Four Women Professors Win Prestigious Honors

Claire Max, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and director of the University of California Observatories, received the 2015 Joseph Weber Award in Astronomical Instrumentation from the American Astronomical Society.

Professor Max is a graduate of Harvard University. She earned a Ph.D. in astrophysical sciences and plasma physics from Princeton University.

Swathi Ravichandran, an associate professor of hospitality management at Kent State University in Ohio, was named the 2014 Distinguished Educator of the Year by the Professional Convention Management Association. She joined the Kent State faculty in 2005.

Dr. Ravichandran holds an MBA and a Ph.D. in food service and lodging management from Iowa State University.

Lisa Sowle Cahill, the J. Donald Monan Professor of Theology at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, received the 2015 Yves Congar Award for Theological Excellence, presented by Barry University in Miami Shores, Florida. Professor Cahill is the author of several books including Sex, Gender, and Christian Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Fionna Harrison, the Benjamin M. Rosen Professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, has been awarded the 2015 Rossi Prize from the American Astronomical Society for her “groundbreaking work on supernova remnants, neutron stars, and black holes.”

Dr. Harrison joined the faculty at CalTech in 1993 and was promoted to her current post in 2013. She holds a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley.