University News
NSF Announces Six New Partnerships for Research and Education In Materials
In an ongoing effort to enhance diversity in the materials research field, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced awards for six new Partnerships for Research and Education in Materials (PREMs).
The partnerships are designed to link minority-serving institutions with centers, groups or facilities already being funded by NSF's Division of Materials Research. Each one represents a formal, long-term collaboration that brings together researchers with diverse expertise to address complex, interdisciplinary challenges in materials research and education.
The six new PREMs, listed below, will have a total funding of $15.4 million over 5 years, and will complement four existing PREMs established in 2004. They will focus their research on areas such as nanobiotechnology, electronics, spintronics, polymers and medicine. They will target their education programs at work-force development, pre-college training, and advancing the public understanding of science and engineering.
California State University, Northridge (partnered with the Princeton University MRSEC):
$2.05 million
Director: Nicholas Kioussis
This PREM is a partnership between the multidisciplinary W. M. Keck Computational Materials Theory Center at California State University Northridge, a Hispanic-serving institution, and the Princeton Center for Complex Materials, the NSF-funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at Princeton University. The research emphasis will be on the development of physical models, numerical algorithms and robust simulation techniques for the study of: (1) mechanical properties of metallic systems; (2) charge and spin transport in 2-dimensional interacting electron systems; and (3) spin transport in magnetic tunnel junctions.
The PREMs educational and research efforts will focus on: (1) fostering multidisciplinary and innovative research in computational materials science; (2) educating and training students in cutting-edge computational materials science; (3) stimulating and developing strong industry-university-national laboratory partnerships; and (4) increasing recruitment, retention, and degree attainment by members of groups underrepresented in materials research.
Jackson State University (partnered with the University of California, Santa Barbara MRSEC):
$2.75 million
Director: Paresh Ray
This partnership will focus on the development and application of new materials--specifically, 1) organic semiconductors based on small molecules or conjugated polymers which have potential applications ranging from electronic circuitry to flexible displays, and from solar cells to biological and chemical sensors; and 2) optical nanosystems that use laser-induced fluorescence techniques to detect DNA damage, RNA interaction and modification of nucleic acids. The proposed research is of fundamental scientific interest as well as a crucial component in the development of state-of-the-art devices and sensors.
This PREM will also focus on the education, training and mentoring of minority students and postdoctoral fellows through formal courses, workshops and laboratory rotations. In particular, it will develop hands-on undergraduate and graduate courses to prepare minority students careers as scientists; establish an undergraduate Materials Science Interns program, and create a 2-year, materials-focused master's program at JSU with bridges to the UCSB doctoral programs in materials.
Norfolk State University (partnered with the Cornell University MRSEC):
$2.8 million
Director: Mikhail Noginov
This PREM, the Partnership for Photonic Metamaterials, will include investigators from the Center for Materials Research at Norfolk State University; the Center for Materials Research at Cornell University; and both the Birck Nanotechnology Center and the Network for Computational Nanotechnology at Purdue University. Its central research theme will be the mutual enhancement of (1) optical gain and other optical responses in dielectric media and (2) surface plasmons in metallic particles and aggregates.
The PREM's education program will seek to establish a complete academic pipeline for underrepresented minority groups, starting with efforts to attract high-school students into the science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines. Then, through specially developed educational materials, class work, research training, mentoring and exchange programs within the partnership, the pipeline will carry the students through to become Ph.D. candidates for careers in materials science in academia, industry, and government.
Howard University (partnered with the Johns Hopkins University MRSEC):
$2.75 million
Director: Joshua Halpern
This PREM joins Howard University, the Johns Hopkins University MRSEC, and Prince Georges Community College. The partnership's research will focus on nanowire growth and phenomenology in three areas: (1) transport properties in bismuth nanowires; (2) transport properties in indium nitride nanowires; and (3) fabrication of dipolar nitride nanowires for nonlinear optical elements.
The partnership will produce new courses and laboratory modules, as well as materials-centered, guided-inquiry software suited to college and high-school general chemistry and general physics classes. Broad dissemination of the software will inform students about the impact materials have on their lives and attract them to materials related careers.
Tuskegee University (partnered with the Cornell University MRSEC):
$2.55 million
Director: Shaik Jeelani
In this PREM, the Center for Advanced Materials at Tuskegee University and the Cornell Center for Materials Research, will jointly investigate the chemical interactions between nanoparticles and polymers, as well as the relationship between these nanoscale interactions and the mechanical properties of nanocomposite materials. They will also use this understanding to develop a new generation of nanocomposite structural materials that are amenable to conventional processing methods--one example being high-performance textiles with improved strength and durability.
The partners will share educational materials, courses and best practices through a combination of distance learning, teleconferencing and cross-campus visits. Through a number of outreach programs, the partners will introduce high-school and community-college students to materials research and engineering, and will inform them of career opportunities in the field.
