University News
Finalist Named for President of UT Austin
The University of Texas System Board of Regents named William Powers Jr., Esq., as the sole finalist on Nov. 4 for the presidency of The University of Texas at Austin.
Mr. Powers is dean, university distinguished teaching professor, Hines H. Baker and Thelma Kelley Baker Chair in Law, and John Jeffers Research Chair in Law, School of Law, The University of Texas at Austin. Mr. Powers has served as dean of the law school at UT Austin since 2000. He joined the law school faculty in 1977 and has held several faculty chairs and other administrative appointments. He served as associate dean for academic affairs from 1984 to 1987 and 1994 to 1995. Mr. Powers received his doctorate of law degree from Harvard University and his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley.
The board announced the selection after considering recommendations of an advisory committee that reviewed over 200 nominations and applications for the position. Under state law, university governing boards must name finalists for a presidency at least 21 days before making an appointment.
Campus visits will be scheduled soon and will include meetings with students, faculty, staff, department chairs, deans, alumni and community members. A final decision by the board on Powers' selection as the next president of UT Austin is expected to occur prior to the end of the year.
If named president, Powers will succeed Dr. Larry R. Faulkner, who announced his retirement last June. Dr. Faulkner joined UT Austin as president in 1998. The 27th president of UT Austin, Dr. Faulkner led the most successful fund-raising campaign in the university's history and one of the most successful campaigns in American higher education, raising $1.6 billion. He chartered the Commission of 125, a group of alumni and citizens that developed a strategic vision for the university's next quarter century. He created innovative scholarship and admissions programs and brought the university's minority student enrollment to record levels after the controversial Hopwood decision in 1997.
Dr. Faulkner enhanced the university's national reputation during a period of difficult financial challenges for public universities and he connected the university to Texas like never before through a broad array of new programs, events and initiatives.
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Science Historian Named Caltech/Huntington Professor
A historian with interests as wide-ranging as entomology and Greek astronomy has become the first-ever Eleanor Searle Visiting Professor in the History of Science, a newly established joint program between the California Institute of Technology and the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
Ido Yavetz, assistant professor at The Cohn Institute for History of Science at Tel Aviv University in Israel, arrived in Pasadena this fall and will remain for the academic year. Yavetz specializes in history of classical electromagnetic field theory, history of electrical technology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, history of entomology in the 19th century, and history of early Greek astronomy.
Through the scholar program, he will teach two courses at Caltech and conduct research at The Huntington, in the area of ancient Greek astronomy. Yavetz earned his bachelor's degree and did post-graduate work in physics while earning a master's and PhD in history of science, all at Tel Aviv University. He was a visiting professor at Caltech in 1999-2000.
Each year the scholar will be chosen by the Caltech faculty with the advice and consent of the director of research at The Huntington.
The goal of the scholar program is to bring visiting faculty to Caltech with a superb track record in teaching, who can inspire students to think about the role creativity plays in the scientific process. A different perspective on the challenges that Copernicus, Galileo, Da Vinci, Newton, and Einstein confronted in their work and how they overcame them could be enlightening to today's scientists. Simultaneously, faculty members have the opportunity to exercise their own creative instincts in conducting research at The Huntington to help inform their teaching.
The program is named for Eleanor Searle, the first woman to hold a named professorship at Caltech. She was a world famous medieval historian, a popular teacher, and respected colleague during her time at Caltech, 1979 to 1993. She continued to conduct research at The Huntington until her death in 1999. The author of four books in medieval history that are still widely cited, her students and fellow faculty members were saddened when glaucoma cut short her career and forced her to retire early.
An anonymous local couple is funding $100,000 in annual program costs during their lifetimes. They have established a $2 million charitable remainder trust to eventually fund the Searle Visiting Professors Endowment and provide the program's permanent source of support.
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New Muscular Dystrophy Cooperative Research Centers Announced
The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), a part of the National Institutes of Health, have funded three new Senator Paul D. Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Cooperative Research Centers focusing on this group of genetic muscle-wasting diseases. The late Senator Wellstone was a major champion of muscular dystrophy issues in the Congress.
