Monsignor Milam J. Joseph, President of the University of Dallas announced his retirement as president of the University. Joseph will continue to lead the University as president until the end of the academic year, May 31, 2004.

Accomplishments during Monsignor Joseph's tenure include:
-Creation of the College of Business offering an undergraduate BA in Business Leadership and graduate business degrees.
-Reinvigoration the Institute of Religious and Pastoral Studies serving the pastoral, biblical, and catechetical needs of the Diocese of Dallas and surrounding regions.
-Completion and publication of the National Bible Commentary;
-Creation of the National Alumni Board and the formation of alumni chapters in cities throughout the United States.

Under Monsignor Joseph's leadership, over $45 million has been invested on building renovations, new construction, and improved technology upgrades.

Monsignor Joseph first came to the University as a student to take two philosophy courses in the summer of 1960. After ordination to the Priesthood in 1964, he was hired by the late Dr. Donald Cowan, then President of the University of Dallas. Monsignor has served as Chaplain of UD in 1965 and then as Dean of Men from 1966 to 1969. He was a member of the Board of Trustees from 1980 to 1995; assistant to the President of UD from May to December 1995, president during the interim between January 1996 - October 1996, and President from October 1996 to present and until May 31, 2004.

The Texas Legislature is sending a bill to Gov. Rick Perry for signature that authorizes the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center to issue $45 million in tuition revenue bonds for the construction of a classroom/office building that would be a part of the proposed four-year medical school at the El Paso campus.

M. Roy Wilson, M.D., president of the health sciences center, said the building is an essential component of the proposed four-year medical school. "The health sciences center views this action by the legislature as a strong indication of their intent to support establishment of the first four-year medical school on the U.S.-Mexico border."

According to Jose Manuel De la Rosa, M.D., regional dean of the School of Medicine at El Paso, a health sciences center academic planning committee, chaired by Roderick Nairn, Ph.D., newly appointed executive vice president for academic affairs and vice chaired by Richard Homan, dean of the School of Medicine, has been established to develop academic plans and timelines for the four-year medical school.

More than US$34 Million in SPORE Grants Spurs Research in Leukemia, Endometrial, Pancreatic and Lung Cancers Awarded to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center

Recognized for its translational approach to cancer care -- bringing research findings from the lab to patient care -- representatives of The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center announced this week that it has received more than $34 million in prestigious SPORE grants from the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

Three new Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE) grants -- totaling $12.75 million for leukemia, $10.4 million for endometrial and $4.7 million for pancreatic cancer research -- have been awarded to the institution. M. D. Anderson also received $6.5 million in renewed funding for its lung cancer SPORE, first awarded in 1996. All four grants have been awarded to the institution in the last quarter.

With the addition of the new, five-year grants, M. D. Anderson now holds a total of eight NCI-sponsored SPOREs and ranks first in the number of grants received nationwide by the NCI.

M. D. Anderson's eight SPORE grants over the past seven years total more than $88 million. Before the new $6.5 million renewed award to M. D. Anderson, the grant for lung cancer research was originally given jointly to M. D. Anderson and the UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas in 1996. A second, $10 million SPORE grant for ovarian cancer research was awarded in 1999. In 2001, M. D. Anderson received both prostate and bladder SPORE grants, totaling $13.3 million and $13 million respectively -- making it the first institution to hold two such genitourinary cancer grants. A $12 million grant for head and neck cancer was awarded to the institution in 2002.

Federal funding plays an integral role in M. D. Anderson's success as a leader in translational research. In 2002, the institution spent more than $262 million for research -- an increase of more than 110 percent in the last six years. Of that $262 million, $118 million (45 percent) of M. D. Anderson's total research expenditures came from federally funded grants, such as SPOREs.

Monies from the highly competitive SPORE grants will fund research projects specific to each disease site, as well as establish a Career Development Program to train physicians and scientists, with a focus on translational research.

