University News
Prof. Rivka Carmi Elected President of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Rivka Carmi was elected Acting President of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. This is the first time that a woman has been elected to head an Israeli university. The University's Executive Committee, chaired by David Brodet, approved the recommendations of the Presidential Search Committee at a special meeting on December 26, 2005.
Prof. Carmi, a pediatrician and geneticist, made history in 2000 when she was elected the first female dean of a Faculty of Health Sciences in Israel. She will enter office as Acting President on February 1, 2006 and will replace Prof. Avishay Braverman following the approval of her nomination by the Board of Governors under the chairmanship of Roy Zuckerberg in May 2006. Prof. Braverman recently took a leave of absence from the University to run in the March 2006 national elections.
Carmi is a senior faculty member in both the Faculty of Health Sciences as well as the Soroka Medical Center in Beer-Sheva. She is a graduate of the Medical School of Hebrew University in Jerusalem and completed her residency in Genetics at Harvard University. Prof. Carmi has three areas of expertise: pediatrics, neonatology and medical genetics. She served as the Director of the Clinical Genetics Unit at the Soroka Medical Center and is an expert in diagnosis, genetic counseling and follow-up of patients with genetic diseases. In the past, Prof. Carmi served as the Chair of the Selection Committee of the Joyce and Irving Goldman Medical School, the Chair of the Instructional Committee at BGU’s Recanati School for Community Health Professions and as Associate Dean of Student Affairs at the FOHS. Furthermore, she was deeply involved in biotechnology initiatives at BGU, serving as Acting Director of the National Institute for Biotechnology in the Negev in its founding stages.
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SG$9 Million Boost for Maritime R&D at NUS
Two professorships to push maritime R&D in Singapore have been launched as a result of a new collaboration between Lloyd's Register, a leading international classification society and risk management organization, the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) and National University of Singapore.
Lloyd's Register and MPA will each commit $3 million (US$1.8 million) to the Lloyd's Register Professorship and the MPA Maritime Technology Professorship (MTP). With dollar-for-dollar matching grant from the Government, a total of $9 million (US$5.5 million) will go towards the establishment of the professorships.
The establishment of the two professorships is an important tripartite collaboration between industry, government agency and tertiary institution – a significant effort to create a dynamic maritime R&D cluster in Singapore. Said Mr John Stansfeld, Director for Asia, Lloyd's Register Asia: "NUS is ranked 22nd in a global ranking of 200 best universities and 9th for the disciplines of Engineering & IT, and this has been an important factor in the decision to support a university outside of the UK for the very first time."
The Lloyd's Register Professorship and MTP will be established at the Centre for Offshore Research & Engineering (CORE) which was jointly set up by NUS and the Economic Development Board.
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MIT Nuclear Energy Projects Get $2M in DOE Grants
The U.S. Department of Energy awarded US$2 million in grants to three MIT projects as part of an initiative to encourage nuclear energy research and development in the United States.
The research will be done through MIT's Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems, which was established in 2000 to work on the development of technologies for nuclear energy plants and fuel facilities. Professor Mujid S. Kazimi of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering directs the center.
The grants were awarded under the DOE's Nuclear Energy Research Initiative (NERI) to develop advanced nuclear technologies to make the U.S. less reliant on imported fossil fuels.
About 85 percent of the world's energy currently comes from fossil fuels, which also account for most of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The United States is responsible for the world's largest percentage of carbon dioxide emissions relative to its gross domestic product. By contrast, France, which uses nuclear power to produce electricity, has the lowest emissions per GDP.
In the next few years, MIT is expected to make a big push in the area of energy research, following the creation by President Susan Hockfield of the MIT Energy Research Council. The council is charged with determining the areas of energy research in which MIT can make the greatest impact.
MIT has a longstanding nuclear energy research program conducted in part through its Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems, the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, the Department of Chemical Engineering, and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. The MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory is credited with a number of safety advances and research developments in the nuclear energy industry over the past five decades, as well as with developments in nuclear medicine. The Reactor Lab also enables other U.S. universities to conduct research in nuclear energy and medicine by making its lab resources available to them.
The DOE selected the 24 NERI research projects totaling $12 million from a pool of 144 proposals. MIT and Purdue University each earned three awards; the University of Wisconsin, North Carolina State University and University of Michigan each received two grants.
The three MIT projects funded under the NERI grants are:
MIT Professor Ronald Ballinger is the principal investigator on a collaborative project with Los Alamos National Laboratory that will seek to develop a corrosion-resistant material to use for making fuel cladding and structural materials in lead-cooled reactor systems. The project will receive about $1 million in funding over three years.