University of New Mexico (partnered with the Harvard University MRSEC):
$2.5 million
Director: Gabriel Lopez
This PREM links the University of New Mexico (UNM), the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI) and the Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) with the Harvard University MRSEC. This project will focus on a promising, multidisciplinary area of materials technology: biomaterials, which are synthetic and natural, solid and sometimes liquid materials, used in medical devices or in contact with biological systems. The subprojects will be focused on developing new materials technologies for three areas of medicine that are especially problematic in minority populations: infectious diseases (inexpensive detection and diagnosis); cardiovascular diseases (tissue engineering approaches to small diameter vascular grafts and heart valves); and cancer (cost effective, individualized, genomic sequencing for diagnosis and prognosis).
This project will have an immediate impact on the education of minority students by partnering APS, an urban school district with a large minority population, SIPI, a tribal college with an emphasis in science, technology, engineering and math education, UNM, a Hispanic serving research university, and Harvard University.
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N.Y. Gov. Pataki Announces $50 Million State Grant to Upgrade Cornell Animal Disease Testing Center
Standing before a bank of television cameras with people lining the hallways and balcony at Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine's Veterinary Education Center, New York Gov. George Pataki announced Aug. 14 a grant of $50 million in funding for a state-of-the-art renovation and consolidation of the New York State Animal Health Diagnostic Center (AHDC) at the college.
The AHDC is a land-grant facility that conducts more than a million diagnostic tests annually on animals with diseases or other conditions. AHDC services all counties in New York as well as many other states and Canada.
The AHDC, which is run by Cornell and the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets (NYSDAM), is the state's sole provider of comprehensive diagnostic testing for infectious diseases and other conditions in food- and fiber-producing, companion, performance, zoo, exotic and wildlife animals. Cornell mainly handles testing, diagnoses and research, while the NYSDAM largely collects samples from around the state, including live bird markets.
For 100 years, the role of testing and diagnosing has fallen to Cornell, but the facilities are not good enough for the 21st century, Pataki said.
The governor commented that today people routinely travel across continents, increasing the possibilities for new infections and diseases. Also, a majority of infectious diseases - including bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow disease) and the recent H5N1 strain of avian flu - are threats to both animals and humans.
With these concerns, it is no surprise that Cornell and state officials have planned an $80 million renovation of the existing center. Cornell will add $24 million and will seek the remaining $6 million from private and government sources.
This state-of-the-art Animal Health Diagnostic Center will play a critical role in our efforts to detect and prevent the spread of dangerous pathogens. ... The new facility also will continue to support the economic well-being of New York's animal industry, he said.
The current center includes overcrowded labs and office spaces in a dozen buildings scattered across campus and Ithaca.
The announced $50 million in capital funding will be used to build a new 100,000-plus-square-foot center, pending review. Also pending municipal approvals, construction is scheduled to begin in early 2008.
The redesign also will include an upgrade of the lab's outdated biocontainment facilities to Bio-Safety Level 3, making it an invaluable resource in the Northeast. The upgrade to Level 3 will enable the center to work even more closely on such highly contagious agents as West Nile virus, anthrax and E. coli. The new laboratories will provide research and testing services to protect New York's animal agriculture against such foreign animal diseases as avian flu, foot-and-mouth disease, Exotic Newcastle disease and swine flu. Ongoing testing and research for BSE and chronic wasting disease will continue, while the upgrades will allow the center to handle new diseases.
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UT System Regents Grant $30.5 Million for New UTMB Medical Specialty Center
The University of Texas System Board of Regents has approved $30.5 million from the Permanent University Fund (PUF) for the University of Texas Medical Branch to construct a new medical specialty center in north Galveston County between Dickinson and League City.
This funding is part of the unprecedented outlay of $2.56 billion by the Board of Regents to boost the UT System’s competitiveness in key scientific areas. This investment is the largest single financial commitment in UT System’s nearly 125-year history.
The UTMB Specialty Care Center at Victory Lakes will expand the clinical, surgical and diagnostic services that UTMB offers on the mainland, providing affordable, high-quality care to the growing population in that area. It will also strengthen educational opportunities for the university’s medical, nursing and allied health students, as well as for clinical research. The 35-acre site is near the intersection of northbound Interstate 45 and FM 646. The facility is expected to open in December 2007.
The Victory Lakes facility will complement existing primary care services in the area and provide a range of medical specialty services local physicians can access for their patients. It will also provide a base for the UTMB faculty group practice to enhance and strengthen its clinical service, research and education programs, and help sustain long-term growth for the academic medical center.
The Board of Regents’ decision to include $57 million in tuition revenue bonds as part of their capital budget request to the Texas Legislature reflects the board’s continued support of UTMB’s Galveston National Laboratory. The $167 million facility—which, when completed in the summer of 2008, will be the only national laboratory in Texas—will enable scientists to study highly contagious and potentially deadly viruses and bacteria and, it is hoped, speed up development of treatments and cures.
