Ramanan Laxminarayan, a senior research scholar, was awarded the Garrod Medal by the British Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC). The Garrod Medal is presented to an international authority in the field of antimicrobial chemotherapy and is the highest honor bestowed by BSAC.

“I am deeply honored to join the ranks of previous Garrod Medalists, which includes many of the greatest contributors to antimicrobial discovery and chemotherapy,” Laxminarayan said. “My inclusion as the first economist on that list is an acknowledgment of the role that the social sciences play in maintaining the effectiveness of the crown jewels of modern medicine.”

Laxminarayan’s area of study includes public health and infectious disease and the integration between the two in order to understand and address public health issues. In recent years, he has worked toward creating a greater understanding of antibiotic resistance, a growing global crisis. In 2014, Laxminarayan served on President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology’s antimicrobial resistance working group, and he is a voting member of the U.S. Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antimicrobial Resistance.

Elliot Mamet, a postdoctoral research associate and lecturer, co-authored “Nonvoting Delegates to the Modern U.S. Congress: Race, Democracy, Empire.” The paper received an honorable mention for the David Brian Robertson Best Paper Award, which is given for the best paper in politics and history by the American Political Science Association’s Politics and History Section.

The paper studies how, and why, the U.S. Congress added four new nonvoting delegates in the 1970s, from Washington, D.C., Guam, the Virgin Islands, and American Samoa. Combining archival research and quantitative analysis of voting behavior, the article explains how racial attitudes structured conflict over the delegate position.

“It is an honor for Austin Bussing and I to receive honorable mention for APSA’s David Brian Robertson Best Paper Award,” Mamet said. “I hope our paper will encourage further research into the lack of democratic equality accorded to the residents of Washington, D.C., and the U.S. territories.”

Mamet’s research has focused on themes of democracy in the U.S., and his writing has appeared in Political Theory, Polity, American Political Thought, State Politics & Policy Quarterly, and The Washington Post. Previously, he served on the legislative staff of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow.