Tsung Wei Sze, former Fessenden Professor (1957-62) and Westinghouse Professor (1962-65) in the Swanson School of Engineering’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, died Aug. 11, 2017. He was 95.

Sze – known to friends as Wayne – joined the Pitt faculty in 1954 and served as associate dean for graduate studies and research (1970-77), as well as acting dean of engineering (1972-73). While at Pitt he worked as a consultant to Remington Univac Company, Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Westinghouse Airbrake Company and Wheeling Steel Corporation, and was named a NATO Senior Fellow in 1968.

Sze established the University’s Image Processing and Pattern Recognition Laboratory in 1976, and was its director through the rest of his career. He was instrumental in introducing computers to his engineering students, and wrote textbooks for early classes on computer systems and programming languages. He also mentored 32 PhD students’ dissertations.

Ching-Chung Li, faculty member in the Swanson School’s electrical and computer engineering department, recalled Sze’s work to develop the engineering graduate student program and how Sze mentored new faculty such as Li.

“He was an excellent teacher, especially of graduate students,” Li said. “He devoted his whole life to education, and to Pitt.”

Sze’s son Daniel remembered watching Pitt football games at Pitt Stadium from his father’s office window in Pennsylvania Hall (now K. Leroy Irvis Hall), and attending all the home games during Pitt’s 1976 championship season.

“He was very dedicated to his field,” Daniel said. “He often worked so hard and so late he would go for many days a week without eating dinner with his family.”

Sze retired in 1993.

Born Sept. 13, 1921, in Shanghai, China, Sze attended National Jiao Tong University for engineering, where he helped lead the anti-Japanese underground resistance prior to World War II, then left to join the Chinese Army as an English interpreter to the U.S. Air Force. He was discharged in the U.S. as a lieutenant colonel.

Remaining in this country – with just $30 – he earned a BSEE at the University of Missouri, an MSEE at Purdue University and a PhD from Northwestern University in 1954.

Sze worked to connect Pitt to engineering talent in China and Taiwan throughout his career. Appointed an adjunct professor at Jiao Tong University, he helped establish exchange programs for electrical engineering students and faculty between its campuses and Pitt.

Sze is survived by his wife of 65 years, Frances Tung Sze; children David, Daniel and Deborah Sze Modzelewski; eight grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.

Memorial donations are requested to the Tsung Wei Sze Fund at The Lifespace Foundation, 1290 Boyce Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15241, for construction of a new gazebo. Condolences may be emailed to frances.t.sze@gmail.com.

Delores “Dee” Johnson, who is believed to have been Pitt’s longest-serving female staff member when she retired in 2005, died July 23, 2017. She was 76.

She began her Pitt career in 1958 as a microscope technician in the cyclotron laboratory within the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences’ physics department. But she spent the majority of her time, beginning in 1971, at the University as a communications support services specialist with Pitt’s Office of News and Publications (now University Communications), where she helped to produce Pitt Magazine, Pitt Med and other University publications.

“She was always there” for fellow Pitt employees, recalls her colleague Bill Young, formerly executive director of marketing in Johnson’s former department. “If you needed background on something that happened before you arrived, she was the person to go to. She had the institutional knowledge. She was a hardworking person – she did her job and did it well.”

“I never thought I’d be here at Pitt for so many years, to tell you the truth, but I’ve enjoyed my work and I’ve learned a lot,” Johnson told Pitt news services upon retirement after 47 years at Pitt. In 2000, she was honored with the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence for Staff Employees – Pitt’s highest staff recognition.

Johnson was known as a talented vocalist. She sang in many musical genres with a variety of acts throughout the years, including performances at Pitt holiday parties.

Michelle Denson, administrative specialist in Johnson’s department, was also her women’s choir director at the Rodman Street Missionary Baptist Church in East Liberty. “She was like a mom – she had that maternal instinct” in dealing with fellow choir members, Denson said. “She was very committed to her choir and her church.”

Born Aug. 9, 1940, Johnson is survived by her siblings Bashir Ansari, Alfreda Praither, Shirley Taylor, and Lillian (Stanley) Robinson.

Herbert L. Needleman, known for his pioneering efforts that linked environmental lead exposure — even at low doses — to cognitive deficits in children, died in Pittsburgh on July 18 at an assisted living center. He was 89.

“Herb Needleman was not only an outstanding researcher but also a passionate public health advocate who changed the way we understand the health effects of environmental exposures,” said Arthur S. Levine, senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and the John and Gertrude Petersen Dean of the School of Medicine. “His tireless efforts transformed the lives of current and future generations.”

Needleman was a pediatrician and emeritus professor of psychiatry in the School of Medicine Departments of Psychiatry and Pediatrics, which he joined in 1981 after leaving Harvard University.

Two years earlier, in 1979, he published a landmark study in the New England Journal of Medicine showing that Boston-area children with higher accumulations of lead also had, on average, five or six fewer IQ points than those with lower lead accumulations who were of the same neighborhood, ethnic background and economic status.

“That study really changed the whole way the world thinks about lead poisoning,” Philip Landrigan of Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, a longtime lead researcher who worked alongside Needleman, told Pitt Med magazine in 2001.

“He really made the world consider the possibility that subclinical exposure to environmental pollutants could have a serious societal impact,” said David Bellinger of Harvard Medical School in the same article. Bellinger and Needleman were also collaborators.

In 1996, Needleman conducted his first in-depth delinquency study in which he measured bone lead levels in children and collected reports of aggression and delinquency from the subjects, their parents and their teachers. The results of this study showed an association between lead and delinquency, providing evidence for effects beyond cognitive deficits.

“And the thing about lead toxicity is it’s completely preventable,” Needleman told Pitt Med magazine.

Born in Philadelphia in 1927, Needleman received a bachelor’s degree from Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in 1948 and completed his medical degree in 1952 from the University of Pennsylvania. He also served in the Army and the Army Reserve, reaching the rank of captain, according to published obituaries.

In addition to his scientific work, he was a key figure in convincing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to require that lead be taken out of gasoline. According to Landrigan, that movement decreased blood lead levels in children by 90 percent.

Needleman also pushed for lead to be removed from paint and for rehabilitation of houses where lead paint was used.

“People say we can’t afford to do it. We can’t afford not to do it,” he told Pitt Med in 2001, explaining the cost of de-leading houses would mean avoiding even greater costs in terms of health care and education fees. “So, there are a lot of good reasons to do it: moral, ethical and practical reasons.”

Needleman was the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the University of Pittsburgh Chancellor’s Award for Public Service and the Heinz Award, named in memory of the late U.S. Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania.

Members of the Pitt community joined jazz fans the world over last month in mourning the death of acclaimed pianist and composer Geri Allen, the director of Pitt’s Jazz Studies program.

An influential jazz pianist who brought the same passion for playing to her role as educator, Allen succumbed to cancer the afternoon of June 27 at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America at Eastern Regional Medical Center in Philadelphia. She was 60.

Allen headed up the Pitt Jazz Studies program beginning in 2014, when she officially joined the faculty after coordinating the fall 2013 Pitt Jazz Seminar and Concert. She took the reins after the founding director of the program, Nathan Davis, retired. Allen revamped the program with additional faculty and outstanding staff and students, according to Deane Root, professor and music department chair.

“Geri also quickly took a role across campus in many capacities, including diversity initiatives, the Year of the Humanities, outreach programs, the development of resources and archives and collaboration with other institutions,” said Root.

He said when she took a leave from teaching and service at the University last fall to focus on her treatment, she was worried she’d have to give up her creative activities.

“Throughout her illness, she continued to take an active role in mentoring her graduate students and worked valiantly to fulfill her contracted performances, which she said sustained her spirit and her reason for living,” he said.

Allen was born in 1957 in Pontiac, Michigan, and raised in Detroit. The piano became her instrument at age 7, and by the time she graduated from Cass Technical High School, she was a protégé of the late trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, with whom she continued to collaborate over the years. She was one of the first students to complete a jazz studies degree at Howard University, and then, at the urging of Davis, earned a master’s degree in ethnomusicology at Pitt in 1982.

Kenneth Powell, adjunct saxophone instructor at Pitt, was in the ethnomusicology program at the same time and immediately hit it off with Allen.

“We performed together in a group called The Sounds of Togetherness,” he said. “Geri was a kind, passionate and personable individual, and those qualities were reflected in her music.”

Allen made a name for herself in New York City’s jazz clubs and in other venues across the country beginning in the 1980s. She performed and collaborated with Ornette Coleman, Ravi Coltrane, Betty Carter, Billy Taylor, fellow Cass Tech alum and bassist Ron Carter and many others. More recently, she toured with bassist Esperanza Spalding and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington in the ACS Trio.

