English professor Yiyun Li last week won The (London) Sunday Times 2015 short story award for "A Sheltered Woman." Li is the first woman to win the award in its six-year history.

First published in The New Yorker in March 2014, "A Sheltered Woman" tells about a Chinese-American nanny hired to spend a month supporting a new mother and her baby, and who has to remain detached from the emotional turmoil around her.

Novelist Elif Shafak said Li's story "enchanted" the judges — he was one of them — "with its exquisite crafting, brilliant observations and modest but powerful voice,” according to London’s Guardian newspaper.

Li received the $45,000 prize in a ceremony the night of April 24. Recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, Li has published two short story collections, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and Gold Boy, Emerald Girl; and two novels, The Vagrants and Kinder Than Solitude.

•••

The Hartwell Foundation has given an Individual Biomedical Research Award to Mark Huising, assistant professor, in support of his early-stage research toward a cure for juvenile diabetes. The foundation will provide $300,000 in direct cost over three years.

Huising has appointments in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, College of Biological Sciences; and the Department of Physiology and Membrane Biology, School of Medicine. He joined UC Davis last November, having previously worked at the Salk Institute in La Jolla.

Read the complete news release.

•••

Elizabeth S. Freeman, professor of English, has received a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. She will use the fellowship to work on a project titled “It Goes Without Saying: Sense-Methods in the United States’ Very Long 19th Century.”

She specializes in American literature and gender/sexuality/queer studies. She has written two books, The Wedding Complex: Forms of Belonging in Modern American Culture and Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories.

The council made 70 awards to faculty and independent scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences this year, selected from 1,000 applications. The fellowships allow scholars to spend six to 12 months on full-time research and writing.

•••

The International Association for the Fantastic Arts recently presented a career award to Colin Milburn for distinguished contributions to the scholarship and criticism of the fantastic.

Milburn holds the Gary Snyder Chair in Science and the Humanities; he is a faculty member in the departments of English, and Cinema and Technocultural Studies.

His research focuses on the relations among literature, science and technology. His book Mondo Nano: Fun and Games in the World of Digital Matter came out earlier this month.

•••

The Oakland-based legal aid organization Centro Legal de la Raza recently presented its Outstanding Achievements in the Law Award to Kevin R. Johnson, dean of the School of Law.

The award recognizes his outstanding achievements in education and the law.

Johnson is the Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law and a professor inn the Department of Chicana/o Studies. He is an internationally recognized scholar in the fields of immigration law and policy, refugee law and civil rights.

•••

Beth Mitcham, director of the Postharvest Technology Center and the Horticulture Innovation Lab, has been chosen by the American Society for Horticultural Science as the outstanding international horticulturist for 2015.

The award recognizes a horticulturist who has made an outstanding and valuable contribution to international horticultural science, education, research and/or outreach for a period of 10 or more years.

•••

Thomas Scott and James Carey, distinguished professors, Department of Entomology and Nematology, recently received awards from the Entomological Society of America’s Pacific Branch:

Scott received the C.W. Woodworth Award, the branch’s highest honor. Carey received the distinguished teaching award, and his nomination packet will now be submitted to the national competition.

Doctoral candidate Mohammad-Amir Aghaee, who studies with Cooperative Extension entomologist Larry Godfrey, won the John Henry Comstock Graduate Student Award, the branch’s highest honor for a graduate student.

•••

UC Davis has been designated a Tree Campus USA for the seventh year in a row — that’s every year since the Arbor Day Foundation began the program, honoring colleges and universities and their leaders for promoting healthy trees and engaging students and staff in the spirit of conservation.

In a recent letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi, Tree USA President Don Lambe said UC Davis “met the five core standards for effective campus forest management: a tree advisory committee, a campus tree-care plan, dedicated annual expenditures for its campus tree program, an Arbor Day observance and student service-learning project.”

“By earning Tree Campus USA recognition, your campus  has shown its commitment to protecting and preserving its valuable tree resources and will reap their benefits for generations of students to come,” Lambe wrote.

•••

Dateline UC Davis welcomes news of faculty and staff awards, for publication in Laurels. Send information to dateline@ucdavis.edu.

Follow Dateline UC Davis on Twitter.