University News

Daniel Assumes Presidency of U. T. Dallas

Proclaiming his new assignment “one of the best jobs in higher education in America,” Dr. David E. Daniel Wednesday became the fourth president of The University of Texas at Dallas in the institution’s 36-year history, succeeding Dr. Franklyn G. Jenifer, who retired after serving as UTD president since 1994.

Daniel, who comes to UTD from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he served as dean of one of the top engineering schools in the country, was scheduled to begin his first day on the job by meeting with Dr. Kern Wildenthal, president of The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. UTD and UT Southwestern collaborate on a growing number of research projects and are seeking to expand their relationship.

Later, he was to meet with other university presidents from the Metroplex at a Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce luncheon and attend a welcome reception in his honor. Daniel will attend a “meet and greet” with UTD students Thursday afternoon in The Pub on campus.

The University of Texas System Board of Regents selected Daniel as the next president of UTD on Feb. 10 after conducting a lengthy national search for a successor to Jenifer. The retiring president described Daniel, who is a member of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering, as an “excellent choice to be the next head of UTD.”

Daniel has said that the development of a new strategic plan for the university would be one of his top priorities in 2005, and he promised today that he would “seek input from all of UTD’s stakeholders” in developing that document. Work has already begun on the plan, and Daniel has said he wants it completed by the end of the year, if not before.

Daniel said that another of his priorities would be to “round out the university’s leadership team as quickly as possible” by filling several key positions.

The new president said he was “very anxious to learn as much as he can about UTD” and planned to spend his first few days and weeks meeting with faculty, staff, students and others to get to know UTD’s people and challenges better.

Jenifer, a former president of Howard University and chancellor of higher education in Massachusetts, served as UTD president for nearly 11 years. His predecessor, Dr. Robert H. Rutford, served as head of the university from 1982 until 1994 and is still on the UTD faculty. Rutford is one of the world’s foremost authorities on Antarctica . In fact, an ice stream that he discovered on the continent bears his name, as does a street on the UTD campus. UTD’s first president, Dr. Bryce Jordan, led the university for more than a decade, until 1981. He went on to become president of Penn State University.

The university has had two “interim” or “acting” presidents. Dr. Francis S. Johnson, head of the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies (SCAS), formerly the Graduate Research Center of the Southwest, served as interim president of UTD after SCAS was turned over to the state on June 13, 1969, and officially became The University of Texas at Dallas on Sept. 1, 1969. And Dr. Alexander L. Clark served as acting president for more than eight months between the Jordan and Rutford administrations.

Daniel earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in civil engineering from The University of Texas at Austin and served on the engineering faculty at U. T. Austin for 16 years. He joined The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1996 and became dean of the College of Engineering in 2001. He also was Gutgsell professor of civil engineering at the university.

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Drake Named New UC Irvine Chancellor

Michael V. Drake, M.D., longtime University of California faculty member and administrator, and current UC vice president for health affairs, was appointed chancellor of the university’s Irvine campus on May 26.

Acting on the recommendation of President Robert C. Dynes, the UC Board of Regents appointed Drake the fifth chancellor of UC Irvine at its regularly scheduled meeting in San Francisco.

Effective July 1, Drake will take the helm from Ralph J. Cicerone, chancellor since July 1998 who has been elected president of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC.

Drake, 54, emerged as Dynes’ top choice for the position after a national search that produced approximately 650 prospects. During the search, Dynes solicited advice from a committee representing regents; UCI faculty, students, staff, and alumni; and the UC Irvine Foundation.

Drake began his long-time association with the University of California as a medical student at UC San Francisco Medical Center in 1975. He later joined the UCSF faculty, rising through the ranks to become professor of ophthalmology. In 1991, Drake assumed the post of assistant dean for student affairs at UCSF, later becoming the school’s associate dean for admissions and student programs. From 1998-2000, he served as both the Stephen P. Shearing Professor and vice chair of the department of ophthalmology, and senior associate dean for admissions and extramural academic programs in the UCSF School of Medicine.