MIT Professor Neil Todreas and Pavel Hejzlar, a principal research scientist, are co-principal investigators on a project to develop nuclear reactor designs with a flexible conversion ratio for lead alloy and liquid salt coolants. This is a $500,000 grant over two years.
MIT Professor Paul Barton will develop a model for the simulation and optimization of a system to produce hydrogen from water using the heat and/or electricity generated by a nuclear plant. The grant is for $500,000 over three years and is part of a larger project to design a plant that could produce hydrogen without creating greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition, Todreas is co-principal investigator with Ehud Greenspan and Donald Olander of the University of California at Berkeley on a project to assess the feasibility of improving pressurized water reactors by using hydride instead of oxide fuels. MIT's award is a $190,000 subcontract from Berkeley for two years.
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Gates Grant Will Help Emory, Finland Build International Public Health Network
Emory University, in partnership with Finnish National Public Health Institute (KTL), in Helsinki, has received a US$902,554 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to enhance the International Association of National Public Health Institutes (IANPHI) during 2006.
Founded in 2002 with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the IANPHI is a growing network of public health agencies that encourage participants to learn from each other's experiences. More-established agencies, such as KTL, provide smaller, younger national health agencies scientific and technical support to build their national public health systems. IANPHI also incorporates the perspectives of public health experts who have served the needs of both the developed and developing world, and who are currently in the academic community or the private sector.
Jeffrey Koplan, MD, MPH, vice president for academic health affairs in Emory University's Woodruff Health Sciences Center and former director of the CDC, is the principal investigator for the IANPHI grant. Co-investigators are Pekka Puska, MD, PhD, director general of KTL, and Pekka Jousilahti, MD, PhD, research professor with KTL.
"With increasing globalization and travel, the public health issues of one country can quickly affect the entire world," explains Dr. Koplan. "The Gates Foundation grant will provide some concrete tools for bringing the world's national public health agencies together."
Currently, there are 35 national public health agencies connected through IANPHI, and each one brings something different to the association. The KTL has been successful in reducing chronic disease mortality, and the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research may be able to share its success with HIV and AIDS prevention. Academic institutions such as Emory bring the educational support and expertise to teach basic public health skills including surveillance, laboratory support, health communication, policy development, epidemiology, and health education.
Expertise and support from IANPHI will help fledging national public health agencies build basic public health infrastructure necessary to deliver aid from international and philanthropic organizations.
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Fogarty Announces Awards for Biodiversity-based Drug Discovery Research
The Fogarty International Center (FIC), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced two new awards to support the search for new pharmaceutical compounds and agricultural agents from organisms found in coral reefs, forests, and extreme environments, the cataloging of these diverse organisms, and the training of scientists in the United States and developing countries.
Chemical compounds originally identified from plants, animals and micro-organisms have been the basis for the development of nearly half of our new drugs over the past 20 years. Recent examples include a new drug called ziconitide (Prialt TM) for treatment of severe chronic pain originally derived from tropical cone snails, and an anti-cancer compound called hemiasterlin, based on a molecule found in sponges off the coast of New Guinea.
As part of its International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups (ICBG) program, FIC is funding international, public-private, interdisciplinary research teams. The two awardees are led by Dr. Jon Clardy of Harvard University and by Dr. Mark Hay of Georgia Institute of Technology.
The awards, co-sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and National Institute of General Medical Sciences, both parts of the NIH, and the National Science Foundation, provide $6.5 million over four years to support these two new projects. Together with five previously awarded ICBG grants, total funding for the program is about $6 million per year from a consortium of U.S. government science funding agencies.
Dr. Clardy's team includes investigators at Harvard Medical School; Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT; University of Michigan; National Institute of Biodiversity (Santo Domingo de Heredia, Costa Rica); and Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (Cambridge, MA).
The Harvard project will focus on organisms found in Costa Rica that have been under-explored because they are less accessible, less well-known scientifically, and more difficult to analyze. Research teams will use these organisms, for example, marine and soil bacteria and a type of fungus that lives inside plants, to identify compounds with the potential to treat a wide spectrum of disorders. These include infectious diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, and several types of cancer.
Dr. Hay's team includes investigators from Georgia Institute of Technology ( Atlanta, GA); Scripps Institution of Oceanography ( La Jolla, CA); University of the South Pacific ( Suva, Fiji); and Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute ( Princeton, NJ).
The Georgia Institute of Technology project will study marine bacteria and coral reef plants and invertebrates to uncover chemical compounds for use in treating people with cancer, malaria, HIV-AIDS, tuberculosis, and other emerging bacterial pathogens, such as drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
In addition to the two new awards, the ICBG supports five other projects. Joining FIC in supporting these other projects are the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Cancer Institute, National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Office of Dietary Supplements, and National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Science Foundation.