She has been described by more than one of her peers as “the female Herbie Hancock on the piano.” Hancock was just one of many musicians who phoned to say goodbye to Allen in her final days, Root said.

In 1995, Allen was the first recipient of Soul Train’s Lady of Soul Award for jazz album of the year for “Twenty-One.” The following year, she became the first woman and youngest person to win the Danish JAZZPAR Prize. She was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2008, the same year she won a Distinguished Alumni Award from Howard.

She was co-producer of the recently released three-CD set “The Complete Concert by the Sea,” an expanded version of the best-known album by Pittsburgh jazz great Erroll Garner. In 2016, it was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Historical Album.

Allen also was the guiding force in securing the donation of the Erroll Garner Archive for Pitt’s University Library System.

“Her love and knowledge of Pittsburgh’s jazz legends and her international acclaim as a musician, along with her determination to enhance resources for Pitt students, led to a continuing relationship with the donor,” said Root.

“When you look back at women in jazz,” said former classmate Powell, “she’s going to be among the greatest ever. The synergy of her creativity and technical proficiency made her a powerful force that will be acknowledged for years to come.”

Allen is survived by her father, a brother and three children.

Services were held Friday, July 7, in Newark, New Jersey.

Pitt’s first music librarian, Norris Lynn Stephens (SIS ’67G, A&S ’68G), died June 6, 2017.

Stephens earned both his master of library science and doctorate in musicology at Pitt, and headed the Finney Music Library here from 1966 until he retired in 1998. He was also an adjunct assistant professor in the music department from 1972 to 1982.

Deane L. Root, chair of the Department of Music, met Stephens when Root joined the University in 1982 as curator of the Stephen Foster Collection. Root sought out Stephens as a mentor, discussing the new challenge of digitizing library materials.

“Norris was a librarian of the old school,” Root recalled. “There were certain ways in which information about the collections was to be prepared and made available to users of the library.”

Stephens’ focus was compiling the most detailed bibliographical information about music collections. “That was his highest calling,” Root said, remembering the sight of Stephens toting bags of books as homework at the end of the day.

The reference work Stephens co-authored in 1997 – Collected Editions Historical Series and Sets & Monuments of Music: A Bibliography– Root called “a tremendously exciting step forward for music librarians all over the world. He had a tremendous dedication, an obsession with accuracy. He pursued that with a tenacity I don’t think many of us have.”

Before joining Pitt, Stephens earned an MFA in sacred music from the Union Theological Seminary in New York. His PhD thesis on 18th-century English composer Charles Avison is still cited by scholars. Stephens also played carillon programs for several local churches and composed and arranged music for organ, hand bells and choirs.

He is survived by his wife of 62 years, Donna A. Stephens, and their children Catherine (Simon) Richardson and Nathaniel Stephens. Contributions are suggested to the East End Cooperative Ministries: www.eecm.org/give.

Julius S. Youngner, a world-renowned virologist best known for his contributions to the development of the first effective polio vaccine alongside Jonas Salk, died Thursday, April 27, 2017 at his home in Pittsburgh, surrounded by family.

Youngner, a Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of microbiology and medical genetics in the School of Medicine, had a remarkable scientific career that spanned more than 60 years, influenced the careers of an entire generation of virologists, and has saved innumerable lives.

More than just an outstanding and inspiring scientist, Juli, as Youngner was known to friends and colleagues, was warm, compassionate and down to earth with a wonderful sense of humor. He joined the University of Pittsburgh in 1949, and served as professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology from 1966 to 1985, and as professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from 1985 until his retirement in 1989. He continued to remain a large presence in the department, attending seminars as recently as last year.

“Juli’s infectious curiosity has fueled his own research and influenced all who had the privilege to work with him. As a direct result of his efforts, there are countless numbers of people living longer and healthier lives,” said Arthur S. Levine, senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and John and Gertrude Petersen Dean of the School of Medicine.

“Julius Youngner once told a reporter that he intended to stay at the University of Pittsburgh for only a short time following his work on the Manhattan Project. But he soon fell in love with Pitt and the research opportunities here. I am grateful he stayed and that his work, with Jonas Salk and others, led to the polio vaccine. He was one of the world’s preeminent virologists and our University community will miss him immensely,” said Chancellor Patrick Gallagher.