The center at the University of Pennsylvania, co-directed by the university’s H. Lee Sweeney, Ph.D., and Kathryn R. Wagner, M.D., Ph.D., of The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, will explore new strategies for treating a variety of muscular dystrophies (MD). Two laboratory projects are focused on ways to increase muscle growth, and another on examining compounds that may be able to inhibit enzymes involved in breaking down muscle tissue. Clinical trials will determine the safety and feasibility of a potential drug treatment for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). The core facility — a muscle physiology lab — will analyze MD mouse models. Other sites involved with this center are the University of Florida, Gainesville, and the NINDS Intramural Research Program.
Center scientists at Washington, D.C.’s Children’s National Medical Center, under the direction of Eric P. Hoffman, Ph.D., and Diana M. Escolar, M.D., will study biochemical pathways that contribute to DMD. A clinical project aims to identify genetic modifiers of the disease, and two laboratory studies focus on muscle cell damage and muscle growth and remodeling in mice. The center also has a bioinformatics and computing core, as well as a clinical core to help support the Cooperative International Neuromuscular Research Group, an existing consortium of MD clinical investigators. Collaborating with the center is the University of Padova in Italy.
The center at the University of Iowa, directed by the university’s Kevin P. Campbell, Ph.D., and Steven A. Moore, M.D., Ph.D., will explore therapeutic strategies for different muscular dystrophies. One project focuses on muscle membrane maintenance and repair, and another on potential embryonic stem cell treatment in mice. A third study involves people with Fukutin Related Protein MD and the development of a mouse model for further investigation of this disease. The center cores here will serve as a national resource for human muscle biopsies, fibroblast cell cultures and embryonic stem cells for MD researchers, and will provide advanced services for diagnosing the different dystrophies.
These new centers join three others already funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Muscular Dystrophy Association at the University of Washington, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Rochester. The centers spring from the Muscular Dystrophy Community Assistance, Research and Education (MD-CARE) Act passed by Congress in 2001. The centers work individually and collaboratively, and are guided by a steering committee that includes representatives from each center. Each has both basic and clinical research projects, and one or more core facilities to support them. Centers must also make core resources or services available to the national muscular dystrophy research community.
MD is characterized by progressive weakness and degeneration of the skeletal or voluntary muscles which control movement. Researchers at the Senator Paul D. Wellstone Centers study various forms of MD, including Duchenne/Becker Muscular Dystrophy, Myotonic Dystrophy, Facioscapulohumeral Dystrophy, Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy, and others. MD can affect people of all ages. Although some forms first become apparent in infancy or childhood, others may not appear until middle age or later.
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President Bush to Award the 2005 National Humanities Medals
President George W. Bush will award the 2005 National Humanities Medal on Thursday to eleven distinguished Americans and one scholarly research project for their contributions to the humanities. At a White House ceremony, the President will present the National Humanities Medal to Walter Berns, Matthew Bogdanos, Eva Brann, John Lewis Gaddis, Richard Gilder, Mary Ann Glendon, Leigh Keno, Leslie Keno, Alan Charles Kors, Lewis Lehrman, Judith Martin, and the Papers of George Washington Project at the University of Virginia.
The National Humanities Medal, first awarded in 1989 as the Charles Frankel Prize, honors individuals and organizations whose work has deepened the nation's understanding of the humanities, broadened citizens' engagement with the humanities, or helped preserve and expand America's access to important humanities resources.