In March 2000, Drake was appointed University of California vice president for health affairs in the Office of the President. As systemwide vice president, he oversees education and research activities at UC's 15 health sciences schools (medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, public health, optometry, veterinary medicine), which are distributed among seven campuses. Additionally, the Office of Health Affairs has oversight responsibility for numerous special research programs, including tobacco-related diseases, breast cancer and HIV/AIDS; the California/Mexico Health Initiative; and the newly developed California Health Benefits Review Program.

Under the supervision of the Office of Health Affairs, the University of California is the largest single producer of trained physicians in the United States.

In recognition of his career-long efforts to promote social justice in medical education, in 2004, Drake became the fifth recipient of the Herbert W. Nickens, M.D., Award, one of the highest honors bestowed by the Association of American Medical Colleges.

He has been the recipient of a number of awards for teaching, public service, mentoring and research, including the UCSF School of Medicine's Clinical Teaching Award, the Chancellor's Award for Public Service, The Alumnus of the Year Award, the Speaker’s Gold Headed Cane, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Award.

Drake is a member of several national scientific and scholarly societies. He is the current national president of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society, and serves as a trustee of the Association of Academic Health Centers. In 1998, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine.

In addition to his academic achievements, Drake has published numerous articles and co-authored four books. He serves as a reviewer for several medical journals, including the Journal of the National Medical Association, New England Journal of Medicine, Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science and the American Journal of Ophthalmology.

Drake’s extensive public service experience includes the American Medical Association, the National Eye Institute, the American Association of Medical Colleges, the California Health Manpower Commission and the Committee on The Protection of Public Health.

He holds an M.D. from UC San Francisco, and two undergraduate degrees: an A.B. in African and African American studies from Stanford University, and a B.S. in medical sciences from UCSF. He also holds certifications from the National Board of Medical Examiners and the American Board of Ophthalmology.

Born in New York City, Drake spent his childhood in Englewood, NJ, and then later moved to Sacramento, CA, with his family.

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Governor Joins UC, CSU, Private Sector Partners To Bolster Science, Math Teacher Work Force

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger joined the University of California, California State University (CSU) and business leaders on May 31 in announcing the creation of a bold new effort to enhance the supply and preparation of science and mathematics teachers for California's public schools.

Under the "California Teach" program, the UC system over the next several years will quadruple its annual production of credentialed science and mathematics teachers, from 250 per year to 1,000 per year by 2010. This initiative is the largest of its kind in the nation. Undergraduate students at UC will be able to achieve, in four years of study, both a bachelor's degree in science, mathematics or engineering and the preparation to enable them to become a secondary-school science or mathematics teacher.

The CSU system will join in the effort by expanding its own teacher preparation programs for science and mathematics teachers as well as its recruitment of students to the profession.

The overall effort is aimed at bolstering California's long-term economic prospects, which are largely dependent on the availability of a work force that has the scientific and mathematical skills to help California's knowledge-based industries thrive. The objective is to expand and strengthen that skilled work force by improving the quality of K-12 science and mathematics instruction through an expansion of the supply and preparation of teachers in these fields.

The governor asked UC to develop this initiative in collaboration with CSU in his May 2004 "compact" with the two university systems.

To launch the University of California's program, corporate leaders from across California have pledged to contribute an initial US$4 million over a five-year period. A catalyzing lead gift of US$1 million was provided by SBC. In addition, Intel Corp. has added a key contribution of US$2 million from its foundation.

In total, 18 companies have committed private funds to help UC improve K-12 science and math instruction, including Qualcomm, Boeing, Sun Microsystems, HP, Adobe Systems, US Bank, Apple, Chiron, Amgen, Biogen Idec, Edwards Lifesciences, Apacheta, Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Invitrogen, Wind River, and Burrill & Co. Discussions are underway with additional companies wishing to support the initiative. "SBC Communications supports the communities we serve with a focus on education and technology," said Chuck Smith, president and chief executive officer of SBC West. "We are proud to support the California Teach program because it will develop the highly trained work force that our state needs to keep our economy growing."

In addition, the governor has pledged $1 million in the May Revision to his 2005-06 state budget proposal to support the planning and operation of the first phase of the program at UC and CSU. Furthermore, the governor's May Revision proposes to expand a loan-forgiveness program of the California Student Aid Commission, authorizing 350 new awards in 2005-06 for students participating in this science and mathematics teacher preparation program.

