University News

MIT Provost to Lead BU

Boston University 's trustees named MIT Provost Robert A. Brown as that university's ninth president on Saturday, June 4, following a long search. Brown will take the helm at BU on Sept. 1.

A professor of chemical engineering, he was appointed MIT's provost by former President Charles M. Vest in October 1998, Brown is widely respected, liked and admired by his colleagues at MIT.

Brown, who also holds the Warren K. Lewis Professorship in chemical engineering, has spent his career thus far at MIT, joining the faculty in 1979 as an assistant professor and rising through the ranks to department head, dean of engineering and provost. Although his geographic move will take him just across the Charles River, he said it won't be easy to leave the Institute.

As provost, Brown plays a major role in managing the Institute's US$2.1 billion budget. Brown has served as provost during an unusual seven-year period for the Institute, when an economic downturn caused the endowment to drop right in the midst of a major campus building campaign. About 90 staff were laid off, 140 positions eliminated, and a yearlong salary freeze was put into place for FY 2005. Thanks to these measures, today the Institute is on sound financial footing and work continues on maintaining and improving the campus infrastructure.

During his tenure as provost, the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute, a partnership among MIT, Harvard and its affiliated hospitals and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, was established with the mission to create tools for genomic medicine and pioneer their application to the treatment of disease. Brown also oversaw the Cambridge-MIT Institute, the Dupont-MIT Alliance for biotechnology research, the Singapore-MIT Alliance and many other successful collaborations with industry and universities worldwide.

Recognition for some of the success of the Institute-wide initiative to recruit and retain superb women faculty also goes to Brown, who has been co-chair with Professor of Biology Nancy Hopkins of the Council on Faculty Diversity. Hopkins credits Brown's engineering perspective and creativity as keys to the success of the initiative, saying that by looking at the methodology of institutional processes such as faculty leaves, career development and the faculty search process, Brown was able to identify where problems occurred and introduce solutions. Since 1990, MIT has increased the number of women faculty members from 10 percent to 18 percent.

Brown and his wife, Beverly, live in Winchester. Their oldest son works in lighting and sound design in Miami. Their younger son will be a senior in physics at MIT next year.

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UCLA Awarded More Than $6 Million for Biodefense and Infectious Disease Research from National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

UCLA has been awarded more than US$6 million over four years by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to support research for countering threats from bioterrorism agents and infectious diseases. UCLA will be a major component of the Pacific-Southwest Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research, a consortium of more than a dozen universities and research institutes in California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii.

Jeffery F. Miller, professor and chair of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics at UCLA, and the center's associate director for basic research and his laboratory will focus on bacterial pathogens and will study an environmental organism that causes pneumonia and septicemia, and is a potential bioterror threat. Numerous safety precautions will be in effect, as required under federal regulations. The researchers will work with the organism under tightly controlled conditions, with high security and extensive oversight by the university and federal agencies.

Alan Barbour, professor of medicine and microbiology at the University of California, Irvine, will serve as director of the new center. Barbour is internationally known as a co-discoverer of the bacterium that causes Lyme disease; he also identified the protein that became an approved vaccine against the disease.

While the center's goals include scientific applications to detect, prevent and treat diseases and bio-agents — including developing vaccines — Miller and Barbour also emphasized the importance of basic scientific research in providing the foundation for creating a defense against diseases and potential bioterrorism agents.

Overall, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has awarded $40 million over four years to establish the Pacific-Southwest Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research, which will be based at the University of California, Irvine. The institute is part of the National Institutes of Health.

The center is one of only 10 federally funded regional centers dedicated to research for countering threats from bioterrorism agents and infectious diseases. Its mission will be to bolster basic biomedical research into bioterrorism agents, such as those that cause anthrax and botulism, and naturally occurring infectious diseases, including West Nile virus, hantavirus and dengue, which affect increasing numbers of people worldwide. It also will provide scientific support, expertise and facilities in response to a national emergency, such as a terrorist attack or an epidemic of a new infectious disease, like the SARS virus.

The center also will create a clinical trials unit for evaluating new vaccines. In addition, the center will support a detailed analysis of proteins and DNA that are key to understanding infectious diseases and bioterrorism agents, and lead efforts to apply recent computer and engineering advances toward improving infection detection as well as outbreak management.

The center also will consist of researchers from the University of California, Irvine; the University of California, Davis; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Santa Barbara; the University of Southern California; the California Institute of Technology; the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla; the University of Hawaii; Stanford University; Northern Arizona University; the University of Arizona; the Desert Research Institute in Nevada; the California Department of Health Services; and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The center will sponsor 30 research projects involving 130 researchers, post-docs, students, and technical and support staff.