The following individuals and organization will receive the National Humanities Medal for 2005:
Walter Berns (Washington, D.C.), a political scientist, is a leading authority on the history of the U.S. Constitution. He is the John M. Olin University Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Berns also taught at Louisiana State University, Yale University, Cornell University, Colgate University, and University of Toronto. He earned his master's and doctorate degrees in political science at the University of Chicago and has published many works on American government and society. Among them are: Making Patriots (2001), Taking the Constitution Seriously (1987), In Defense of Liberal Democracy (1984), The First Amendment and the Future of American Democracy (1976), and Freedom, Virtue, and the First Amendment (1957). His articles have also appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Commentary, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Berns served on the National Council on the Humanities from 1982 to 1988 and the Council of Scholars in the Library of Congress from 1981 to 1985. He was also a delegate to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
Matthew Bogdanos (New York, N.Y.), a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves, has been an assistant district attorney in Manhattan since 1988. Raised waiting tables in his family's Greek restaurant, Bogdanos is a former middleweight boxer who holds a law degree and a master's in classics from Columbia University, as well as a master's in strategic studies from the Army War College. Recalled to active duty after September 11, 2001, an attack that also forced his evacuation from his Manhattan apartment a block from the Twin Towers, Bogdanos received a Bronze Star for counter-terrorist operations in Afghanistan and served several tours in Iraq. While in Iraq, Bogdanos led the investigation into the theft and destruction at the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. Under his supervision, more than 5,000 artifacts have been recovered in six countries, and this became the topic of his book, Thieves of Baghdad: One Marine's Passion for Ancient Civilizations and the Journey to Recover the World's Greatest Stolen Treasures (Bloomsbury), published in October 2005. Bogdanos is donating the book's royalties to the Iraq Museum for additional recoveries and has returned to the D.A.'s office, where he continues to perform recovery work for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Eva Brann (Annapolis, Md.) has been a tutor (professor) at St. John's College in Annapolis, Md., which is known for its distinctive "great books" curriculum, since 1957, serving as dean from 1990-97. A Jewish immigrant from Berlin, Brann went to Brooklyn College and later earned her master's in classics and a doctoral degree in archaeology at Yale University. At St. John's College, she became a tutor, exploring philosophy in greater depth; the primary focus of her career has been her teaching and service to her college. Brann's latest book is Open Secrets / Inward Prospects: Reflections on World and Soul (2004). She has produced many publications, including Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey and the Iliad (2002), The Music of The Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings (2004), The World of the Imagination (1992), What Then, Is Time? (1999), and The Ways of Naysaying: No, Not, Nothing, and Nonbeing (2001). Brann's long history of academic posts and honors includes fellowships with NEH and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a seat on the Maryland Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1988-1996).
John Lewis Gaddis (New Haven, Conn.), is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History and Political Science at Yale University. Educated at the University of Texas in Austin, Gaddis has also taught at Ohio University, the United States Naval War College, the University of Helsinki, Princeton University, and Oxford University. His books include The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (1972, second edition 2000); Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States: An Interpretive History (1978, second edition 1990); Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (1982, revised and expanded edition 2005); The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (1987); The United States and the End of the Cold War: Reconsiderations, Implications, Provocations (1992); We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (1997); The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (2002); and Surprise, Security, and the American Experience (2004). His latest book, The Cold War: A New History, will appear from Penguin Press at the end of this year. Gaddis teaches Cold War history, grand strategy, international studies, and biography at Yale, where he was the 2003 recipient of the Phi Beta Kappa William Clyde DeVane Award for undergraduate teaching. He is on the advisory board of the Cold War International History Project and is currently working on a biography of George F. Kennan.
Richard Gilder (New York, N.Y.) is co-founder and co-chairman of the Gilder Lehrman Collection and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History to promote the love and study of American History, now with teaching programs in fifty states, and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale. Gilder and Lewis Lehrman are founders and sponsors of the Lincoln Prize, the Frederick Douglass Book Award, and co-sponsors of the George Washington Book Prize. In 1971, he pioneered the renovation of Central Park and in 1978 became a founding and continuing trustee of the Central Park Conservancy. He also participated in the transformation of the Hayden Planetarium and of its parent, the American Museum of Natural History, into the world-class institutions they have become. In 2003 he joined the Board of the New-York Historical Society, where he serves as co-chairman, and he is a trustee of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and the American Museum of Natural History. Gilder heads the brokerage firm Gilder, Gagnon, Howe & Co.
Mary Ann Glendon (Cambridge, Mass.), is the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University. She writes and teaches in the fields of human rights, comparative law, constitutional law, and legal theory. Her most recent book, A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (2001), was described by the New York Times reviewer as the definitive study of the framing of the UDHR. Glendon served as a member of the U.S. President's Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2005. She is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the International Academy of Comparative Law, and a past president of the UNESCO-sponsored International Association of Legal Science. By appointment of Pope John Paul II, she is president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and a member of the Pontifical Council for the Laity. In 1995 she headed the 22-member delegation of the Holy See to the Fourth U.N. Women's conference in Beijing. Glendon has contributed to legal and social thought in several articles and books and has lectured widely in this country and in Europe. Her books, bringing a comparative approach to a variety of subjects, include A Nation Under Lawyers (1996), Seedbeds of Virtue (co-edited with David Blankenhorn, 1995), Rights Talk (1991), The Transformation of Family Law (1989), Abortion and Divorce in Western Law (1987), The New Family and the New Property (1981), and textbooks on comparative legal traditions.
