David J. Mooney receives Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award

Cambridge, Mass. - April 11, 2013 - David J. Mooney, Robert P. Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has been named among five recipients of the 2013 Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award.

Presented by the Harvard Graduate Student Council on April 10, the award honors members of the faculty "who go above and beyond as mentors to graduate students by supporting and promoting students' research, education, career, and personal development."

Candidates are nominated directly by their advisees and then selected by a panel of nine judges. The criteria for selection include interpersonal mentoring skills and the ability to serve as an effective and inspiring role model. Mooney currently oversees 17 graduate students (including visiting students) and 11 postdoctoral researchers.

In one of several nomination letters, a student described Mooney as "a truly outstanding mentor... helpful, supportive, patient, fair, and kind."

"He pushes us to think about research in a very independent way, and he strikes the right balance between providing guidance and allowing us learn from the process of doing research ourselves," the student wrote. (The nominating students customarily remain anonymous.) "The true impact of Dave’s work is much more broad and long lasting than the papers or discoveries that come out of his lab; it lies in the former and future generations of students who will carry with them what they learned from Dave and make their own impact through science and mentorship.”

Mooney was instrumental in helping graduate students to launch the seminar series Topics in Bioengineering at SEAS in 2009. The nomination letters also praised his dedication to teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels; his encouragement of students to pursue their own research interests; and his accessibility for individual feedback and constructive advice.

Mooney's research investigates how mammalian cells receive information from the materials in their environment. Students in his group use the tools of cell and molecular biology to study the mechanisms by which chemical or mechanical signals are sensed by cells and promote either tissue growth or destruction.

The goal of that research is to design and synthesize new biomaterials that regulate the gene expression of interacting cells for a variety of tissue engineering and drug delivery projects—for example, therapeutic angiogenesis, regeneration of musculoskeletal tissues, and cancer therapies.

In addition to his professorship at Harvard SEAS, Mooney is a Core Faculty Member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard.

Mooney is one of five faculty honored with the award this year. The other recipients are:

• William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Department of Sociology & Harvard Kennedy School;
• Katharine Park, Samuel Zemurray, Jr. and Doris Zemurray Stone Radcliffe Professor of the History of Science;
• Patricia D’Amore, Professor of Ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School and Schepens Eye Research Institute; and
• Jacob Olupona, Professor of African and African American Studies, Department of African & African American Studies; and Professor of African Religious Traditions, Harvard Divinity School.

The Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award, now in its 15th year, was established in 1998 by the Graduate Student Council and named after the former Master of Dudley House and Professor of the History of Science, Emeritus, Everett I. Mendelsohn.

"We seek to recognize those faculty members who truly go out of of their way to mentor graduate students," the Council said, "honoring them for efforts which often go unnoticed—but not unappreciated."