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NTU Strengthens Its China Presence

Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is strengthening its presence in China in its bid to be a Global University of Excellence. It is doing so on the educational and economic fronts.

NTU opened the NTU Beijing Office on June 6 Zhongguancun. On June 10, it will open the NTU Shanghai Office in Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park. Zhongguancun is China’s largest business incubator while Zhangjiang is Shanghai’s hotbed for high-tech companies. This is a strategic decision for NTU as both locations are close to top universities and key centers of business start-up activities and where major Chinese companies and MNCs congregate. It is also the first time a Singapore university has opened two offices in two of China’s most popular hi-tech parks.

The NTU Beijing Office and the NTU Shanghai Office were established to strengthen NTU’s presence and initiatives in China. Through its Chinese offices, NTU hopes to:

1. further increase its understanding and depth of expertise in the Chinese education market
2. create opportunities for students and alumni to set up, manage and expand their businesses in China
3. identify even more opportunities for professional and industrial attachments in China for NTU undergraduates through NTU’s Global Immersion Program, as well as for NTU’s graduate students
4. strengthen NTU’s ties with its alumni in China
5. create opportunities for educational program, research, entrepreneurship, and cultural and student exchange activities

NTU’s close links with the Chinese government are well-illustrated through Chinese government officials’ attendance of such NTU programs as:

• the M.Sc in Managerial Economics, which is dubbed the “mayors’ class” because Chinese deputy mayors and mayors attend the program
• the Master of Public Administration for senior Chinese officials, which was launched in April this year
• an Executive MBA program offered by NTU in collaboration with Shanghai Jiaotong University, rated among the top in Asia, and a forthcoming Executive MBA program majoring in hospital management offered to senior hospital managers in collaboration with China's Ministry of Health

Today also sees the signing of an MOU between NTU’s Nanyang Technopreneurship Centre and Beijing’s Zhongguancun International Incubator Inc in the area of entrepreneurship.

Through the collaboration, Nanyang Technopreneurship Centre will provide entrepreneurship training and consultancy to start-ups in Zhongguancun to help them attract venture capital and launch their companies in Singapore and other countries overseas. NTU will also capitalize on its connections with start-ups in other parts of the world and connect these start-ups with those in Zhongguancun through investment projects.

In turn, Beijing Zhongguancun International Incubator Inc will assist companies introduced by NTU to set up or expand their businesses in China. They will also help attract talents from Chinese universities for these business ventures.

Many Chinese start-ups at Zhongguancun and companies introduced by NTU are expected to benefit from this arrangement. 3

On June 7, NTU entered into separate agreements with Peking University and Beijing Foreign Studies University in the areas of teaching, education and research.

NTU already has a presence in the United States, Europe and India through its Global Immersion Program, India Strategy Group and various academic and exchange initiatives.

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Cambridge Venture Partners Unites University, Venture Capitalists

The Cambridge University Challenge Fund is joining forces with some of the UK's leading Venture Capitalist firms to provide greater commercial opportunities for the University's researchers.

The new entity, to be known as Cambridge Venture Partners, comprises the Challenge Fund together with the 3i Group, Amadeus Capital Partners, Avlar BioVentures, IDG Ventures, Porton Capital and TTP Ventures.

It is anticipated that early-stage businesses, set up to exploit University innovations in technology, will reap huge benefits, as will the Cambridge Venture Partners' players.

There are a number of Challenge Funds across the UK, each associated with a leading University, but this is the first time that one of the Funds has joined forces formally with established Venture Capitalists in order to provide a further boost to early stage university spin-outs.

The University of Cambridge Challenge Fund has provided early investment to a range of successful spin-outs including Smart Holograms, Metalysis, DanioLabs, Cambridge Semiconductor, Hypertag and genapta.

The Cambridge University Venture Fund is part of Cambridge Enterprise, bringing together the University's existing commercialization activities performed by the Technology Transfer Office, the University Challenge Fund and the Cambridge Entrepreneurship Centre, in one new organization. Its purpose is to improve the support available to the academic community to make their ideas and concepts more commercially successful for the benefit of themselves, the University, and the UK economy.

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Princeton Names Eight New Trustees

Princeton University has named eight new members of its Board of Trustees. They are:

• Thomas Barron, an author and private investor from Boulder, Colo. He earned his A.B. in politics from Princeton in 1974. He previously served on the board as an alumni trustee from 1989 to 1993.

• Y.S. Chi of Princeton, vice chair of Elsevier, a publisher of scientific, technical and health information products and services. He earned his A.B. in economics from Princeton in 1983. He is a trustee of the Princeton University Press and has served as an alumni member of the Council of the Princeton University Community.