Since 1992, the NCI has awarded SPORE grants to certain cancer sites for concentrated research that focuses on projects with a translational emphasis.

Five finalists were named on Wednesday for the presidency of the University of Texas at Arlington.

The Board of Regents of the U.T. System announced the finalists after considering recommendations of an advisory committee that reviewed 108 nominations and applications for the position.

Under state law, university governing boards name finalists for a presidency at least 21 days before making an appointment. A meeting at which the U.T. System board will make a final decision has not yet been scheduled.

The finalists are:

-Dr. Peter S. Hoff, president of the University of Maine in Orono. Dr. Hoff is also a professor of English at the university and is a former administrator in the California State University System, the University of Georgia System, Indiana University Southeast, and the University of Wisconsin System.
-Dr. Roderick J. McDavis, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Dr. McDavis is also a professor of education at the university and is a former administrator at the University of Dayton in Ohio, the University of Florida in Gainesville, and the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.
-Dr. Bob Smith, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Dr. Smith, a pharmaceutical chemist, is a former administrator at the University of Connecticut, Washington State University, and U.T. Austin.
-Mr. James D. Spaniolo, Esq., dean of the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University. Mr. Spaniolo is also a professor of journalism and previously was vice president and chief program officer of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, an executive at Knight-Ridder Inc., and associate general counsel at the American Newspaper Publishers Association.
-Dr. Arthur C. Vailas, vice chancellor for research and intellectual property management at the University of Houston System. Dr. Vailas is also a professor of mechanical engineering, biology, and biochemistry at the University of Houston Main Campus and is a former administrator at the University of Houston Main Campus and the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Campus visits by the finalists will be scheduled soon and will include meetings with students, staff, faculty, department chairs, deans, alumni and community members.

Dr. Ray H. Baughman of The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) has discovered that rare materials that increase density when stretched can be used to amplify the response of sensors and actuators.

While ordinary materials act like a rubber band by becoming thinner when elastically stretched, these unusual materials - known as stretch-densified, auxetic materials - contract in one lateral direction and expand in another lateral direction when stretched. This combination of lateral expansion and contraction can enable both dimensional changes to be gigantic -- thereby amplifying mechanical strain.

The discovery is reported by Baughman, Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry and director of the UTD NanoTech Institute, in the Oct. 16 issue of the prestigious scientific journal Nature.

"These strange Alice-in-Wonderland-like properties result for investigated crystals containing molecule-size levers, so the amplification effect will still appear when these crystals are scaled down to nanoscale dimensions, more than 500 times smaller than the width of a human hair," said Baughman. "Hence, they could be used to amplify the displacements needed for sub-microscopic pumps and valves used for a 'chemical laboratory on a chip' - an assembly of chemical equipment that could be much smaller than a postage stamp. On a larger scale, the enabled amplification of sensor signal effects might be used to make much more sensitive sonar for mine detection and sensors to detect trace chemicals and biochemicals."

Baughman's latest work builds on research he has published in the journals Nature and Science with Dr. Anvar Zakhidov, associate director of the UTD NanoTech Institute, and other colleagues from Brazil and Sweden, as well as on the work of such pioneers as Dr. Roderick Lakes of the University of Wisconsin, Dr. Ken E. Evans of the University of Exeter and Dr. Michael Ashby of Cambridge University.

The research was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an agency of the United States Department of Defense, by the Robert A. Welch Foundation and by the Strategic Partnership for Research in Nanotechnology, a federally funded consortium of four Texas universities co-founded by UTD.

According to new research from Rice University, scientists studying the way light interacts with metallic nanostructures should throw out their old optics textbooks and bone up on their quantum mechanics instead.

The new findings, which are described in the Oct. 17 issue of the journal Science, offer a new understanding of plasmonics, an emerging field of optics aimed at the study of light at the nanometer scale - at dimensions far smaller than a wavelength of light, smaller than today's smallest electronic devices. Rice's findings will make it easier for scientists and engineers to design new optical materials and devices "from the bottom up," using metal particles of specifically tailored shapes.