Leigh Keno (New York, N.Y.) is president of Leigh Keno American Antiques, a gallery in Manhattan dealing in fine eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century American furniture and decorative arts. During the past 18 years, he has helped build some of the top institutional and private collections of American furniture and decorative arts. Actively involved in the field of American antiques since childhood, he was a fellow at Historic Deerfield and visiting scholar at the Winterthur Museum in Delaware. After receiving a B.A. in art history from Hamilton College in 1979, Leigh came to New York City and joined William Doyle Galleries, where he was director of the American furniture department. In 1984 he joined Christie's, first serving as vice president of their appraisal company and later joining the American furniture department as a senior specialist. In that capacity, Leigh appraised items across the country and negotiated the consignment of important examples of American furniture. From 2001 through 2005, he and his twin brother wrote monthly furniture and design columns for House Beautiful and This Old House magazines, respectively. In November 2000, Warner Books published Hidden Treasures: Searching for Masterpieces of American Furniture, a book both Keno brothers wrote with Joan Barzilay Freund. Leigh has co-authored two groundbreaking articles on Boston's Georgian chairs for the 1996 and 1998 editions of the journal American Furniture, published by the Chipstone Foundation. Leigh is a friend of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a friend of Historic Deerfield, and a member of the National Antique and Art Dealers Association of America and the Antiques Dealers Association of America. For the past ten years, Leigh Keno and his brother Leslie have appeared regularly as appraisers on the hit PBS series Antiques Roadshow, and, since October 2003, co-hosted a show on WGBH called Find!, which celebrates the world of design, style, antiques and furnishings. Leigh Keno lectures extensively across the country and with his twin, participates as an auctioneer for various charity events throughout the United States.
Leslie Keno (New York, N.Y.), is senior vice president, senior specialist, and director of American furniture and decorative arts at Sotheby's in New York. Leslie and his brother Leigh were passionate about antiques at a very young age and were very fortunate to know what path in life they wanted to pursue. Much of their childhood was one continuous treasure hunt for antiques, and on the front page of their first joint diary they declared "Leigh and Leslie ... twelve years old ... at this time ... we are antique dealers." Since that moment on, they have never stopped doing what they love. Born in upstate New York, Leslie graduated from Williams College with honors in American art. While at Williams, he carried out an intensive study of early American furniture from the Charles M. Davenport collection, which culminated in a catalog and exhibition of the collection at the Williams College Museum of Art. During his tenure of nearly 24 years at Sotheby's he has been responsible for successfully selling numerous important single-owner sales of American furniture and decorative arts, including the collections of: Mr. and Mrs. Adolph H. Meyer, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Paul Sax, Mr. and Mrs. Lammot du Pont Copeland, and Mr. and Mrs. Walter K. Jeffords, and the property of the Goddard Family, to name but a few. Numerous record-breaking sales of American furniture achieved during Leslie Keno's tenure have received international attention, increasing the public's awareness and appreciation of the great beauty and majesty of America's unique cultural heritage. In addition to writing monthly magazine articles with his brother Leigh and co-authoring Hidden Treasures, Leslie Keno has been published in Sotheby's Encyclopedia of Furniture and the American Ceramic Circle Journal. Leslie and his brother Leigh believe in the extraordinary benefits of television as a powerful teaching tool to inspire young people and get them excited about material culture and history. They appear regularly as appraisers on the hit PBS series Antiques Roadshow, and they co-host Find!, which premiered on WGBH in October 2003 to celebrate a world of design, style, antiques, and furnishings. Leslie is a member of the board of directors of Sotheby's North and South America and lectures extensively on antiques. He and Leigh volunteer each year as benefit auctioneers for various charity events across the country.
Alan Charles Kors (Wallingford, Pa.), has been teaching European intellectual history since 1968 at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is professor of history and holds the George H. Walker Endowed Term Chair. He has published extensively on the conceptual revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and was recently editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, an international project published in four volumes in 2002. Kors was confirmed by the United States Senate in 1992 to the National Council on the Humanities, serving in that capacity for six years. He has served on the executive boards of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and The Historical Society, where he is on the Board of Governors. He has done two videotape and audio courses for The Teaching Company, one on "The Birth of the Modern Mind" and one on "Voltaire: The Mind of the Enlightenment." Kors has been involved in the defense of academic freedom since his arrival at the University of Pennsylvania. His colleagues at Penn have elected him four times to University and School Committees on Academic Freedom and Responsibility, and since 1998 he has been chairman of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. He has received two awards, the Lindback Foundation Award and the Ira Abrams Memorial Award, for distinguished college teaching, numerous awards for the defense of academic freedom, and, in 2005, The Conference on Value Inquiry Award for "extraordinary contributions to the appreciation and advancement of human values." He writes and lectures widely on academic life. In 1998, he coauthored, with Harvey Silvergate, The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses.