• Jose Huizar, an attorney who is president of the board of education for the Los Angeles Unified School District. He earned his master's in public affairs and urban and regional planning from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1994. A member of the Alumni Schools Committee, he received the 2004 Community Service Award from the Princeton Club of Southern California.

• Randall Kennedy, a professor at Harvard Law School. He earned his A.B. in history from Princeton in 1977. He previously served on the board as a term trustee from 1994 to 1998.

• Matthew Margolin of Portola Valley, Calif., who earned an A.B. in politics from Princeton this year. The president of the student body in 2004-05, he has been a member of the Undergraduate Student Government since 2002. At Class Day, he received the Class of 1901 Medal, which goes to the senior who, in the judgment of his or her classmates, has done the most for Princeton

• Katherine Marshall of Washington, D.C., a director at the World Bank and counselor to its president. She earned her MPA from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1969. A former member of the Wilson School's advisory council, she is a current member of the steering committee for the school's 75th anniversary.

• Nancy Peretsman, executive vice president and managing partner of Allen & Co., a New York investment banking firm. She earned her A.B. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1976. She previously served on the board as an alumni trustee from 1976 to 1980 and as a charter trustee from 1981 to 1991.

• Kimberly Ritrievi of St. Petersburg, Fla., who recently retired from her post as director of research at Goldman Sachs. She earned her BSE in chemical engineering from Princeton in 1980. She has worked for the Alumni Schools Committee in several cities and currently serves on the leadership council for the School of Engineering and Applied Science and on the University's Development Leadership Council.

The board elected Barron, Kennedy and Peretsman to 10-year terms as charter trustees, while it elected Chi for four years as a term trustee. Princeton alumni elected Huizar, Marshall and Ritrievi to four-year terms as alumni trustees, and the junior, senior and two youngest alumni classes elected Margolin to a four-year term as young alumni trustee. All trustees have the same power, authority and responsibilities.

The 40-member Board of Trustees is responsible for the overall direction of the University. It approves the operating and capital budgets, supervises the investment of the University's endowment and oversees campus real estate and long-range physical planning. The trustees also exercise review and approval concerning changes in major policies, such as those in instructional programs and admission, as well as tuition and fees and the hiring of faculty members. 

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Logistics Expert Elected IIE Fellow

Prof Chung-Yee Lee, Head of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management (IEEM) at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), has been elected a Fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) for his professional leadership and outstanding contributions to industrial engineering.

Recognized by IIE as "an internationally leading scholar in scheduling and logistics management", Prof Lee is a pioneer of the "global shop floor scheduling" concept that has so significantly improved companies' on-time delivery performance.

He is also the industrial engineer who devised the acclaimed "business process management" approach in the early 1990s. Many major US companies applied the strategy to improve their operations processes, collectively enhancing the competitiveness of US industry in the global marketplace.

Prof Lee has made many valuable contributions to the Hong Kong logistics industry. After joining HKUST in 2001 he helped found the University's Logistics and Supply Chain Management Institute and became its Director. He has guided the local logistics industry's adoption of modern, performance-enhancing decision technologies such as radio frequency identification (RFID) and intelligent transportation routing and scheduling.

Concomitant to the announcement of his Fellowship, a research paper Prof Lee co-authored with two collaborators has been named the year's most impactful in the area of operations engineering by IIE Transactions, the Institute's academic publication. This follows similar awards made last year to HKUST's Dr Raymond K Cheung and Dr Fugee Tsung for their respective articles in the areas of scheduling and logistics, and quality and reliability.

Lee received his PhD from Yale University in 1984 before assuming professorships at the University of Florida and Texas A&M University. He has received various honors including Fellowships of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences and the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers.

Founded in 1948, IIE is the world's largest professional body dedicated to the development of industrial engineering. The Institute now has more than 15,000 members and 280 chapters worldwide, including Hong Kong.

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Clarke Prize for Water Science and Technology to Yale's Elimelech

The 2005 Athalie Richardson Irvine Clarke Prize for outstanding achievement in water science and technology will be presented to Professor Menachem Elimelech of Yale University on July 7 in a ceremony in Dana Point, Calif. by the National Water Research Institute (NWRI).

This distinguished award is one of only a dozen water prizes awarded worldwide. It is awarded annually to an outstanding individual who has demonstrated significant contributions in one of the following areas: the discovery, development, improvement, and/or understanding of the issues associated with water quality, quantity, technology, or public policy. The award includes a gold medallion, a $50,000 honorarium and an invitation to deliver the 2005 Clarke Lecture.