The field of plasmonics, which has existed for only a few years, has already attracted millions of research dollars from industry and government. One primary goal of this field is to develop new optical components and systems that are the same size as today's smallest integrated circuits and that could ultimately be integrated with electronics on the same chip. In the field of chemical sensing, plasmonics offers the possibility of new technologies that will allow doctors, anti-terror squads and environmental experts to detect chemicals in quantities as small as a single molecule - a prospect so intriguing the National Nanotechnology Initiative chose it as one of this past year's primary funding objectives.

The fact that light interacts with nanostructures at all flies in the face of traditional optics, which held for more than a century that light waves couldn't interact with anything smaller than their own wavelengths.

Research over the past five years has turned that assumption on its head, showing that nanoscale objects can amplify and focus light in ways scientists never imagined. The "how" of this involves plasmons, ripples of waves in the ocean of electrons flowing across the surface of metallic nanostructures. The type of plasmon that exists on a surface is directly related to its geometric structure - the precise curvature of a nanoscale gold sphere or a nano-sized pore in metallic foil, for example. When light of a specific frequency strikes a plasmon that oscillates at a compatible frequency, the energy from the light is harvested by the plasmon, converted into electrical energy that propagates through the nanostructure and eventually converted back to light. Researchers at Rice, Caltech, Stanford and UCLA, as well as European teams at Imperial College, UK, and Strasbourg, France, have all reported advances in plasmonics in recent years.

Some nanostructures act as superlenses, capturing specific wavelengths of light and focusing the light to ultrasmall spots at high intensities and converting some electrical energy back into light that is reflected away. One such nanoparticle is the nanoshell, which was developed at Rice five years ago in the laboratory of Naomi Halas, the Stanley C. Moore Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and professor of chemistry.

In the research described in the Science report, the Rice team show that the equations that determine the frequencies of the plasmons in complex nanoparticles are almost identical to the quantum mechanical equations that determine the energies of electrons in atoms and molecules.

Their method is called "plasmon hybridization." Just as quantum mechanics allows scientists to predict the properties of complex molecules, the work performed by the Rice team shows how the properties of plasmons in complex metallic nanostructures can be predicted in a simple manner.

Peter Nordlander, the theoretical physicist who led the study said the importance of the research is that it frees researchers from having to describe nanophotonic structures in terms of classical optics, something that plasmonic scientists have struggled with since the field was formed.

The research was sponsored by the Army Research Office and the Robert A. Welch Foundation.

The paper, titled "A Hybridization Model for the Plasmon Response of Complex Nanostructures," was co-authored by Nordlander, Halas and doctoral graduate students Emil Prodan and Corey Radloff.

Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center President M. Roy Wilson, M.D. named Roderick Nairn, Ph.D, as the executive vice president for academic affairs and dean of the graduate school of biomedical sciences.

Nairn currently serves as senior associate dean for academic affairs and professor and chair for the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, Neb.

The position of executive vice president for academic affairs will be responsible for the following departments: rural and community health, research, institutional compliance, and student support services and operations.

Nairn has served as the interim dean for the Creighton University School of Medicine and faculty associate for the Center for Health Policy and Ethics. He has served at Creighton University since 1995.

He earned his B.Sc. in Biochemistry from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland in 1973. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, London and the Royal Free School of Medicine at the University of London.

Nairn was a post-doctoral research fellow and then post-doctoral research associate in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, N. Y. from 1976 to 1981. He was a faculty member at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan from 1981 to 1995, serving as associate professor of microbiology and immunology and director of the M.D./Ph.D. training program.

In 1996 he was involved in the Harvard Macy Institute Program for Leaders in Medical Student Education at Harvard Medical School. In 1997 Nairn served as a participant in the AAMC Council of Deans Executive Development Seminar for Deans in Philadelphia.

He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals and received research grants from prestigious funding organizations such as the National Institutes of Health and the American Cancer Society.