Lewis Lehrman (Greenwich, Conn.), is currently a senior partner, L. E. Lehrman & Co., an investment firm he established, and the co-founder and co-chairman of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, which promotes the teaching of history in American high schools and colleges through seminars, workshops and an extensive Web site featuring original documents. Lehrman was the Cardinal Cooke honoree in 1983 of the Archdiocese of New York for his early work in developing the Inner City Scholarship Fund. He has been a trustee of the American Enterprise Institute, the Morgan Library, the Manhattan Institute and the Heritage Foundation. He is a former Chairman of the Committee on Humanities of the Yale University Council. In April of 1987, Lehrman joined Morgan Stanley & Company, investment bankers, as a senior advisor and a director of Morgan Stanley Asset Management. In 1988, he became a managing director of the firm. Lehrman has written books and articles on American history, national security, and economic and monetary policy. He has co-authored the book Money and the Coming World Order (1976). He has also written on economic, foreign policy and national security issues in publications such as Harper's, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and Policy Review. He actively lectures and writes on economic and American history. He has published numerous articles on Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, and other historical figures, in addition to teaching a seminar on Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg College. He is the managing partner of the Gilder Lehrman Collection, a national resource of American historical documents, now on deposit at the New-York Historical Society, where he is also a trustee. Lehrman is co-founder of the Lincoln Prize, given annually to the best scholarly work published on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. The Gilder Lehrman Institute is a co-sponsor of the George Washington Book Prize. Lehrman is a trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale University for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, which gives the annual Frederick Douglass Prize. He is chairman of The Lehrman Institute, a public policy research and grant making Foundation founded in 1972. The Lehrman Institute created The Lincoln Institute, which has promoted the study of America's 16th president--particularly through five Web sites (see: www.abrahamlincoln.org).
Judith Martin (Washington, D.C.), known to her many readers as "Miss Manners," was born in Washington, D.C., "a perfect lady in an imperfect society" and is considered the pioneer mother of today's civility movement. Martin's "Miss Manners" newspaper column-distributed thrice-weekly by United Features Syndicate and carried in more than 200 newspapers in the United States and abroad-has chronicled the continuous rise and fall of American manners since 1978. Since 1996 she has been writing an additional "Miss Manners" column for the Microsoft Network, and she is also a columnist at Child magazine. Martin is also a novelist and journalist and, as the nation's leading civility expert, a frequent lecturer and guest on national television and radio shows. As a reporter, feature writer, and critic, she spent 25 years at The Washington Post, where she was one of the original members of the Style and Weekend sections. In addition to her most recent book, Miss Manners Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior (Freshly Updated) (2005), Martin has written many others, including Star-Spangled Manners: In Which Miss Manners Defends American Etiquette (For a Change) (2002), Miss Manners' Guide to Domestic Tranquility: The Authoritative Manual for Every Civilized Household, However Harried (2000); Miss Manners' Basic TrainingTM: The Right Thing to Say (1998); Miss Manners' Basic Training™: Communication (1996); Miss Manners' Basic TrainingTM: Eating (1997); Miss Manners Rescues Civilization from Sexual Harassment, Frivolous Lawsuits, Dissing and Other Lapses in Civility (1996). She also has written two novels, Style and Substance (1986) and Gilbert (1983). She is also the author of Common Courtesy: In Which Miss Manners Solves the Problem that Baffled Mr. Jefferson (1985). She is a graduate of Wellesley College and has been awarded honorary degrees.
The Papers of George Washington (Charlottesville, Va.), was established in 1969 at the University of Virginia, under the joint auspices of the university and the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union, to publish a complete edition of Washington's correspondence. Letters written to Washington, as well as letters and documents written by him, will eventually be published in the complete edition that will consist of approximately 90 volumes. Fifty-two volumes are now finished. The new edition is supported financially by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, as well as the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association and the University of Virginia. The staff spent much of the first ten years of the project's life collecting Washington documents from repositories and private owners all over the United States and Europe. The 135,000 Washington documents now deposited in photographic form in the project's offices represent one of the richest collections of American historical manuscripts extant. There is almost no facet of research on life and enterprise in the late colonial and early national periods that will not be enhanced by material from these documents. The publication of Washington's papers will make this source material available not only to scholars, but also to all Americans interested in the founding of their nation. Theodore J. Crackel, editor-in-chief of the Papers of George Washington Project, will accept the National Humanities Medal on behalf of the project.
