"It is a tremendous honor to be selected by my peers and it is most gratifying to join the esteemed company of the previous recipients of the award," Katz said.

"Samuel Katz exemplifies a rare sort of commitment and perseverance that culminates in life-saving medical discoveries," said H.R. Shepard, chairman of the Sabin Vaccine Institute. "The global benefit of the measles vaccine alone is tremendous and can be realized even further with amplified immunization rates."

Edward Tower, professor of economics, has received a Fulbright Senior Specialists grant in economics at the Graduate School of Economics and Business at the University of Zagreb in Croatia.

In May and June, Tower will be teaching both undergraduates and graduate students at the University of Zagreb. He also will address the Zagreb Business Club on the effectiveness of lobbying in the United States.

The Fulbright Senior Specialists Program was created to complement the traditional Fulbright Scholar Program, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and managed by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars. Under the Senior Specialists Program, scholars receive grants for curricular and faculty development, as well as institutional planning.

Kelly Heaton, media artist-in-residence in Information Science & Information Studies and computer science, has one show underway in Boston with a second show upcoming in New York in September.

The current show is an exhibit of Dead Pelt, includes the skins of 400 Furby toy, turned into a red and white fur cloak for Missus Santa Claus. The coat was made while she was a fellow at the famed. MIT Media Laboratory. The show is at the Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston through May 27.

The second show consists of an exhibit Heaton has worked on since arriving at Duke. Live Pelt, a coat featuring the pelts of Tickle Me Elmo dolls, premieres Sept. 6 at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New York.

Karla FC Holloway has won the 2002 Eugene M. Kayden Book Award for Passed On: African-American Mourning Stories, A Memorial.

Holloway, dean of the humanities and social sciences at Duke University and William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor of English, wrote about the death of her own son in the book, which also examines bereavement, death, dying and burial in 20th-century African America.

The prize, given each year by the University of Colorado at Boulder, honors the best book in the humanities published by an American university press. It carries an award of $4,000.

Holloway's research and teaching interests focus on literary and cultural studies, 20th century African and African-American literature and linguistics, and the association between literature and linguistics. She is the author of four other books, including Codes of Conduct: Race, Ethics, and the Color of Our Character.

Laurie Ball, a junior from Duke University, has been selected to serve as fellow at the Office of the Secretary of State in Washington, D.C. A public policy major, Ball studied abroad at the School for International Training in Chile. While in Chile, she volunteered as a tutor and mentor. During the summer of 2001, Laurie interned for the Guatemala Human Rights Commission. Her academic research has complimented her public service with a plan to examine the needs of Hispanic immigrant children in a local public school, entitled, "Educating Immigrant Children." For her work in Chile, she received the Mellon Award for Undergraduate Research.