University News
National Academy of Engineering Elects Chair, Vice President, and Councillors
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has re-elected the chair and one member of its governing Council, in addition to electing a new vice president and three new council members. All terms begin July 1, 2006.
Re-elected to a two-year term as NAE's chair is Craig R. Barrett, chairman of the board of Intel Corp., Chandler, Ariz. The NAE chair works with the NAE president to promote the Academy and its policies to the engineering community and the public.
Newly elected to serve a four-year term as NAE's vice president is Maxine L. Savitz, retired general manager for technology partnerships of Honeywell Inc., formerly AlliedSignal, Los Angeles. She brings over 40 years of experience managing research, development, and implementation programs for the public and private sectors, including serving as deputy assistant secretary for conservation at the U.S. Department of Energy. Savitz succeeds Sheila E. Widnall, Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has served two consecutive terms as vice president, the maximum tenure allowed by the Academy's bylaws.
Newly elected to three-year terms as councillors are William F. Banholzer, corporate vice president and chief technology officer of The Dow Chemical Company, Midland, Mich.; Thomas F. Budinger, professor in the department of bioengineering and the department of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, and head of the department of nuclear medicine and functional imaging at the E.O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif.; and Robert F. Sproull, vice president and Sun Fellow at Sun Microsystems Inc., Burlington, Mass. Re-elected to serve a second three-year term as councillor is John Brooks Slaughter, president and chief executive officer of the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, White Plains, N.Y.
The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964 under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering promotes the technological welfare of the nation by marshalling the knowledge and insights of eminent members of the engineering profession.
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UCSF Institute for Regeneration Medicine Receives Gift from Dolbys
Ray and Dagmar Dolby have donated US$16 million to the University of California, San Francisco, in support of the construction of a proposed research building. With the donation, the UCSF Institute for Stem Cell and Tissue Biology will be renamed the UCSF Institute for Regeneration Medicine.
The donation is the Dolbys' second major gift to stem cell research. In June 2005, they donated $5 million to the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), which supported the Institute in establishing the infrastructure necessary for administering the $3 billion in general obligation bonds for stem cell research authorized by voters with the passage of Proposition 71 in November 2004. Litigation challenging the constitutionality of the measure has delayed sale of the bonds, and thus tied up funding for infrastructure. A California state court on April 21 upheld the constitutionality of Proposition 71, but the appeals process is expected to continue until next spring.
Dolby said he thinks the new name for the UCSF program, Institute for Regeneration Medicine, will help people grasp the significance of the research and its enormous potential for the future.
UCSF began considering construction of a regeneration medicine building in early 2004. Last summer, the University initiated a conceptual design phase with world-renowned architectural firm Rafael Viñoly Architects. UCSF expects to have a realistic cost estimate following completion of this design phase early this summer.
Funding for the building, which is planned for the UCSF Parnassus Campus, is expected to come in part from philanthropic and foundation sources. UCSF also plans to submit a grant proposal for partial funding from CIRM. Final plans for the building are subject to approval by the Regents of the University of California.
The building will bring under one roof some 15 labs involved in various areas of human and animal embryonic and adult stem cell and related early-cell studies. It will serve as the core of a research program that will continue to extend throughout UCSF.
"The objective of the building," said Arnold Kriegstein, MD, PhD, director of the newly named UCSF Institute for Regeneration Medicine, "is to foster intensive collaboration and a cross-pollination of ideas across a broad spectrum of labs and disciplines, with the goal of answering fundamental questions about the earliest steps of embryo and cell development.
Expanding on the rationale for the donation, Ray Dolby said, "Dagmar and I were inspired by Proposition 71's creation of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which had been spearheaded by Bob Klein. We were struck that this name represented an advance both in freedom from controversy and in clarity.
"A little later, David Kessler told us about the plan for a new UCSF building to advance regeneration research. We all thought this project would be a good opportunity to change the focus on the original stem cell name to something that sounded more approachable and less problematic."
He added, "As soon as possible, I called Bob Klein to get his OK for our entering into CIRM's name territory; he had no problem with this. However, I suggested a slight name modification for the UCSF Institute, to change the term regenerative to regeneration. To my ear the word regenerative sounded too much like heavy machinery. I was glad that Bob immediately agreed. So that is where we are now."
At UCSF, Kriegstein noted, researchers are continuing to expand their work and to explore stem cell science from different angles. A new building is intended to support interaction between these different endeavors.
Scientists working to create insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells to treat diabetes will be located in labs near one another, in so-called clusters. But they also will likely be based near a cluster of scientists working to create neurons to treat such brain diseases as Parkinson's disease, because stem cells undergo nearly identical molecular signaling on the path to becoming both cell types.
Likewise, one scientist's expertise regarding the bone marrow's blood-forming stem cells, which she is exploring as a treatment for blood cancers, makes it likely that she will be based near scientists interested in using the cells for a different purpose -- to fuse with liver cells, with an eye toward regenerating diseased livers and other tissues.
Scientists who focus on broad phenomena of cell development, such as signaling molecules, rather than on particular diseases, will also be strategically based. A scientist who focuses on sonic hedgehog, which plays a key role in the differentiation of neural stem cells, will likely be based near scientists interested in treating brain diseases.
The opportunity to work within this environment, said Kriegstein, will support the recent and future recruitment of premier young stem cell scientists to the faculty.
A new building will play a critical role in enabling UCSF scientists to expand their human embryonic stem cell studies on campus. For the last three years, scientists have been conducting this research off of University property, due to federal funding restrictions that severely restrict the ability to carry out research involving human embryos in federally funded buildings. Most university labs are supported in part by federal funds.
One lab has been carrying out its research 30 miles away from the Parnassus Campus, at Geron Corp., which funds part of its research. Another lab has been conducting the research in rented space in a former commercial office in San Francisco. During this time, the labs have derived a total of 11 new lines of human embryonic stem cells.
In order to bring this research back to the UCSF campus as soon as possible, UCSF is currently renovating space – without federal funds -- within an existing building on the Parnassus Campus. This renovated laboratory, expected to be completed by late this summer, will be the home of the UCSF Human Embryonic Stem Cell Center, co-directed by Renee Reijo Pera, PhD, UCSF associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences, and Susan Fisher, PhD, UCSF professor of cell and tissue biology.
With the planned construction of a building, however, there will be the opportunity to expand the human embryonic stem cell research program beyond the renovated space, allowing for additional scientists to carry out studies, and for scientists based at the Center to work in tandem with those in the new building.
Thus, scientists studying somatic cell nuclear transfer, or therapeutic cloning, in the Human Embryonic Stem Cell Center, will be able to collaborate with numerous scientists in the new building who are interested in cell reprogramming.
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Research Focuses on Alleviating Symptoms of Huntington’s Disease
A £1 million (US$2 million) University of Cambridge study will investigate behavioral symptoms and potential treatments for Huntington's Disease.
The disease is best known for its physical symptoms, the dance-like movements known as chorea. However, the psychiatric and emotional symptoms, along with cognitive decline, are particularly distressing for patients and their families.
Dr Jenny Morton of the Department of Pharmacology has been awarded a £1.1million (US$2.05 million) grant from the High Q Foundation, a non-profit organization with the mission of bringing together academia, industry, governmental agencies, and other funding organizations in the search for Huntington's Disease (HD)treatments.
The £1.1m grant will further previous work done in Dr Morton's laboratory to identify specific abnormalities in the function of the HD brain. It will also continue research into potential drugs to restore the cognitive, social and sleep deficits caused by the disease.
Huntington's Disease is a familial disease, passed from parent to child through a mutation in a gene. Each child of a HD parent has a 50-50 chance of inheriting the HD gene which causes programmed degeneration of brain cells and results in emotional disturbance, loss of intellectual faculties and uncontrolled movements.
Most people with HD develop the symptoms at midlife but in some patients, onset occurs in infancy or old age. The average survival time after onset is fifteen to twenty years. It is estimated that about one in every 10,000 persons has the HD gene. At this time, there is no way to stop or reverse the course of HD.
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Gast Named New President of Lehigh University
Alice P. Gast, MIT vice president for research and associate provost, has been appointed president of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. She will assume leadership there on Aug. 1, 2006.
MIT President Susan Hockfield described Gast as an "exceptionally talented academic leader and a wonderful colleague. Her leadership on issues relating to research policy and organization, faculty governance, and intellectual property, to name a few, is more than impressive, as is her ability to bring people with different interests together around a common agenda. All of these qualities will serve her — and the university — very well as Lehigh's next president."
