University News
Robert J. Zimmer Nominated President of the University of Chicago
The Presidential Search Committee of the University of Chicago is recommending to the Board of Trustees that Robert J. Zimmer, who is currently provost of Brown University, be elected the 13th President of the University of Chicago.
If the recommendation is approved at a special meeting of the Board on Friday, March 10, Zimmer will assume the office on July 1.
Zimmer will succeed Don Michael Randel, who has served as President of the University since 2000. Randel will become President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation this summer.
Zimmer is a mathematician who was a faculty member at the University of Chicago for more than two decades before leaving in 2002 to become Brown’s provost.
As provost at Brown, Zimmer is the chief academic officer and the institution’s leading officer after the president. While there, he has helped Brown to increase its investments and stature in faculty distinction and academic programs across the full scope of the university. He has played a key role in strengthening Brown’s research programs, recruiting outstanding faculty, and enhancing its graduate school and medical school. He also led an effort to enhance substantially Brown’s network of academic affiliations with such institutions as the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass.; the Rhode Island School of Design; the Trinity Repertory Theater Company; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and the hospitals affiliated with the Brown Medical School.
Zimmer is the fourth consecutive former provost of another university to be chosen to lead the University of Chicago, and the first to have been a faculty member at Chicago since Hanna H. Gray, who served as President from 1978 to 1993. Gray is still a member of Chicago’s faculty today.
In addition to his teaching and research work in the mathematical fields of geometry, group theory and analysis, Zimmer served in many administrative capacities at the University of Chicago before accepting his appointment at Brown. These included chairman of the mathematics department, deputy provost, and finally, Vice President for Research and for Argonne National Laboratory. With his January 2001 appointment as Vice President for Research and for Argonne, Zimmer helped begin a reinvigoration of the University’s stewardship of Argonne. He helped to usher in an era of greater collaboration between scientists at the University and Argonne National Laboratory, which the University has operated for the U.S. Department of Energy since the laboratory’s inception in 1946.
A specialist in geometry, particularly ergodic theory, Lie groups, and differential geometry, Zimmer is the author of two books, Ergodic Theory and Semisimple Groups (1984) and Essential Results of Functional Analysis (1990), and more than 80 mathematical research articles. The recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, he served on the Board of Mathematical Sciences of the National Research Council from 1992 to 1995, and was on the executive committee from 1993 to 1995. Zimmer held the title of Max Mason Distinguished Service Professor in Mathematics at Chicago before leaving for Brown, where he has been the Ford Foundation Professor of Mathematics in addition to being provost.
He earned his A.B., summa cum laude, from Brandeis University in 1968 and a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1975 from Harvard University. He joined the Chicago faculty as an L.E. Dickson Instructor of Mathematics in 1977. He was also on the faculty at the U.S. Naval Academy from 1975 to 1977, and at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1981 to 1983. He has held visiting positions at Harvard University and at institutions in Israel, France, Australia, Switzerland, and Italy.
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Carol Tomlinson-Keasey to Step Down as UM Merced Chancellor
After seven years as founding chancellor of the University of California's newest campus in Merced, Chancellor Carol Tomlinson-Keasey announced today that she plans to step down as chancellor on August 31, 2006 to return to teaching and scholarship.
Tomlinson-Keasey, a longtime UC faculty member and administrator, assumed UC Merced's top position on August 1, 1999. Under her energetic leadership, the vision of establishing the first UC campus in the San Joaquin Valley - the 10th in the prestigious University of California system - flourished, despite unprecedented upheaval in the state's financial and political landscape. The new campus officially opened on September 5, 2005 with nearly 900 students.
Tomlinson-Keasey, a distinguished developmental psychologist, said she looks forward to returning to her academic roots. During her sabbatical leave, she plans to document the early history of UC Merced.
In 1997, Tomlinson-Keasey was appointed as the University of California's first systemwide vice provost for academic initiatives. Former UC President Richard Atkinson also named her to direct planning for the new UC campus in 1998.
When named founding chancellor in July 1999, Tomlinson-Keasey joined UC Merced's two other employees in temporary quarters at Merced College. Since her first year, she has met regularly with education and business leaders, civic groups and elected officials from Bakersfield to Sacramento to build support for the new campus. She also launched an intensive and highly successful campaign to attract nationally recognized academic deans, faculty and senior managers to UC Merced.