Nairn will start his position at the health sciences center Jan. 1, 2004.

Dr. Robert M.A. Hirschfeld, Titus H. Harris Chair and professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB), is one of only three recipients of the Nola Maddox Falcone Prize, a US$50,000 award for research on bipolar disorder given by the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression.

The award will be presented Oct. 17 in New York in recognition of Hirschfeld's groundbreaking work on the early identification and treatment of bipolar illness. Hirschfeld was selected for the honor by a peer panel of internationally renowned psychiatrists.

One of America's most respected psychiatrists, Hirschfeld is recognized internationally for his research on the treatment of depression, bipolar disorder and anxiety disorders. The former chief of the Mood, Anxiety and Personality Disorders Research Branch, Hirschfeld has written more than 200 scientific papers and abstracts in leading scientific and medical journals, and has contributed chapters on mood and anxiety disorders in several major psychiatric textbooks, as well as in nearly two dozen other books on psychiatry.

The National Alliance for Schizophrenia and Depression is an international organization based in New York that is devoted to the research that generates the recognition, treatment and cure of mood disorders and schizophrenia.

A Detroit native, Hirschfeld received his Bachelor of Science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964, and his medical degree from the University of Michigan in 1968. He received a Master of Science in operations research from Stanford University in 1972 and completed his residency in psychiatry at Stanford University Medical Center in the same year. He was certified in psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in 1975.

Hirschfeld served as chair of both the original and the revision of the American Psychiatric Association's Workgroup to Develop Practice Guidelines for Treatment of Patients with Bipolar Disorders. One of the nation's leading advocates for the mentally ill, Hirschfeld spent six years as chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the National Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association.

He subsequently spent 18 years at the National Institute of Mental Health, where he was chief of the Mood, Anxiety and Personality Disorders Research Branch, and the clinical director of NIMH's Depression/Awareness, Recognition, and Treatment (D/ART) Program.

Hirschfeld has received numerous honors, including the Gerald L. Klerman Lifetime Research Award from the National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association, the Jan Fawcett Humanitarian Award from the National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association, and the Distinguished Achievement Award from the University of Michigan Medical School. He is listed among "The Best Doctors in America" and "America's Top Doctors," and was described by Good Housekeeping Magazine as one of the nation's "Best Mental Health Experts."

Hirschfeld is a member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, the American Psychiatric Association, the American College of Psychiatrists, and the International Society for Affective Disorders. He serves on a number of editorial boards of scientific journals, and is the associate editor of the International Journal of Psychiatry in Clinical Practice. He serves on the scientific advisory boards of several national mental health advocacy organizations, including the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, and the Anxiety Disorders Association of America.

The University of North Texas (UNT) has been recognized by the Robert A. Welch Foundation for solving some of chemistry's most complex issues. In 2003, UNT received $900,000 for chemistry research.

The Welch Foundation is one of the largest private funding sources for basic chemical research in the United States. The mission of the foundation is to advance basic research in chemistry by supporting talented chemists working at Texas institutions of higher education.

From its inception in 1954 to the present, foundation representatives said that UNT scientists have been recognized with $15,132,494 in research grants.

Dr. Ruthanne Thomas, chair of UNT's Department of Chemistry, said that for decades the Robert A.Welch Foundation has been a strong supporter of fundamental chemical research at UNT.

The following faculty members received new Welch Foundation grants for 2003:
-Regents Professor of chemistry Paul S. Braterman has been awarded $150,000 for Control of Structure and Reactivity in Layered Double Hydroxides
-Regents Professor of chemistry Jeffry A. Kelber has been awarded $150,000 for Reactions of Ultrathin Ordered Oxides in Non-UHV Environments
-Regents Professor of chemistry Martin Schwartz has been awarded $150,000 for The Electronic Structure and Properties of Conducting Polymers
-Chair of UNT's chemistry department Ruthanne D. Thomas has been awarded $150,000 for Organolithium Clusters
-Regents Professor of materials science Witold Konrad Brostow has been awarded $150,000 for Uncrosslinked and Crosslinked Macromolecular Systems: From Thermodynamics to Properties
-Professor of physics Floyd D. McDaniel, Sr. has been awarded $150,000 for Impurity Characterization in Compound Semiconductor Materials

