their fields, who not only answer important questions, but change the very questions that are asked,” said Salovey and Polak in announcing the initiative. The goal, they added, is to create an academic community “where we are inspired by our students, by our research, and by each other — the kind of community that will draw the best colleagues, and will be very hard to leave.”

The 2018-209 academic year saw the recruitment of top scholars from other institutions to head Yale programs and initiatives — including the appointment of economist Kerwin Charles of the University of Chicago as the Indra K. Nooyi Dean of the Yale School of Management; physicist Larry Gladney of the University of Pennsylvania as dean of diversity and faculty development for the Yale Faculty of Arts & Sciences; vaccine expert Dr. Saad B. Omer of Emory University as inaugural director of the Yale Institute for Global Health; digital artist Dana Karwas of New York University as director of the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media; and Courtney J. Martin as director of the Yale Center for British Art, among others.