Five Women Scholars Selected for Notable Awards

Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, professor emerita at the University of New Mexico School of Law, has been chosen to receive the 2014 Excellence in Legal Service Award from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF). She will be honored at the MALDEF Awards Gala in San Antonio, Texas, on  September 19.

Professor Lopez joined the faculty at the law school in 1986. In 2001, she became director of the law school’s clinical program and remained in that role for eight years. Earlier this year, she was named executive director of Enlace Comunitario, a social justice organization dealing with domestic violence issues in the Latino immigrant community. Professor Lopez is a graduate of the University of New Mexico and the law school at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Margaret H. Marshall, senior research fellow and lecturer at Harvard Law School and the former chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, received the Thurgood Marshall Award at the American Bar Association’s annual convention in Boston. She is being honored for her long-term contributions to advancing civil rights, civil liberties, and human rights.

Marshall is a native of South Africa and fought to end apartheid. She came to the United States to earn a master’s degree at Harvard and a law degree at Yale. In 1992, she was named general counsel at Harvard University, the first woman to hold that position.

Helga Van Miegroet, a professor at Utah State University, is the recipient of the 2014 Women in Agronomy, Crops, Soil, and Environmental Sciences Mentoring Award given by the American Society of Agronomy, the Crop Science Society of America, and the Soil Science Society of America. She will receive the award at the societies’ joint annual meeting in Long Beach, California, this November.

Dr. Van Miegroet is a summa cum laude graduate of the State University of Ghent in Belgium. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in forest soils and mineral cycling from the University of Washington.

Patricia A. Thiel, a Distinguished Professor in the departments of chemistry and materials science & engineering at Iowa State University, received the 2014 Medard W. Welch Award from the AVS Society (American Vacuum Society). Professor Thiel is the first woman to win the award in its 44-year history.

Dr. Thiel is a summa cum laude graduate of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. She earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology.

Anne White, the Norman C. Rasmussen Career Development Professor in nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been selected to receive the 2014 Katherine E. Weimer Award from the American Physical Society. The award is given to a woman physicist in the early years of her career and recognizes outstanding achievement in plasma science research. She will receive the award in New Orleans this October.

Dr. White is a graduate of the University of Arizona. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Los Angeles.