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MIT’s McGovern Center Opens
The McGovern Institute has come home. Celebrating the official Nov. 4 opening of the institute they founded in 2000, Pat and Lore McGovern hosted more than 500 guests in the sun-filled atrium of the largest neuroscience complex in the world -- the brain and cognitive sciences complex at MIT.
An overflow of onlookers lined the tiered balconies to hear the lineup of speakers, which included Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass), TV news host Jane Pauley, Nobel laureates Eric Kandel and Phillip Sharp, and Ethernet inventor Robert Metcalfe.
Pat McGovern, an MIT alumnus, recounted how he and his wife, Lore Harp McGovern, came to see misunderstanding and miscommunication as the basis for conflicts. They founded the institute to promote peace and understanding by improving communication and helping to alleviate the human suffering brought on by mental illness and brain disease, he said.
Theirs is the biggest gift in MIT history, $350 million over 20 years.
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Dr. Israel German Appointed Senior Vice President and Director General of Technion
Dr. Israel German has been appointed senior vice president and director general of the Technion. German, who has a doctoral degree in economics, replaces Prof. Michael Rubinovitz, who is stepping down after 14 years in the position. In his previous position. German served as senior vice president of Ben Gurion University of the Negev.
German received his bachelor’s degree in economics with honors at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, and completed his doctoral degree in macroeconomics in the US. He also taught at the University of North Carolina. After a year, he moved to the World Bank in Washington, DC, where he was responsible for the Philippines.
Upon his return to Israel, in 1988, German was appointed a senior assistant for economics and strategy to the director general of Haifa Chemicals. In 1991, he was asked by the President of Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Prof. Avishai Braverman, to serve as deputy director general of the University and in 1995 was promoted to director general. In 1999, he was appointed vice president and director general and in 2003 senior vice president.
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Alumni Make HK$10 Million Gift
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has received its largest-ever alumni gift - a HK$10 million (US$1.2 million) donation establishing a scholarship fund to recruit students from developing countries.
The gift comes from Mr Liu Sing Cheong, a homegrown entrepreneur, and his wife, Ms Wong Po Yuk. Mr Liu is a graduate of the University's first MBA class, while Ms Wong took postgraduate degrees from HKUST in both business studies and social science.
A chartered surveyor, Liu's success story began in the early 1990s when he started his local real estate consulting business. In a far-sighted move, he ventured into the uncharted waters of the Guangzhou market in 1993 with the establishment of the Guangzhou Pearl River-Hang Cheong Real Estate Consultants Limited. He later founded MyTopHome, which has grown into the biggest property agency company in Guangzhou. His fast expanding group of companies now employs more than 2,000 staff members, offering professional and wide-ranging services to leading developers and government departments.
Liu has long been a staunch supporter of HKUST. He is a Corporate Advisor to the HKUST Business School and Director of the HKUST R and D Corporation. In 2001, the University conferred an Honorary Fellowship upon Liu in recognition of his innovations in business management.
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One of World's Fastest Supercomputers to Aid Princeton Researchers
A unique partnership between Princeton scientists and information technology administrators has brought one of the world's fastest supercomputers to the University to spur advancements in research.
Working with IBM, the University's Office of Information Technology (OIT) collaborated with Princeton researchers to purchase and install a "Blue Gene" high-performance computer that will aid current and future research solving complex problems in areas including astrophysical sciences, engineering, chemistry and plasma physics. The University plans a ribbon cutting Nov. 22 to inaugurate the computer that was installed last month.
Princeton expects its new supercomputer to claim a spot in the top 100 of the world's highest performing computers on the "Top500 Supercomputer Sites" list that will be released by the computing industry next week.
Fewer than 10 other U.S. universities in the top 100 have supercomputers on their campuses not affiliated with federal agencies, according to the 2005 Top500 list compiled by computing labs at Germany's University of Mannheim, the University of Tennessee and the Office of Science in the U.S. Department of Energy.
The new supercomputer should also position the University to be a better funding target for science and research organizations attracted to institutions that can demonstrate the greatest computing efficiency, according to Curt Hillegas, manager of computational science and engineering support in OIT's academic services department.