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Sullivan Selected as Provost for University of Michigan
Representatives of The University of Michigan announced that Teresa A. Sullivan, executive vice chancellor for academic affairs of The University of Texas System, has been selected as provost and executive vice president for academic affairs of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Dr. Sullivan's appointment will be effective June 1, pending approval of the University of Michigan Board of Regents.
Sullivan has been executive vice chancellor for academic affairs at the UT System since October 2002. As head of academic affairs for the System, she is responsible for the programs of the UT System related to academic affairs, and provides coordination and support for the nine general academic institutions in the UT System. Through the presidents of the member institutions, the Academic Affairs Office has responsibility for academic planning and programs, budgets, facilities planning and construction, and personnel (both academic and non-academic) of those institutions.
Sullivan is also a professor of sociology and a professor of law at The University of Texas at Austin. Prior to being named executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, she served as UT Austin's vice president and dean of graduate studies since 1995. She has been a faculty member at UT Austin since 1981 and held several other administrative positions, including vice provost, associate dean of graduate studies, chair of the sociology department, and director of women's studies. She was the first woman appointed to serve as an executive vice chancellor of the UT System.
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Inventors of Charge-Coupled Device and Founders of Learning Factory Receive Highest Engineering Honors for 2006
The engineering profession's highest honors for 2006, presented by the National Academies' National Academy of Engineering (NAE), recognize an invention that revolutionized imaging technologies and an undergraduate education program designed to create leaders in engineering by solving challenges posed by industry.
Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith will share the Charles Stark Draper Prize -- a $500,000 annual award that honors engineers whose accomplishments have significantly benefited society -- "for the invention of the Charge-Coupled Device (CCD), a light-sensitive component at the heart of digital cameras and other widely used imaging technologies."
Jens E. Jorgensen, John S. Lamancusa, Lueny Morell, Allen L. Soyster, and José Zayas-Castro will receive the Bernard M. Gordon Prize -- a $500,000 award issued annually that recognizes innovation in engineering and technology education -- "for creating the Learning Factory, where multidisciplinary student teams develop engineering leadership skills by working with industry to solve real-world problems."
The prizes will be presented at a gala dinner in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 21.
The Charles Stark Draper Prize
At Bell Laboratories in 1969, Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith were brainstorming about a way for semiconductors to store data and compete with new magnetic bubble memory technologies. "We were always coming up with new ideas, but most of them didn't work," joked Boyle. One day, however, they sketched out the design of the CCD, and soon researchers at Bell Laboratories and other companies were abuzz about the tiny, simple device. Boyle and Smith's invention became the first practical solid-state imaging device.
"Because they are small, accurate, and reliable, CCDs have found many applications as imaging devices," said Smith. They have become a ubiquitous component of electronics such as digital cameras, video cameras, and scanners. They are essential to many medical imaging devices, such as the tiny cameras that permit diagnostic procedures and smaller surgical incisions. Because CCDs are much more sensitive than photographic film, they are now used in space telescopes and remote sensing cameras. The Hubble Space Telescope, Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, and the many surveillance satellites circling Earth all incorporate the rugged and energy-efficient device and are thus able to transmit spectacular images to the world.
The CCD's flat array of semiconductor capacitors detects photons, and each capacitor holds an electrical charge that is proportional to the intensity of light striking it. Boyle and Smith's device was novel because it could hold this discrete, isolated charge, and then move it without circuitry interconnects to a single output detector. This makes the device very sensitive. The CCD's electronic read-out can be readily digitized and displayed and analyzed by a computer.
The Bernard M. Gordon Prize
The Learning Factory was developed to produce engineering graduates who could easily translate engineering theory into practice and manage projects independently. In this innovative undergraduate program, students tackle real problems from industry, such as designing a collapsible crutch, turning coal ash into a pavement, and making the mechanism that adjusts the position of car seatbacks safer. Multidisciplinary teams of students define and characterize the problem, build a solution prototype, write a business proposal, and make presentations about their idea. "Learning Factory students see firsthand the importance of teamwork, effective communication, and engineering ethics," says NAE President Wm. A. Wulf. "Mastering such qualities is essential for engineers to become leaders in a dynamic workplace."
The Learning Factory originated from a coalition between three universities, Sandia National Laboratories, and 36 industrial partners that shared a desire to give students firsthand experience in design, manufacturing, and business. A 1994 National Science Foundation/Advanced Research Projects Agency grant funded the creation of the Learning Factory as a Manufacturing Engineering Education Partnership (MEEP).