The NWRI, established in 1991, is renowned for facilitating and funding water–related research projects in the U.S. and abroad. Some of its critical research topics and interests in the world of water include ultraviolet disinfection, membranes, salinity management and desalination, riverbank filtration and education.

Elimelech, the Roberto C. Goizueta Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, is a specialist in the physiochemical processes in natural water and in engineered aquatic systems. He directs the Yale Environmental Engineering Program, emphasizing a multidisciplinary approach to solving environmental problems. His research focuses on three areas: transport and fate of microbial pathogens in aquatic environments; fundamentals and applications of membrane separation processes for water quality control; and dynamics of colloidal particles and biocolloids in aquatic systems.

A native of Israel, Elimelech served in the Israeli Air Force before earning his B.S. and M.Sc. at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University (1989). He taught 1989–1998 at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he was professor and vice chair in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering before coming to Yale as professor of Environmental Engineering. He has written over 90 articles and is principal author of the book “Particle Deposition and Aggregation.” Elimelech has held visiting posts at the California Institute of Technology, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in Korea. In summer of 2002, he was the Exxon–Mobil Professor at the National University of Singapore.

His numerous honors include the W.M. Keck Foundation Engineering Teaching Excellence Award, the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Outstanding Paper Award of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors and the Excellence in Review Award of the journal Environmental Science & Technology. In May 2004 he received Yale’s Graduate Mentor Award.

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Study Spells Out New Evidence for Roots of Dyslexia

Addressing a persistent debate in the field of dyslexia research, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Southern California (USC) have disproved the popular theory that deficits in certain visual processes cause the spelling and reading woes commonly suffered by dyslexics.

Rather, a more general problem in basic sensory perception may be at the root of the learning disorder, the scientists report on May 29 in the journal Nature Neuroscience. The work suggests new ways to identify dyslexics and to assess the many unevaluated techniques teachers use to help dyslexics in the classroom.

Misfiring neurons perhaps make it difficult for dyslexics to pick out relevant visual and auditory cues from the expanse of surrounding sounds and patterns, or "noise"; it is this inability that may bear heavily on how easily a child can read, says lead author Anne Sperling, who conducted the research as a USC graduate student, alongside co-author Mark Seidenberg, a UW-Madison psychology professor who left USC in 2001.

A learning disorder with neurological underpinnings, dyslexia affects between 5 to 10 percent of children in the U.S. Sperling calls the condition a "spiraling problem" because poor reading interferes with many types of learning.

Researchers first proposed during the 1920s that dyslexic children sometimes spell words backwards because they have trouble seeing straight. Five decades later, that idea out of favor as researchers increasingly believed that dyslexic reading problems are directly linked to the inability to blend phonemes, or the component sounds in any word.

A child needs to understand that spoken words consists of such sounds-that "bat" for example, includes three sounds ("buh," "aah" and "tuh") while the word "splat" has five. The knowledge makes it easier to learn how to pronounce letters, explains Seidenberg. Dyslexic children do not develop knowledge of phonemes, which does not impact on their spoken language but interferes with their learning to read.

Scientists have long tried to understand why dyslexics stumble with phonemes. With recent advances in the understanding of the brain and visual processes, dyslexia researchers again turned in the 1990s to vision as the likely root of the learning disorder. In particular they focused on the magnocellular (M) pathway, one of two visual pathways in the brain that processes motion and brightness. The other visual channel, the parvocellular (P) pathway, processes detail and color.

Some studies implicated an impaired M channel, showing that dyslexic children have trouble seeing rapidly changing or moving stimuli. But the findings have not been readily replicated and there was little consensus among experts, says Sperling. "We wanted to know decisively once and for all whether it is the M pathway or not," she says.

Devising a new approach, Sperling gathered 28 dyslexic and 27 non-dyslexic children, and showed them a pattern on a computer screen showing alternating light and dark bars. One type of pattern, with thick, rapidly flickering bars, targeted study participants' M pathways. The other type of pattern, with thinner non-flickering bars activated participants' P pathways. The patterns appeared either on the left or right side of the screen, and the children's task was to indicate which side they saw them.

When only the patterns appeared, the dyslexic children were as able as their peers to pick out both the M and P displays. But when Sperling partially obscured the patterns with patches of "noise," or television static-like bright and dark spots, the dyslexic children struggled to isolate both M and P patterns.

The work confirms that problems with "ignoring noise" play a more central role in the onset of dyslexia than the M and P pathways, Sperling says. An immediate classroom application, she suggests, could be for teachers to "accentuate differences between sounds, showing the extremes to help [dyslexic children] build categories."

Future studies should examine additional sensory systems, Seidenberg adds, to see if the noise idea holds for all senses and to seek connections between auditory and visual processes in dyslexia.