In March 2000, Tomlinson-Keasey announced the creation of the founding UC Merced Foundation Board of Trustees, many of whom continue their service today. Since then, some $50 million in major gifts has been pledged or awarded to enhance the academic and cultural experience at the newest UC.
Before construction began in 2003, Tomlinson-Keasey oversaw a relocation of the campus from its original site to an adjacent site, reducing the impact on wetlands by 90 percent. As the campus began to take shape, she secured major new funding commitments from the state to keep hiring and construction on track. She also insisted that building designers meet or exceed the state's toughest standards for energy efficiency and environmental stewardship throughout the new campus.
A nationwide search for a new UC Merced chancellor will be initiated shortly, and a panel of regents, faculty, students, community members, and UC Merced Foundation and staff representatives will be named to serve as members of the advisory committee. UC President Dynes will chair the search, which will be completed as expeditiously as possible.
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IIT Bombay to Set Up Center of Excellent in Nanoelectronics
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB) is setting up a Center of Excellence in Nanoelectronics on its Campus to undertake state-of-the-art research in nanoelectronics, train manpower in this area, interact with industry, research laboratories and government departments, and create facilities which will be used by nanoelectronics researchers all over the country.
Funded by the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT),a similar Centre of Excellence is also to be set up at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore. The total cost of the project is Rs. 99.8 crores (approximately US$22.5 million) spread over 5 years, shared equally by the two Institutes.
Though both the centers will have some areas in common, the team at IISc will focus more on the materials aspects of nanoelectronic devices, and the team at IITB will focus more on the devices and circuits aspects of nanoelectronics.
Nanoelectronics is the emerging area of electronics dealing with nanometer-sized devices used for electronic circuits and systems. Nanoelectronics is probably the most advanced of the nanotechnologies, and products are starting to appear in the market utilizing nanoelectronic devices.
Prof. Ramgopal Rao, Chief Investigator for this project at IIT Bombay said that this project also represents the first collaborative effort between two leading academic Institutes in the country, to carry out a joint program in an important emerging area. The two Institutes have a Memorandum of Understanding for collaborative research. Prof. Ramgopal Rao pointed out that over 20 faculty members from six different departments/schools at are involved in the execution of this project at IIT Bombay.
According to Prof. Rao, the joint activity between IITB & IISc will also have two major benefits. Firstly, it will ensure that several major equipments do not have to be replicated at two centres, thus leading to considerable cost saving. Secondly, it will ensure that the complementary expertise of the two teams is effectively used.
In terms of manpower training, the centers will produce highly-trained, innovative scientists and engineers with hands-on experience through the post-graduate and under-graduate programs of these two institutes, as well as through the research assistant/associate program. The number of trained personnel produced at the two Centers will be about 200 per year at all levels. In addition the centers will run several continuing education and short-term courses for participants from industry, government and research laboratories.
The facilities created through this project at the two centers will be available to researchers, scientists, engineers and users from other organizations, including academia, industry and government through the auxiliary "Indian Nanoelectronics Users Program" (INUP).
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UCLA, UCB, UCSB and Stanford Join to Establish Western Institute of Nanoelectronics
The UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science; the University of California, Santa Barbara; the University of California, Berkeley; and Stanford are teaming up to launch what will be one of the world's largest joint research programs focusing on the pioneering technology called "spintronics."
The Western Institute of Nanoelectronics' headquarters will be located at UCLA Engineering, with scientific and technical responsibility distributed across all four campuses.
UCLA Engineering professor Kang Wang will serve as the director of the institute, working closely with professors David Awschalom at UC Santa Barbara, Jeff Bokor at UC Berkeley and Philip Wong at Stanford. All of the nearly 30 eminent researchers taking part in the institute will explore critically needed innovations in semiconductor technology. The program will be co-managed by the four participating campuses and semiconductor industry sponsors, with nearly 10 researchers from semiconductor companies working with the students and faculty on all of the university campuses. This close collaboration, with research and responsibilities shared by four campuses and six industry sponsors, represents an innovative model for cooperative research.
"With this new institute, we are talking about an unprecedented opportunity to help define a technology that can exploit the idiosyncrasies of the quantum world to provide key improvements over existing technologies," Wang said. "As rapid progress in the miniaturization of semiconductor electronic devices leads toward chip features smaller than 65 nanometers in size, researchers have had to begin exploring new ways to make electronics more efficient. Simply put, today's devices, which are based on complementary metal oxide semiconductor standards, or CMOS, can't get much smaller and still function properly and effectively. That's where spintronics comes in."