Because each of the 1,000 UC-trained science and mathematics teachers will touch the minds of more than 1,000 California children during 10 years of teaching, the UC campaign to produce these highly qualified teachers is being referred to as the "One Thousand Teachers -- One Million Minds" campaign.

The academic performance of California K-12 students in math and science remains a major challenge for the state's economic future. The National Science Foundation recently reported (National Science Indicators, 2004) that California 8th-graders scored last in the country in sciences and seventh from the bottom in mathematics.

But while many of California's economy-driving industries depend upon a scientifically and mathematically literate work force, the state faces a teacher shortfall in these fields. In 2002-03, nearly 1,500 mathematics classes in California high schools were taught by teachers with no teaching credential, and such was the case in more than 800 science classes. Even more classes were taught by teachers with a credential in an unrelated subject area.

That same year, all segments of California higher education collectively awarded 1,389 mathematics degrees, yet the total need for new mathematics teachers that year was 2,131. Compounding the problem, nearly one-third of California's existing teaching work force is expected to retire in the next decade, and studies indicate that K-12 science and mathematics teachers nationally have attrition rates of nearly 40 percent after four years of teaching.

CSU currently trains 60 percent of the state's elementary and secondary teachers. UC produces about 45 percent of the state's science, mathematics and engineering baccalaureates.

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New £5m Supercomputer Unveiled

One of the world’s most powerful supercomputers was officially unveiled at the University of Nottingham on June 1.

The £5m high performance computing (HPC) facility will allow researchers to perform calculations 100 times faster than is currently possible — and could allow them to complete a year’s work in a single day.

The facility will also allow University experts to run hundreds of analyses simultaneously, vastly increasing the speed and efficiency of world-class research carried out in Nottingham.

The supercomputer also:

• weighs 13 tons — equivalent to about eight family cars — and occupies 650 cubic feet of space
• can perform three million million calculations every second
• has 50 Terabytes of disk space — if it was an MP3 player it could hold enough music to play continuously, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for the next 5,700 years

Professor John O’Reilly, chief executive of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), who officially opened the HPC facility at an event attended by leading figures from industry, government, research and funding bodies.

Professor O’Reilly will also meet Vice-Chancellor Sir Colin Campbell and other senior academics, before being given a tour of the HPC facility in the Cripps Computing Centre’s South Building.

The University of Nottingham’s HPC facility is the second largest academic facility in Europe and the eighth largest of its kind in the world. It was funded as part of a successful bid to the government’s Science Research Investment Fund (SRIF), and has as much computing power as several thousand standard desktop PCs.

Provided by leading technology companies Sun Microsystems Inc, AMD and Streamline Computing Ltd, in a joint venture with the university, it represents a total investment of £5m over the next three years.

The HPC facility has been made available to more than 20 schools and departments across the university, with academics in each school able to access the central grid directly through their desktop PCs via a ‘clone’ system.

Dr Frazer Pearce, in the University’s School of Physics and Astronomy, is the HPC project leader and will be using it himself to model the evolution of the Universe.

University of Nottingham researchers in the Schools of Pharmacy, Civil Engineering, Physics & Astronomy and Chemistry are undertaking four pilot projects using the HPC facility. These projects cross academic boundaries and provide a snapshot of the depth and range of research that can be explored:

• Protein folding and dynamics — the HPC allows, for the first time, a simulation of the whole process by which proteins ‘unfold’. The failure of this process is implicated in many diseases, and a better understanding could lead to advances in the treatment of diseases such as Alzheimer’s and diabetes.
• Modelling turbulence — simulations of how strong winds affect suspension bridges will be the most detailed ever to have taken place. They could provide answers to one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics — understanding turbulence and representing it in computer models.
• The Hot Universe — a project involving the largest simulation of its kind ever attempted: a two billion particle model of the evolving Universe. This work will provide models of how the Universe might have developed since the Big Bang around 13 million years ago.
• Solving solvation — the HPC facility could hold the key to harnessing the potential of supercritical fluids, which have some liquid-like properties and some gas-like properties. Groundbreaking studies could see supercritical fluids offering a much more environmentally friendly alternative solvent for the global chemical industry.