Scientists from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) have discovered that a protein critical to drug metabolism can take on a previously unsuspected shape. This finding could improve researchers' ability to predict whether potential drugs will be properly processed by the liver, shed light on why some individuals tolerate drugs better than others, and suggest why some drugs interact with each other in dangerous ways.

In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, UTMB researchers in collaboration with scientists from the Scripps Research Institute describe what they call an "open conformation" in one of a group of enzymes found in the membranes of liver cells that break down foreign chemicals such as drugs. The enzyme is called a mammalian cytochrome P450. The researchers made the discovery in the course of creating the most detailed image ever of a membrane-bound P450, using a process known as X-ray diffraction.

The discovery and mapping of a P450 in an open configuration has implications for the developers of new drugs, who are finding it increasingly important to understand drug metabolism. "The vast majority of compounds that may look interesting in a test tube fail when you put them into animals or humans because they don't have good metabolic properties," says James Halpert, chairman of UTMB's pharmacology and toxicology department and one of the senior authors of the PNAS paper. "Being able to predict how the human P450s will handle potential new drugs is a huge emphasis in the pharmaceutical industry, and any type of modeling procedures are greatly facilitated if you know what the enzymes really look like. Up to now we've largely had to guess, based on a few available structures of the closed form of the enzyme."

The particular P450 structure presented in the PNAS paper--designated P450 2B4--is derived from the membranes of rabbit liver cells. The structures of proteins residing in cell membranes are extremely difficult to determine; the only previous membrane-bound P450 structures (including ones determined by Eric Johnson and Dave Stout of the Scripps Research Institute, also authors on this paper) were obtained only by changing a number of important amino acids to make them easier to crystallize. P450 2B4 was chosen because Christopher Chin of UTMB's Sealy Center for Structural Biology showed that it was a candidate for crystallization with a smaller number of changes in less critical amino acids. Subsequent work in collaboration with Mark White, also of the Sealy Center for Structural Biology, showed that the crystals had the potential to yield detailed structural information.

Emily Scott is the lead author on the paper and a postdoctoral fellow in UTMB's pharmacology and toxicology department.

Richard Wallace, M.D., a professor of microbiology at The University of Texas Health Center at Tyler, has received a US$35,000 grant from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to study the effectiveness of a new drug.

Cystic fibrosis is a life-threatening genetic disease that affects about 30,000 children and adults in the United States. A defective gene causes the body to produce an abnormally thick, sticky mucus that clogs the lungs and leads to life-threatening lung infections. These thick secretions also obstruct the pancreas, preventing digestive enzymes from reaching the intestines to help break down and absorb food.

The Health Center is the only medical center that can conduct trials of the new drug, he said. The grant will be used to help provide CF patients with the drug and to monitor the levels of the drug in their blood, Dr. Wallace said. Currently, four patients are enrolled in the clinical trial at the Health Center, he said.

People with cystic fibrosis live almost twice as long as they did 10 years ago because of improved antibiotic therapy, he said.

The 15-month grant ends in June 2004.

The Sam Houston State University (SHSU) Small Business Development Center has received a 2003 SBC Excelerator Competitive Grant for $5,000 from the SBC Communications company.

A check for that amount was presented Monday to SHSU president James F. Gaertner by Ron Snelson, director of external affairs for the SBC company in this area.

SBC Excelerator seeks to fund projects that build the technology infastructure of nonprofits enabling them to increase their organizational effectiveness and or service delivery capability. The competitive grants range from $2,500 to $25,000 and are for one year in length.