A chemical engineer specializing in complex fluids and colloids, Gast came to MIT in 2001. She also served as the Robert T. Haslam Professor of Chemical Engineering.
In her administrative role, Gast coordinated policy regarding research and the licensing of copyrights and patents, and oversaw policies and processes regarding academic misconduct. Eighteen of the Institute's large, interdisciplinary research laboratories and centers as well as committees report to her office.
She cited the opening of the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnology (ISN) as an example of MIT's collaborative and innovative spirit. "Senior faculty self-assembled into a new organization. They wrote the proposal, designed a new facility and won the contract. It was a huge success!" she said.
MIT Provost L. Rafael Reif praised Gast for her "extraordinary job" in fostering new interdisciplinary initiatives, including ISN, and for her "wisdom and practical guidance" in areas including research policy, environmental safety and international scholarship in an "era of heightened security concerns."
A native of Texas who spent most of her life in California, Gast, 48, arrived at MIT just after Sept. 11, 2001, when the world and our nation's role in it were drastically altered. Since then, the regulatory environment has changed, especially for research universities, as attempts are made to restrict participation in some research to students of certain nationalities.
Gast leads a research group that studies the physical and chemical processes governing the behavior of macromolecular liquids. The group aims to understand molecular forces and their influence on bulk properties through a combination of colloid science, polymer physics and statistical mechanics.
Gast was selected as the 2006 winner of the American Chemical Society Award in Colloid and Surface Chemistry, a singular distinction, and she has received many other awards for her work. Yet, true to the MIT spirit, she counts graduate student mentoring as the "highlight of being a professor. We've discovered many interesting things in our research, but the main products of my academic career are my graduate students. I take great pride in helping them learn new methods of problem-solving," she said.
Gast was always interested in chemistry, physics and math. The daughter of a biochemist, she credits his influence along with frequent hikes with a California mountain-climbing club composed mainly of engineers with inspiring her to pursue engineering.
She continues to enjoy sports, including cross-country skiing and jogging with her daughter.
Gast joined the Stanford University faculty as a professor of chemical engineering in 1985 after earning her Ph.D. from Princeton University.
A noted teacher at Stanford, she is the co-author of a classic textbook on colloid and surface phenomena. Her scientific achievements have been recognized with an array of honors, including a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award and the Allan P. Colburn Award of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2001.
Gast received the B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Southern California in 1980. She went on to earn an M.A. (1981) and Ph.D. (1984) from Princeton. Gast is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the American Physical Society.
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Nottingham Stroke Trial Goes Worldwide
Researchers in Nottingham have secured substantial funding for the largest trial in the world to explore the effectiveness of lowering patients' blood pressure after stroke.
The ground-breaking University of Nottingham study will recruit a total of 5,000 patients in 30 countries and could help to reduce death and dependency from strokes.
Results from the study could end a 30-year debate about whether lowering patients' blood pressure immediately following an acute stroke is the best course of action for doctors to take.
The multi-million pound trial — called ENOS, which stands for Efficacy of Nitric Oxide in Stroke — already has over 450 patients enrolled from 20 centers but needed further funding for a massive roll-out across the globe. The crucial latest funding has now been secured from the Medical Research Council.
Patients eligible to take part are given a treatment in the form of a glyceryl trinitrate skin patch. The skin patch is cheap and easy to administer and could be used for almost all stroke patients, if results from the five-year trial are positive.
The skin patch contains glyceryl trinitrate (GTN) which releases nitric oxide (NO). GTN is used widely in the management of angina. Nitric oxide lowers blood pressure but also can improve cerebral blood flow — so there are two mechanisms by which it might be effective, researchers believe.
ENOS is also unique in that it is currently the world's first ever internet-based acute stroke study. Data from patients are entered online by administrators at the various test center across the globe, to be analyzed as part of the study.
In half the patients, the study will also focus on whether their current blood pressure treatment should stop or continue.
More than 140,000 people suffer from a stroke in the UK every year — which equates to one every five minutes. They are more common among those over the age of 55, but can happen at any age.
Strokes are the leading cause of disability in the UK, and the third most common cause of death, after cancer and heart disease.