Commercial companies collaborating with the University can also use the HPC’s computing power to help them realise their research ambitions.

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Oxford Opens Collaborative Research Center

Oxford University will this week launch a unique collaborative research center putting it at the forefront of research to find solutions to the most pressing problems facing the world in the 21st century. The James Martin 21st Century School, funded by a multi-million pound endowment by British-born computing pioneer James Martin, will stimulate research on issues such as climate change, an increasingly ageing society, extreme inequalities in wealth across countries and continents, the risk of infectious disease epidemics like AIDS and SARS, and the effects of rapid technological change.

The new benefaction – worth more than £3m a year in perpetuity – will provide funding for University academics to focus specifically on the ideas, methods, policies and practices which will begin to solve some of the major challenges which threaten humanity and the planet.

The 21st Century School is James Martin’s second major benefaction to Oxford, following the setting up of the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization last year, bringing his total endowment for the benefit of this University to $100m (£60m). The new School will be designed on a ‘hub and spoke’ model, with a Director and small staff at the centre, and a number of institutes each undertaking leading-edge research in its own subject area. At the launch of the School, these will be: the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization; the Environmental Change Institute; the e-Horizons Institute; the Oxford Institute of Ageing; the International Migration Institute; the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute; the Programme on Ethics of the New Biosciences; the Institute for Emergent Infections of Humans; and the Institute for the Future of the Mind.

With the exception of the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization, projects will be funded initially for three years. After this period a standard competitive grant-funding model will operate, opened up to other parts of the University, which is expected to generate new future-oriented Research Institutes. The School will host about 10 Fellows a year from the University through the James Martin Fellowship Scheme. Academics will contribute towards the School’s publication series, establish seminars and conferences, and over time will create a network of ‘future thinkers’ at Oxford. The School will also work with the World Education Institute to help bring education and understanding about the future to developing countries.

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A.J. Stewart Smith to Chair University Research Board

A.J. Stewart Smith, a longtime Princeton faculty member and leading researcher in high-energy particle physics, has been selected to chair the University Research Board.

He will begin a five-year term on July 1, 2005, succeeding Will Happer, who plans to return to full-time teaching and research after serving as chair for 10 years.

Smith first came to Princeton as a graduate student, earning his Ph.D. in physics in 1966. He joined the faculty in 1967 and served as chair of the physics department from 1990 to 1998 and associate chair from 1979 to 1982. Since 1992, he has been the Class of 1909 Professor of Physics. He also has served as scientific team leader of an international collaboration of 600 scientists from 10 countries involved in a project based at the Stanford Linear Accelerator.

The chair of the University Research Board, whose rank is equivalent to that of dean, has administrative oversight of organized research activities throughout the University, is responsible for dealing with questions of policy in the acceptance and administration of research grants and contracts, and has general supervision over the application of established policy in this area. The chair also advises the president and provost about how best to sustain excellence in research at the University. The Office of Research and Project Administration is the administrative arm of the board, which consists of six faculty members. 

In 2003-04, researchers at Princeton conducted $142 million in sponsored research, an increase of $4 million from the previous year. The largest source of research funding at Princeton was the U.S. government, which provided $105 million toward 686 projects. In addition, researchers at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab that year conducted $71.3 million in fusion energy research funded primarily by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Smith holds bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of British Columbia. Between earning his Ph.D. and joining the Princeton faculty, he spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron in Germany.

Over the years, he has carried out a succession of major experiments in particle physics at U.S. national laboratories. Since 1995, Smith has focused on the whimsically-named BaBar experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator. Elected scientific team leader of the BaBar collaboration in 1999, Smith directed this effort to answer fundamental questions about why matter exists in the universe.

In 2001, BaBar uncovered a rare but critical loss of symmetry in the behavior of subatomic particles, culminating a 37-year search for further examples of the profound phenomenon of charge-parity, or CP, violation, discovered in 1964 by Princeton physicists Val Fitch and James Cronin, for which they received the 1980 Nobel Prize in physics. CP violation is required to avoid the complete annihilation of matter and antimatter after they were created equally in the Big Bang.

