Retiring faculty members honored at luncheon

From left: Robert Meyer, Carolyn Cohen, Michael Gilmore, Rachel McCulloch, K.C. Hayes.

Five retiring members of the faculty were honored at a luncheon last Friday.

They are Carolyn Cohen, Michael Gilmore, K.C. Hayes, Rachel McCulloch and Robert Meyer.

Biology Professor Carolyn Cohen, whose research explores protein structures using X-ray crystallography, has been a member of the faculty for 40 years.

Her courses include “How Science is Really Done,” and her work has been published in the journals Nature, Cell and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Cohen holds a bachelor’s degree from Bryn Mawr College and a Ph.D. from MIT. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Founding Fellow of the Massachusetts Academy of Sciences.

Michael “Timo” Gilmore, the Paul Prosswimmer Professor of American Literature, has been a member of the English department for 37 years.

His courses have explored the literature of the American Revolution and the American Renaissance. This past semester he taught a special course on literary rebels from nearby Cambridge, Mass. He is the author or editor of nine books and is currently working on a project about authors from Cambridge.

Gilmore, who received a bachelor’s degree from Yale and a Ph.D. from Harvard, has served as chair of the English Department.

Biology Professor K.C. Hayes has taught at Brandeis for 28 years, during which time he has served as director of the Foster Biomedical Research Laboratories and chair of the department. Hayes has studied the impact of diet on disorders of lipid and glucose metabolism in humans and in animal models, which led to the development of Smart Balance.

He was elected to be a member of the American Society for Nutrition in 2008. In 2011, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Malaysian Palm Oil Industry.

Hayes earned a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University, a doctorate in veterinary medicine from Cornell University and a Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut.   

Rachel McCulloch, the Rosen Family Professor of International Finance, has taught at Brandeis for 24 years. 

McCulloch’s has published nearly 100 articles over 40 years. She’s made seminal contributions to international economics on topics ranging from exchange rate regimes to tariffs and quotas to new forms of administered protection. She has consulted with the World Bank, been a member of the Academic Advisory Council for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston since 2000 and served on the Board of Editors for the Journal of International Economics and Economic Policy since 2003.

McCulloch received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and masters’ degrees and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.  

Physics Professor Robert Meyer has taught at Brandeis for 33 years. He is a member of the Condensed Matter and Biophysics Experiment research group in the Department of Physics, in which he investigates complex fluid systems, and has served as chair of the department. He also is director of the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center. He has also served as chair of the department.

Meyer’s research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Army Research Office, the U.S. Department of Energy and Raytheon Corp. He was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics from the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia in 2004, following in the footsteps Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein, and has received the premier prize in condensed matter physics, the Oliver Buckley Prize from the American Physical Society, in 2005. He also won the Joliot Curie Medal of the City of Paris. He was heralded last year as an Outstanding Reviewer for the Physical Review journals.

Meyer earned a bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.