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names and faces

KUDOS

Ronald W. Busuttil, Dumont Professor in Transplantation Surgery and chief of the Division of Liver and Pancreas Transplantation at UCLA, was appointed chairman of the Department of Surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine.... Rebecca Beatty, director of business and administrative services for Corporate Financial Services, won first place as “Top Travel Innovator” for 2003 at the Society for Collegiate Travel Management’s annual conference. Her winning submission described the process that took UCLA from using an outside travel management vendor to creating its own corporate travel department.... In recognition of her outstanding contributions to Middle East studies, Nikki R. Keddie, professor emerita of history, was named an honorary fellow of the Middle East Studies Association of North America by its board of directors.

CONGRATS

The Film Foundation presented director Curtis Hanson, honorary chairman of the UCLA Film and Television Archive since 1999, with the 2003 Film Preservation Award as part of the 4th Annual Directors Guild of America Honors Gala for his commitment and dedication to the preservation of motion pictures.... Paul J. da Silva, graduate student in screenwriting at the School of Theater, Film and Television, won first prize in the Samuel Goldwyn Writing Awards for his screenplay, “Deep South.” ... Valerie Bross, serials cataloger and digital resources cataloging coordinator at the Charles E. Young Research Library, was named the 2003 Librarian of the Year by the Librarians Association of the University of California, Los Angeles.... For the third consecutive year, UCLA Medical Center received an American Heart Association Get With the Guidelines Coronary Artery Disease Performance Achievement Award. The award honors UCLA’s commitment to implementing a new standard for cardiac care that effectively improves treatment for patients hospitalized with coronary artery disease. Under the program, patients are started immediately on cholesterol-lowering drugs and other cardio-protective medications and are given dietary and lifestyle counseling while in the hospital. By implementing this program, UCLA has cut repeat heart attacks and one-year mortality rates by half.

IN MEMORIAM

Mario Baur, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, died Dec. 14 after battling a bone marrow disorder for over three years. He was 69.

Mario grew up in Chicago and attended the University of Chicago, where he was awarded an A.B. in liberal arts in 1953 and a M.S. in chemistry in 1955. He proceeded to study physical chemistry at MIT, completing a Ph.D. in three years.

In 1962, Mario joined the UCLA faculty as assistant professor and undertook a broad program of research after doing post-doctoral studies at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands as well as at UC San Diego. His theoretical interests included irreversible thermodynamics, the statistical mechanics of equilibrium, the motional states of molecules in solids, as well as other areas.

Mario was a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award for Graduate Teaching in 1966 and the departmental Hansen-Dow Teaching Award in 1993.

He is survived by his wife, Ida, and four children, Matthew, Kim, Joshua, and Saskia. Donations in his memory can be made to City of Hope with the annotation “Mario Baur Fund.”

Paul Hoffman, manager of advanced technologies for Academic Technology Services, died on Dec. 25 after several years of fighting leukemia. He was 56.

In addition to his day-to-day management responsibilities, Paul played a guiding role in the core business of ATS, providing support for computation-based research. Paul furthered the research agenda of the university through the integration of technology. He consulted on high performance computing, with a specialization on parallel programming for commodity-based Linux clusters.

Just prior to Paul’s death, he was working on the Plasma Physics project that had recently been granted a $1 million National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation grant.

When he was not working, Paul enjoyed reading the poetry of Mary Oliver and chatting with friends about everything from plasma physics to the rules of grammar.

Donations can be made in Paul’s memory to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. (310) 846-4734.

Mary Reres, former dean of the UCLA School of Nursing and professor at the UCLA School of Medicine, died of cancer on Dec. 17. She was 62.

In her career, Mary was widely known for her contributions and achievements in nursing education and public health, combining academic, administrative and clinical experience. She was the author of several books and numerous professional articles on nursing, public health policy and psychiatric nursing.

During her tenure as dean at UCLA from 1977 to 1986, the School of Nursing dedicated its building and established its doctoral program. It also opened the UCLA School of Nursing Health Center and Union Rescue Mission, a nurse-managed clinic in the Skid Row section of Los Angeles.

Under her leadership, the School of Nursing received its major endowment gift of $1.5 million, which currently funds $800,000 a year in scholarships and four endowed chairs.

As a member of the board of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals from November 1979 until her death, Mary chaired the Quality and Health Improvement Committee and was a member of the Executive Committee. She also held key leadership positions in organizations that included the American Academy of Nursing, American Nurses Association, and American Hospital Association.

She was cited in Who’s Who of American Women, Who’s Who in Health Care and Who’s Who of Women in Education.

The family asks that remembrances be sent to Creighton University or the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.