The Western Institute of Nanoelectronics has been organized to leverage what are now considered the best interdisciplinary talents in the field of nanoelectronics in the world. The institute's mission is to explore and develop advanced research devices, circuits and nanosystems with performance beyond conventional devices, which are based on the current industry standard, complementary metal oxide semiconductors.
Ranked among the top 10 engineering schools among public universities nationwide, the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science is home to six multimillion‑dollar interdisciplinary research centers in space exploration, wireless sensor systems, nanomanufacturing and defense technologies, funded by top national and professional agencies.
Spintronics relies on the spin of an electron to carry information, and holds promise in minimizing power consumption for next-generation electronics. Information-processing technology has relied so far on charge-based devices, ranging from vacuum tubes to million‑transistor microchips. Conventional electronic devices simply move these electric charges around, ignoring the spin that tags along for the ride on each electron. Spintronics aims to put that extra spin action to work — effectively corralling electrons into one smooth reactive chain of motion.
The Western Institute of Nanoelectronics is being established with starting grants of $18.2 million: an industrial support total of $14.38 million and a matching $3.84 million UC Discovery Grant from the Industry-University Cooperative Research Program, which seeks to strengthen California's research-and-development economy in partnership with California research‑and‑development companies. The $18.2 million includes $2.38 million from a Nanoelectronics Research Initiative grant funded by six major semiconductor companies — Intel, IBM, Texas Instruments, AMD, Freescale and MICRON. The amount also includes an additional Intel grant of $2 million. The institute also will receive a separate $10 million equipment grant from Intel. These grants will ensure that long-range research is properly resourced to address the needs for semiconductor technologies beyond complementary metal oxide semiconductors. Funds will be distributed over a four-year period. Infrastructure and personnel support from the participating universities are estimated to exceed $200 million.
A portion of the Western Institute of Nanoelectronics will be housed in a new 3,000‑square‑foot laboratory within the brand-new California NanoSystems Institute building currently under construction on UCLA's Court of Sciences, strategically located amid UCLA's life and physical sciences, engineering, and medicine disciplines.
The Western Institute of Nanoelectronics also will use new infrastructures and laboratories of all the participating universities, including the California NanoSystems Institute of UCLA and UC Santa Barbara, the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society of UC Berkeley, and the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network of Stanford University.
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Cambridge Launches New Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience
Tuesday saw the official launch of the new Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge.
The new department is the result of the merger between the former Departments of Anatomy and Physiology.
This venture brings together over 60 academic and academic-related staff, and more than 150 post-doctoral researchers and graduate students to form one of the largest departments in the School of Biological Sciences. The vibrant community is organised into four principal research areas; Neuroscience, Developmental and Reproductive Biology, Cellular and Systems Physiology, and Form and Function.
By combining critical masses of researchers in each area the aim is to promote high quality innovative science that studies genes, through cells and tissues, to function. The University has expressed strong support for the merger, by allocating the new Herchel Smith Professorship of Molecular Biology to lead a new centre of Integrative Physiology in the Department and by refurbishing considerable areas of laboratory space to create state-of-the-art facilities. The merger also consolidates educational strengths, and promotes greater integration between the teaching of anatomical structure and physiological function.
The occasion was marked by a reception held in some of the newly refurbished laboratory space where Professor Bill Harris, the inaugural Head of Department, welcomed Professor Tony Minson, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Planning and Resources, and other guests.
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UTD Professor Elected to PEN Board
Dr. Tim Redman, a professor of literary studies in the School of Arts and Humanities at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), has been elected to the board of directors of the prominent literary association PEN USA.
PEN, which stands for Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists, is the world’s oldest international human rights organization . The purpose of PEN is to promote literature and defend freedom of expression. Founded in London in 1921 by Catherine Amy Dawson Scott, its first president was John Galsworthy. Among its early members were Joseph Conrad, George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells. International PEN presidents have included Alberto Moravia, Heinrich Boll, Arthur Miller and Mario Vargas Llosa.
PEN USA is one of 141 national PEN Centers in 99 different nations (the United States has two national centers). It is headquartered in Los Angeles.