Within three years, the university partners -- Pennsylvania State University, the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez (UPRM), and the University of Washington (UW) -- successfully integrated the Learning Factory into their institutions and curricula. Since then, Learning Factory concepts and course materials have spread to other departments within these institutions, and to other universities in the U.S. and Latin America. More than 10,000 students have created over 1,200 Learning Factory design projects involving more than 200 industry partners.
Jens E. Jorgensen is Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington. He led facilities development at all three partner universities and directed the Learning Factory at UW until his retirement in 2000.
John S. Lamancusa is professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Learning Factory at Pennsylvania State University. He was a principal investigator there, and designed the Product Realization curriculum, the Product Dissection course, and the facilities for the university's Learning Factory.
Lueny Morell is the Hewlett Packard Co.'s director of university relations for Latin America and former professor of chemical engineering at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez. She led the Learning Factory curriculum development at UPRM, and continues to conduct dissemination workshops and assessment activities. More than 35 Learning Factory workshops have been offered in the U.S. and abroad since 1998.
Allen L. Soyster is professor and dean of the College of Engineering at Northeastern University. When he was head of the department of industrial engineering at Penn State, Soyster led the administration of the MEEP and was responsible for assembling the Learning Factory faculty and staff and for establishing the Industry Advisory Board.
José L. Zayas-Castro , professor and chair of industrial and management systems engineering at the University of South Florida (USF), established the Learning Factory at UPRM and has adapted Learning Factory concepts to other U.S. universities. In 1999 Zayas-Castro implemented the Entrepreneurial Manufacturing Innovation Learning Experience program at the University of Missouri at Columbia. At USF, he has redesigned the capstone project to include elements of the Learning Factory.
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Partial Ingredients for DNA and Protein Found Around Star
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered some of life's most basic ingredients in the dust swirling around a young star. The ingredients -- gaseous precursors to DNA and protein -- were detected in the star's terrestrial planet zone, a region where rocky planets such as Earth are thought to be born.
The findings represent the first time that these gases, called acetylene and hydrogen cyanide, have been found in a terrestrial planet zone outside of our own.
"This infant system might look a lot like ours did billions of years ago, before life arose on Earth," said Fred Lahuis of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands and the Dutch space research institute called SRON. Lahuis is lead author of a paper to be published in the Jan. 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Lahuis and his colleagues spotted the organic, or carbon-containing, gases around a star called IRS 46. The star is in the Ophiuchus (pronounced OFF-ee-YOO-kuss), or "snake carrier," constellation about 375 light-years from Earth. This constellation harbors a huge cloud of gas and dust in the process of a major stellar baby boom. Like most of the young stars here and elsewhere, IRS 46 is circled by a flat disk of spinning gas and dust that might ultimately clump together to form planets.
When the astronomers probed this star's disk with Spitzer's powerful infrared spectrometer instrument, they were surprised to find the molecular "barcodes" of large amounts of acetylene and hydrogen cyanide gases, as well as carbon dioxide gas. The team observed 100 similar young stars, but only one, IRS 46, showed unambiguous signs of the organic mix.
The Spitzer data also revealed that the organic gases are hot. So hot, in fact, that they are most likely located near the star, about the same distance away as Earth is from our sun.
Organic gases such as those found around IRS 46 are found in our own solar system, in the atmospheres of the giant planets and Saturn's moon Titan, and on the icy surfaces of comets. They have also been seen around massive stars by the European Space Agency's Infrared Space Observatory, though these stars are thought to be less likely than sun-like stars to form life-bearing planets.
Here on Earth, the molecules are believed to have arrived billions of years ago, possibly via comets or comet dust that rained down from the sky. Acetylene and hydrogen cyanide link up together in the presence of water to form some of the chemical units of life's most essential compounds, DNA and protein. These chemical units are several of the 20 amino acids that make up protein and one of the four chemical bases that make up DNA.
"If you add hydrogen cyanide, acetylene and water together in a test tube and give them an appropriate surface on which to be concentrated and react, you'll get a slew of organic compounds including amino acids and a DNA purine base called adenine," said Dr. Geoffrey Blake of Caltech, a co-author of the paper. "And now, we can detect these same molecules in the planet zone of a star hundreds of light-years away."
Follow-up observations with the W.M. Keck Telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii confirmed the Spitzer findings and suggested the presence of a wind emerging from the inner region of IRS 46's disk. This wind will blow away debris in the disk, clearing the way for the possible formation of Earth-like planets.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech. JPL is a division of Caltech. Spitzer's infrared spectrograph was built by Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. Its development was led by Dr. Jim Houck of Cornell.