The Piney Woods Entrepreneurship and Small Business Success Program, which began in 1993, is the project that won the 2003 SBC grant award. The grant will be used to support, educate, and advise small business owners on all aspects of technology and business/community applications through training seminars designed to keep rural community business owners abreast of global technology to be competitive.

The Piney Woods Program will emphasize "Technology and the Future of Small Business" when it begins its 11th year in January 2004. The program encourages economic growth in a rural eight county area.

This year's program will concentrate on improving various aspects of a small business's operations through the implementation of technology and management techniques.

Several research studies have proven that social support and coping strategies may lead to a better quality of life for people living with chronic diseases.

However, the type and source of support, and the type of coping strategy that a person uses, can make the difference, said Dr. Mark Vosvick, a University of North Texas (UNT) psychologist.

Vosvick will direct a new UNT center that will research these and other psychosocial factors associated with chronic conditions. The UNT Center for Psychosocial Health will also provide assistance to Dallas/Fort Worth organizations that serve people living with these conditions.

Located in the UNT Department of Psychology in Terrell Hall, the new center will bring together faculty members in the Departments of Anthropology, Sociology and Psychology as well as at the UNT Health Science Center in Fort Worth for collaborative research.

In addition, faculty members at the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center have expressed interest in collaborating in research with the center, which is the only one of its kind in the North Texas region, Vosvick said.

The center will examine which psychosocial factors lead to positive or negative behavior regarding chronic illness, he said.

A former staff member at the Medical College of Wisconsin's Center for AIDS Intervention Research, Vosvick said the Center for Psychosocial Health will initially focus on AIDS and HIV infection.

He pointed out that HIV infection is not limited to Dallas' inner city.

The new center will provide education and training in HIV prevention for the general population through AIDS Services of North Texas, Fort Worth AIDS Outreach Center and the Resource Center of Dallas.

Eventually, the Center for Psychosocial Health will broaden its scope to include research on other chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease.

In addition to research and service, the Center for Psychosocial Health will provide courses for UNT undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in becoming behavior health researchers. The first course, "Psychosocial Issues in HIV," will be offered in spring semester 2004.

The Ultrasound Imaging Section of The University of Texas Health Center at Tyler's Radiology Department has been re-accredited for three more years by the American College of Radiology (ACR), said Ron Jung, UTHCT's director of radiology.

The ACR, headquartered in Reston, Va., awards accreditation to a facility when it achieves high practice standards after a peer-review evaluation of its practice. Board-certified physicians and medical physicists who are experts in the field conduct evaluations of the facility for the ACR.

The ACR serves more than 32,000 diagnostic/interventional radiologists, radiation oncologists, and medical physicists. It offers programs that focus on the practice of medical imaging and radiation oncology and the delivery of comprehensive health-care services.

The Texas Woman's University (TWU) Pioneer School has been reaccredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) under new criteria established by the organization.

The accreditation will run through 2010, according to the organization's web site, www.naeyc.org. The Pioneer School received a five-year accreditation with a two-year extension based on its status in the program.

The school, under the direction of TWU's College of Professional Education, provides education for children ages 2 through 4 and also serves as an education and training facility for TWU students who conduct practicums, observations and do volunteer work.
"This accreditation is important for our Pioneer School and reaffirms our commitment to developmentally appropriate practices and the needs of children," said

The NAEYC in 2002 revised its accreditation criteria to focus on children and their learning and development as well as the elements needed to develop excellent programs. Accreditation criteria include interactions among teachers and children, curriculum, relationships among teachers and families, staff qualifications and professional development, physical environment and health and safety.

Kim Burton, Pioneer School director, said Pioneer School personnel began the application process more than a year ago, gathering information through family and staff questionnaires and classroom evaluations. The NAEYC in May sent an accreditation validator to conduct evaluations and examine the school's documentation. That information then was sent to the organization, which awarded the accreditation and developed a list of areas that needed improvement. The school must report once each year what is being done in those areas, Burton said.

Burton credits teamwork with achieving reaccredidation for the school.