A fellow of the American Physical Society, Smith served as chair of the science and technology steering committee of Brookhaven Science Associates, the new contractors for Brookhaven National Laboratory, from 1998 to 2001. Since 2004, he has been a member of the experiments committee for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva, Switzerland. He has served on boards for many other groups, including the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Academy of Sciences, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the National Research Council of Canada. 

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Harvard's Narayanamurti to Step Down as Dean in 2006

Venkatesh Narayanamurti has announced his intention to step down in June 2006 as dean of the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences (DEAS) and dean for physical sciences in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) at Harvard University. Narayanamurti, the John A. and Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences, plans to devote himself to teaching, research, and other forms of university service.

William C. Kirby, Edith and Benjamin Geisinger Professor of History and dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, said that a search for a successor would begin early this summer. Narayanamurti, who joined Harvard as DEAS dean in 1998, assumed his appointment as FAS dean for the physical sciences on Sept. 1, 2003.

As dean, Narayanamurti has been a tireless builder and ambassador. The DEAS faculty is now 50 percent larger than it was when he was named dean in 1998, with faculty productivity and satisfaction fostered through new research funding; mentoring for junior colleagues; and staff support to facilitate grants and contracts, communications, information technology, and development. Narayanamurti built new bridges to colleagues in the FAS, Harvard Medical School, Harvard Business School, and the Harvard School of Public Health. Graduate student recruitment, selection, and yield were greatly enhanced even as timely new courses of study in computer science, electrical engineering, and bioengineering became available at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Throughout his deanship at DEAS, he has also maintained an active research group in nanoscience and technology.

An accomplished scientist and administrator in private industry and academia, Narayanamurti served as dean of the College of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, from 1992 to 1998. For five years before that, he was vice president of research and exploratory technology at Sandia National Laboratories. From 1968 to 1987, he was with AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he served as director of the Solid State Electronics Research Laboratory from 1981 to 1987.

Narayanamurti holds bachelor's and master's degrees in physics from the University of Delhi, and a Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University. He has served on numerous national and international advisory committees and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.

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Vanderbilt Engineering Professor Wins National Science Foundation Award

Mark D. Does, Vanderbilt assistant professor of biomedical engineering and assistant professor of radiology and radiological sciences, has won a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) award.

The NSF CAREER award, given to exceptional junior faculty to support their promising research, will help fund Does’ research and development of new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques.

Does’ work will help advance the application of MRI technology to more precisely analyze bodily tissues at the cellular level, particularly in the brain, the spinal cord and the heart. His research will help researchers get a better understanding of diseases such as multiple sclerosis. In multiple sclerosis, degeneration of the sheath of myelin that insulates the nerve cells causes the cells to short out and fail to communicate with each other.

MRI technology is based on recording the energy outputs, in radio frequencies, of tissues subjected to a complex series of forces emanating from magnets and radio frequency transmitters. It has proven to be one of the most effective ways to non-invasively see what is happening within the body.

Starting with a gigantic magnet so heavy that most hospitals must install them on the ground floor, MRI includes a series of additional electromagnets called gradients that vary the magnetic field within the body, a system of radio frequency transmitters and receivers, and a computer that makes images out of the resulting data.

Does noted that, while the knowledge base of tissue characteristics using MRI technology is vast, the expansion of the scientific database from the tissue level down to the cellular level can lead to many new MRI methods and applications.

Part of Does’ research will examine tissues highlighted by the addition of manganese, a contrast agent injected into the patient. The manganese is readily taken up by calcium channels, which are used to transmit electrical signals through nerve cells. Manganese is strongly imaged by MRI equipment.

Does is one of the core members of the Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science (VUIIS) and directs its Center for Small Animal Imaging. The VUIIS is a multidisciplinary institute drawing from the School of Engineering, the School of Medicine and the College of Arts and Science. The institute conducts research ranging from cancer imaging to transgenic mouse imaging. The institute has special expertise in functional MRI, an exceptionally fast MRI technique that can track quick changes in tissue due to blood flow alterations.