The author of Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism (Cambridge University Press, 1991), Redman is at work on a biography about Pound. He is the founder and director of UTD’s world-famous chess program. An occasional book reviewer for The Dallas Morning News, Redman currently is president of PEN Texas, the association’s state chapter.
Redman received a lifetime achievement award from PEN Texas in 2001 for his involvement with the Lone Star Writing Contest, his commitment to the Freedom-to-Write Committee, his biographical work about Pound and his involvement with chess as an educational tool.
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NASA's Cassini Discovers Potential Liquid Water on Enceladus
NASA's Cassini spacecraft may have found evidence of liquid water reservoirs that erupt in Yellowstone-like geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus. The rare occurrence of liquid water so near the surface raises many new questions about the mysterious moon.
High-resolution Cassini images show icy jets and towering plumes ejecting large quantities of particles at high speed. Scientists examined several models to explain the process. They ruled out the idea the particles are produced or blown off the moon's surface by vapor created when warm water ice converts to a gas. Instead, scientists have found evidence for a much more exciting possibility. The jets might be erupting from near-surface pockets of liquid water above 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), like cold versions of the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone.
"We previously knew of at most three places where active volcanism exists: Jupiter's moon Io, Earth, and possibly Neptune's moon Triton. Cassini changed all that, making Enceladus the latest member of this very exclusive club, and one of the most exciting places in the solar system," said John Spencer, Cassini scientist, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder.
"Other moons in the solar system have liquid-water oceans covered by kilometers of icy crust," said Andrew Ingersoll, imaging team member and atmospheric scientist at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. "What's different here is that pockets of liquid water may be no more than tens of meters below the surface."
"As Cassini approached Saturn, we discovered the Saturnian system is filled with oxygen atoms. At the time we had no idea where the oxygen was coming from," said Candy Hansen, Cassini scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. "Now we know Enceladus is spewing out water molecules, which break down into oxygen and hydrogen."
Scientists still have many questions. Why is Enceladus so active? Are other sites on Enceladus active? Might this activity have been continuous enough over the moon's history for life to have had a chance to take hold in the moon's interior?
In the spring of 2008, scientists will get another chance to look at Enceladus when Cassini flies within 350 kilometers (approximately 220 miles), but much work remains after the spacecraft's four-year prime mission is over.
"There's no question, along with the moon Titan, Enceladus should be a very high priority for us. Saturn has given us two exciting worlds to explore," said Jonathan Lunine, Cassini interdisciplinary scientist, University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.
Mission scientists report these and other Enceladus findings in this week's issue of Science. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.
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Dual Functions of Sight – Perception and Action – Demonstrated for First Time by Hebrew University Researchers
The dissociation in the visual system between two separate functions – one that enables us to identify objects and the other to interact with them – has been clearly demonstrated for the first time in healthy humans by researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
These separate vision-related actions have been documented from the beginning of the 20th century in patients who suffered damage to the visual system as a result of illness or injuries in which one or the other function – identification or action – was damaged.
For example, persons suffering from ataxia are able to verbally identify an object presented to them but have difficulty in grasping it, while those who have agnosia can grasp an object if handed to them but are unable to name or indicate the position, size or texture of the object.
This dissociation between action and perception suggests the existence of two separate visual streams However, despite the wide research triggered by this theoretical concept, it had not been proved in subjects in whom both streams are functioning normally.
Now, through the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Prof. Ehud Zohary and his graduate student Lior Shmuelof of the Department of Neurobiology at the Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences at the Hebrew University have been able to demonstrate dissociation between perception of objects and actions in the brains of healthy persons. An article detailing their findings was published as the cover story in the journal Neuron.
In the article, the researchers described how they were able to observe dissociation between dorsal and ventral activation patterns in the brains of participants who were shown video scenes of objects and actions directed towards those objects.
What Shmuelof and Zohary saw in the fMRI images were that a complex in the occipito-temporal cortex area of the brain responded to the identity of an object presented on the screen, while a different complex in the parietal lobe region reacted when the subjects were shown actions directed at those objects.
The researchers point out that the areas of the brain responsible for motor action were activated when the experimental subjects were shown scenes of action, even though the subjects were in a passive state, viewing only video clips presenting actions by others, and were not involved in any way with the activities being screened.
What this suggests is that there is an interrelationship between guiding of our own actions and understanding actions taken by others – a kind of “stepping into another’s shoes” that may be one of the bases underlying social communication.