Texas A&M political scientist Kenneth J. Meier was elected president of the Public Management Research Association (PMRA) at its recent biennial meeting in Washington D.C. The PMRA an international, interdisciplinary association of public management specialists that also sponsors the "Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory," a leading academic journal devoted to questions of governance and public management. Meier, who succeeds H. Brinton Milward, a professor of business at the University of Arizona, will serve as president for two years until the 2005 PMRA meeting in Los Angeles. PMRA's focus for the next two years will be internationalization. The PMRA meetings were attended by a sizable contingent of scholars from Texas A&M's Department of Political Science (B. Dan Wood, Sean Nicholson-Crotty, Jill Nicholson-Crotty) and the Bush School of Government (Laurence Lynn, Anthony Bertelli, M. Jae Moon, Kim Issett, and Donald Moynahan). Kenneth Meier is the Charles Puryear Professor of Liberal Arts in the Department of Political Science at Texas A&M. He also holds the Sara Lindsey Chair in Government in the Bush School of Government and Public Service.

Dr. Murali Varanasi, professor of computer science and engineering at the University of South Florida's engineering department has recently been selected as the University of North Texas (UNT)'s first coordinator of the College of Engineering's Department of Electrical Engineering. He will arrive at UNT in January.

Varanasi is the former chair of the University of South Florida's engineering department. He has also served as a faculty member at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va.

In addition, Varanasi is the former program director of Systems Prototyping and Fabrication at the National Science Foundation and the former senior scientific officer at the Defense Research and Development Laboratory in Hyderabad, India.

Varanasi is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the Association for Computing Machinery. He currently serves as vice-president for chapters of the IEEE Computer Society. He is also director of the Computing Sciences Accreditation Board.

Among his numerous honors, Varanasi has received the University of South Florida Professorial Excellence Award and the 1985 IEEE Computer Society Outstanding Contribution Award for Leadership and Contributions to the Model Program in Computer Science and Engineering. Varanasi is a fellow of IEEE and received the IEEE Third Millenium Medal in 2000.

His research interests are digital communications and coding theory, fault tolerant computing, digital systems design, computer architecture and very large-scale system integration.

Robert M. Sweazy, Ph.D., Texas Tech University vice president for research, graduate studies, technology transfer and economic development, has been appointed to the new state-wide Texas Yes! advisory board.

The nine-member board, which works through the Texas Department of Agriculture, will work with rural Texas communities to boost local economies and to establish a network to help unite rural areas as they face common challenges.

Many programs at Texas Tech are aimed at helping rural communities in a number of ways, said Sweazy. "Texas Tech is in the middle of rural West Texas. We understand the problems. Whether it's through individual class projects in conjunction with a city on the South Plains or major efforts through Texas Tech's Northwest Texas Small Business Development Center or our Office of Economic Development, the university is reaching out to help solve problems facing our smaller communities."

The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), has elected Professor Suresh Sethi of the School of Management at The University of Texas at Dallas to one of its top honors, naming him a Fellow of INFORMS. Dr. Sethi is one of only 13 fellows elected this year from the INFORMS membership of more than 12,000. He will accept his award in ceremonies in Atlanta on Oct. 20.

INFORMS Executive Director Mark G. Doherty said Fellow of INFORMS awards are given "as a way of honoring our most distinguished and illustrious members." Fellows are selected for achievement in research, the practice of operations research and/or management science, taking significant responsibility for applying the profession's techniques within organizations, education in the field and service to INFORMS or to the profession.

Sethi, UTD's Ashbel Smith Professor of Operations Management and director of The School of Management's Center for Intelligent Supply Networks, is departmental editor for the journal Production and Operations Management, senior editor of Manufacturing and Service Operations Management and associate editor of Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications. He also has been named a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the New York Academy of Sciences and the Canadian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Sethi is internationally recognized for applications of quantitative methods to the fields of manufacturing and operations management, finance and economics and marketing and has published three books and some 300 articles in a variety of fields.