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Susan Fuhrman, Authority on School Reform, Is New Teachers College President
Susan H. Fuhrman, a leading authority on school reform and an early analyst of the state-level school standards movement, has been named the 10th president of Columbia University's Teachers College .
A former public school social studies teacher, Fuhrman has served for the past 11 years as dean of the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education (Penn GSE), where she also is the George and Diane Weiss Professor of Education. An expert on teacher excellence, accountability for school performance and the changing balance of power between federal, state and local governments in setting school policy, Fuhrman earned her doctorate in political economy at Teachers College in the 1970s, mentored by future U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala. She is also a former TC faculty member.
Fuhrman will take office Aug. 1, succeeding Arthur E. Levine, president of TC for the past 12 years, whom she praised for "unparalleled work in strengthening the College on every front and bringing glory to TC." She will become the first woman to serve as president of Teachers College.
Shalala, now president of the University of Miami, echoed that assessment. "Susan Fuhrman is one of the most distinguished scholars in education today and a brilliant choice as the next leader of TC," she said.
Fuhrman is widely credited with uniting a fragmented faculty at Penn and elevating the school to enhanced national stature by focusing on themes of urban and international education and broadening involvement with schools in underserved communities in West Philadelphia. Under her leadership, the graduate school created the Sadie Tanner Mosell Alexander School, a pre-K-8 public school of some 500 students. Named for the first African-American woman to receive a law degree at the University of Pennsylvania, the school sends most of its graduates on to selective high schools. Following the state takeover of the Philadelphia school system, Penn GSE also set up partnerships with three low-performing schools in its West Philadelphia neighborhood, where it has been able to drive significant gains in student achievement.
Fuhrman has also presided over a significant increase in externally funded research; Penn GSE now boasts the highest per-capita level of research funding of all the University of Pennsylvania schools. She also significantly expanded its faculty, more than half of whom were hired during her tenure. In a statement that called her departure "a great loss for Penn," University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann and Provost Ron Daniels praised Fuhrman for "a vigorous pragmatism" and a "remarkable ethos of engagement" that has "translated theory into practice in ways rarely seen in education schools."
Beyond her past ties with TC, Fuhrman says she is drawn to the institution's mission of educational equity "because it has the potential to address the most pressing problems related to the gaps in education achievement, resources and teacher quality — and to unite the faculty of the College." Fuhrman says that she will actively encourage a working relationship with the New York City school system.
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UC Geophysicist to Lead National Quake Prediction Panel
University of California, Riverside's Distinguished Professor of Geophysics, James Dieterich, has been named chairman of the U.S. Geological Survey's re-established National Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council (NEPEC).
The 12-member council, which held its initial meeting today and Friday in Menlo Park, Calif., will advise the director of the USGS on earthquake prediction, forecasting and hazard assessment.
The USGS reports that earthquakes are one of the most costly natural hazards facing the nation, posing a significant risk to 75 million Americans in 39 states. The USGS has the lead federal responsibility to provide notification of earthquakes in order to enhance public safety and to reduce losses through effective forecasts based on the best possible scientific information.
Dieterich arrived at UCR in January 2005 from the USGS. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2003 for his contributions to earthquake physics. He originated the "rate and state" friction law, which is a major advance in understanding the critical role of friction to the development of earthquake prediction strategies. He investigates the properties of earthquake faults and does theoretical modeling of earthquakes in geometrically complex fault systems. His interest extends to evaluation of earthquake probabilities. Dieterich also conducts volcano research (mostly at Kilauea volcano in Hawaii) focusing on the interactions between earthquake faulting and magmatic activity within the volcano.
NEPEC was re-chartered on advice from the congressionally authorized Scientific Earthquake Studies Advisory Committee, which provides oversight and guidance to the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program. The committee's 2005 report called for a re-chartered NEPEC to serve as the forum to review predictions and resolve scientific debate prior to public debate, so decision makers are not misled by unfounded short-term earthquake predictions, the USGS reported. NEPEC was first established in 1976, formally authorized by Congress in the 1980 reauthorization of the National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program, and remained active through the early 1990s, according to the USGS.
