News Briefs

Cohen receives society’s highest honor
for lifetime achievement in research

Dr. Myron S. Cohen, J. Herbert Bate distinguished professor of medicine and microbiology and immunology in UNC’s School of Medicine and of epidemiology in UNC’s School of Public Health, has received the 2005 Thomas Parran Award from the American Venereal Disease Association.

The award, presented in early October at the 43^rd meeting of the Infectious Disease Society of America in San Francisco, recognizes lifetime achievements in sexually transmitted disease research. It is the society’s highest honor.

Cohen is internationally known for his studies of transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases and for studies concerning how to prevent transmission of the organisms that cause them.

Among his previous honors are the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Rush Medical College in 2000 and a National Institutes of Health Merit Award. He joined the UNC faculty in 1980 and now directs UNC’s Division of Infectious Diseases and Center for Infectious Diseases.        

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Allen Questrom, former chairman of the board and chief executive officer of J.C. Penney Co. Inc. and Federated Department Stores Inc., will launch this year’s UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School Dean’s Speaker Series on Oct. 27.

Questrom will speak at 5:30 p.m. in the McColl Building’s Maurice J. Koury Auditorium. The lecture, which is free to the public, will be followed by a reception. Free parking will be available in the business school parking deck. To RSVP, call (919) 843-7787 or e-mail kfbsrsvp@unc.edu.

Questrom spent most of his 39-year retailing career with Federated Department Stores Inc., rising from management trainee to become the corporation’s youngest chairman and CEO. With the hostile takeover of Federated in 1988, he joined Neiman Marcus as president and CEO.

Federated rehired Questrom in 1990 as its chairman and CEO to steer the corporation out of bankruptcy. Setting the stabilized corporation on a growth path, Questrom engineered Federated’s strategic 1995 acquisition of RH Macy & Co. Inc. and its 1996 acquisition of Broadway Department Stores. He retired from Federated in 1997.

Questrom returned to retailing in 1999 as chairman, president and CEO of Barneys New York Inc. In 2000, he became chairman and CEO of J.C. Penney Co. Inc. and served there until December 2004.

A principal of AEA Investors Inc., Questrom also is a partner of Mellon Ventures. He is a director of Sotheby’s and a member of the National Committee of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

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News Services contact: Deb Saine, (919) 962-8415 or deborah_saine@unc.edu