Blue Gene, named for the genetics research for which it was initially designed, is made up of 2,048 processors per rack. It calculates problems almost 1,000 times faster than a typical desktop personal computer and allows researchers to partition it to use part of its capacity for less complex jobs or multiple tasks.
Astrophysics problems that involve modeling the universe, for example, or aerospace engineering computations to determine the forces that might act on the wing of a jet plane could occupy one part of the Blue Gene, while another part is modeling a chemical system that might require different processing capacity.
A little larger than a refrigerator and assembled and tested by engineers in IBM’s Rochester, Minn., facility, the Blue Gene that administrators plan to call "Orangena" -- to incorporate aspects of its original name and one of Princeton's colors -- was installed for early testing by IBM engineers and consultants on Oct. 18 in the computing center at 87 Prospect Ave. on Princeton's campus.
The University had been working for three years to centralize computing support for researchers who typically have had to buy their own computers, and began working with IBM to bring the Blue Gene to campus last spring. Researchers selected IBM for the company's potential as a future partner in collaborative research, in addition to the features of its supercomputer.
While the Office of Information Technology paid for about half of the new Blue Gene in a unique collaboration, the Princeton Institute for Computational Science and Engineering, the School of Engineering and Applied Science and individual faculty members made significant contributions toward the purchase.
"My involvement began because I saw a use in my research for demanding computations in predicting structures for protein folding, computations in metabolic networks and other areas," Professor of Chemical Engineering Chris Floudas said.
Floudas is one of seven Princeton researchers who contributed personal grant funds to help buy the supercomputer. Academic administrators, such as Klawe of the engineering school, also supplied funds to support the research of their faculty.
William Tang, the chief scientist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and a professor of astrophysical sciences, said he played a key role in selecting the Blue Gene because of the potential it will unleash for bringing scientific advancements about more quickly.
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SDE's Lijiang Project Wins UNESCO Award
A team from the School of Design and Environment (SDE) at the National University of Singapore has won the inaugural Jury Commendation Award in the 2005 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards. They have designed and built the Yuhu Primary School and Community Centre in Lijiang through reinterpretation of local traditions and materials. Lijiang in China was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1997.
Associate Professor Li Xiaodong, Department of Architecture and Dr Lim Guan Tiong, Department of Building, undertook the project assisted by two PhD candidates, Mr Yeo Kang Shua and Mr Chong Keng Hua. Said SDE Dean, Professor Cheong Hin Fatt: "The prize recognises newly-built structures which demonstrate outstanding standards for contemporary architectural design which are well-integrated into historic contexts."
"The successful construction of Lijiang School is also testimony to the role and potential that design research can play in our understanding of larger social, urban and environmental developments both locally and globally – a model of learning that is actively promoted at the Department," said Professor Heng Chye Kiang, Head, Department of Architecture.
"In its design, construction and maintenance, the primary school and community centre involved the adoption of special approaches which were different from what might be applied on a commercial project, or even a public building," added Professor George Ofori, Head, Department of Building.
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HKUST, Microsoft Launch PhD Joint Scheme
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and Microsoft Research Asia (MSR Asia) will co-supervise PhD candidates in computer science to nurture the region's next generation of IT talents.
An agreement on the Joint Doctorate Supervision Scheme was signed today (5 November 2005) at HKUST by Prof Yuk-Shee Chan, Vice-President for Academic Affairs, and Dr Harry Shum, Managing Director of MSR Asia. Prof Paul Chu, HKUST President, and Dr Rick Rashid, Senior Vice President of Microsoft Corporation, witnessed the signing.
Under the Scheme, MSR Asia will nominate candidates for admission to HKUST's Computer Science PhD program. Candidates' thesis research will be jointly supervised by HKUST faculty and senior MSR Asia research staff. Students will be required to fulfill all PhD coursework and examinations in the first year at HKUST, and carry out research at MSR Asia, Beijing, under the guidance of the co-supervisors. Ultimately students will be awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Computer Science by HKUST.
HKUST and MSR Asia are long-term strategic partners. As recently as 2004, the two joined forces to establish the Ministry of Education/MSR Asia IT Key Lab at HKUST. The first such national laboratory located in Hong Kong, it explores next-generation IT technologies, allowing students and researchers the freedom to engage in basic research projects with real-world applications.