Besides Dietrich, NEPEC members include: David Applegate, USGS, vice chair; Goran Ekström, Harvard University; William Ellsworth, USGS; David Jackson, University of California, Los Angeles; Barbara Romanowicz, University of California, Berkeley; Bruce Shaw, Columbia University; Wayne Thatcher, USGS; Jeroen Tromp, California Institute of Technology; Ray Weldon, University of Oregon; Robert Wesson, USGS; and, Mary Lou Zoback, USGS. Michael Blanpied, USGS, will serve as executive secretary.
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NASA Awards Stanford Solar Physicist it Highest Honor
NASA awarded a Stanford solar physicist its highest honor for nongovernmental employees. J. Todd Hoeksema, a senior scientist at the Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory, won a distinguished public service medal for his leadership in "sun-solar system connection science" and in particular for his leadership of NASA's committee to create a 30-year "roadmap" for heliophysics research.
The 30-year plan laid out research questions that will help scientists learn more about the fundamental physics of the sun, the effects of solar events on Earth and ways to protect astronauts and spacecraft from the harms of solar wind.
To accomplish these goals, Hoeksema says it's important to measure many different parameters at the same time.
Although the Bush administration has charged NASA with sending astronauts to Mars by 2030, Hoeksema said NASA has received no additional funding to meet this goal. "All of a sudden we have less money and more to do, just like everyone else," he said. The heliophysics research budget, which was projected to grow significantly over the next five years, will now be held at $700 million annually, which "sounds like a lot until you break it up into missions that cost almost $1 billion each [over the life of the projects]," Hoeksema explained.
It is easy to think of the sun as benign and unchanging, but in reality the sun is a dynamic ball of boiling gases that scientists are only beginning to understand. "The sun does things that affect the Earth," Hoeksema said. "It affects radio communication pretty severely. It affects the way satellites are operated. People even reroute airliners because of solar activity."
Global positioning system (GPS) navigation, used in ships, planes and cars, is vulnerable to changes in space weather. Explosions on the sun, known as solar flares, blast high-energy gamma rays and X-rays toward Earth. Within minutes, these rays ionize gases in our upper atmosphere, which can disrupt signals from GPS satellites and make performance of navigation systems uncertain.
"If you're landing an airplane and suddenly you're not as sure about your position as you were a few minutes ago, you could have problems," Hoeksema said. Improved prediction of these radio blackouts is one of NASA's new research priorities.
To predict space weather, physicists need to understand the source of the solar flares—the sun's magnetic field. Unlike the Earth, which has a stable north-south field, the sun's magnetic field is complex and constantly changing. Small magnetic disruptions pop up on the surface of the sun every day and the north-south polarity of the entire field swaps approximately every 11 years. Scientists aren't sure exactly what causes the sun's magnetic field or its erratic behavior, but the 30-year roadmap provides for new instruments that will help scientists look deeply into the sun for clues.
Large magnetic field disturbances on the surface of the sun form active regions known as sunspots. Sunspots are the source of solar flares and another type of solar eruption called a coronal mass ejection. Although the development of sunspots is still largely a mystery, scientists do know that the sun's activity varies in roughly 11-year cycles and is most intense during the "solar maximum." The next maximum is expected in 2012 and Stanford's solar group plans to observe every minute of it.
"I'm interested in understanding how the active regions interact with small-scale features to make that 11-year solar cycle happen," Hoeksema said. A technique called helioseismology is key to his work and that of the about 20 other scientists in the Stanford Solar Observatory Group. Helioseismic instruments "listen" to the sound waves created by the boiling surface of the sun.
"The sun resonates like a bell," Hoeksema said. "From the characteristics of those resonances you can tell how fast it's rotating, the temperature and the density. You can sense the magnetic fields a little bit too. We're trying to put all those pieces of information together to build up a better picture of what's inside the sun."
Although helioseismology has been developing since the late 1970s, past instruments have been forced to choose either a low-resolution map of the entire sun or a high-resolution map of a fraction of the sun. The Stanford solar group is working on an instrument known as the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager, or HMI, that should solve this problem by taking high-resolution images of the entire sun every 50 seconds. The HMI instrument will be launched on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite in 2008.
"HMI is going to do the helioseismology just perfectly—it's everything we've dreamed of," Hoeksema said. "Finally we'll be able to characterize the inside of the sun as well as we know how."