The board also allocated an additional $20 million of PUF funds, now totaling $75 million, for the UT System’s STARS program, which supports the recruitment of senior faculty who have national prominence, or “star” status. UTMB’s recent recruitment of one of the nation’s foremost infectious-disease investigators, Dr. Miriam Alter, was supported by a $1.25 million STAR award from the UT System. Alter will lead the development of a new program on infectious-disease epidemiology.
The PUF is a public endowment contributing to the support of institutions of The University of Texas System. It was established in the Texas Constitution of 1876.
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UT Regents OK $27 Million for Specialized Math, Science, Engineering Education Building at UTD
The University of Texas System Board of Regents has allocated $27 million for the construction of a new facility on The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) campus that will focus on research-based education in mathematics, science and engineering.
The regents approved the expenditure at a meeting held August 9-10 in Arlington. The funding is part of a spending package totaling $2.56 billion during the current and next fiscal years, the goal of which is to “boost competitiveness in key scientific areas,” according to UT System.
In addition to providing a significant enhancement of the educational experiences of UTD science and math students, the facility will also serve as a “demonstration center in which K-12 educators, working with UTD faculty from the university’s Department of Science and Mathematics Education, can study how to teach math and science more effectively,” Wildenthal said.
According to Wildenthal, the building will comprise an estimated 90,000 square feet of classroom, laboratory and office space and hopefully could be completed in time for the opening of Fall 2009 classes. Its location on campus has not been determined.
The building will continue an ambitious construction program underway at the university. Early next year, UTD is scheduled to open a new, 200,000-square-foot Natural Science and Engineering Research Laboratory on its campus, and a totally renovated, 63,000-square-foot headquarters for the Center for BrainHealth, located on Mockingbird Lane in Dallas.
In the past several years, UTD has completed a building for the School of Management, an expansion of the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science and a satellite facility for the Callier Center for Communication Disorders. In addition, the university purchased and renovated a building on Waterview Parkway just west of campus to house science faculty and university support staff.
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UCSD Cognitive Scientist Wins $100k Rumelhart Prize
Psycholinguistics and artificial neural networks pioneer Jeff Elman – distinguished professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego and acting dean of the Division of Social Sciences – has been named the seventh recipient of the David E. Rumelhart Prize.
Presented annually since 2001, the Rumelhart Prize honors “outstanding contributions to the theoretical foundations of cognitive science,” a relatively new field which brings together numerous disciplines for the study of the mind. The prize includes a monetary award of $100,000.
Elman’s research focuses on human development, language processing and computational models of cognition. The citation for the 2007 Rumelhart Prize notes Elman’s work in advancing an approach called “connectionism,” which analyzes complex behaviors and mental phenomena as processes that emerge from interconnected networks of simple units (as opposed to the view that argues for discrete brain modules with distinct or unique functions).
In particular, the prize committee cites Elman’s creation (with McClelland) of the TRACE model of speech perception and spoken word recognition, which has been used to run simulations that can then be compared with results from experiments with human subjects; his co-authorship of the book “Rethinking Innateness”, which introduced a new theoretical framework for understanding the nature/nurture debate; and, most especially, his highly influential paper “Finding Structure in Time.”
“Finding Structure in Time,” published in the journal Cognitive Science in 1990, introduced the architecture of a breakthrough artificial neural network that Elman named the Simple Recurrent Network – which has since become known as the “Elman Network” or the “Elman Net.” The paper was the most highly cited paper in the field of psycholinguistics from 1990 to 1994, and the “Elman network” is today widely used in cognitive science labs around the world to understand behaviors that unfold over time.
Elman is a founding member of the UC San Diego department of cognitive science, the first of its kind in the nation, and is founding co-director of the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind at UCSD. He joined the university in 1977, after earning his PhD in linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin and his bachelor’s at Harvard.
Elman, who is also an inaugural fellow of the Cognitive Science Society, will deliver the 2007 Rumelhart Prize Lecture at the society’s annual meeting next August.
David Rumelhart, a MacArthur Fellow and member of the National Academy of Sciences, is most famous for the development of computer models that mimic memory and learning. He served on the UCSD psychology faculty from 1967 to 1987, when he moved to Stanford University, serving as professor there until 1998.
The Rumelhart Prize is funded by the Robert J. Glushko and Pamela Samuelson Foundation of San Francisco. Robert Glushko is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who completed a Ph. D. in cognitive psychology at UCSD under Rumelhart’s supervision.
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Appointment of Registrar to Succeed Keith Jones at Nottingham
Keith Jones, whose decision to retire was announced to Council at the beginning of 2006, will be succeeded as Registrar of The University of Nottingham by Dr Paul Greatrix from January 2007.
Paul Greatrix, who is 41, graduated in English Language from The University of Edinburgh and joins The University of Nottingham from The University of Warwick, where he has worked since 1999. He previously worked at Staffordshire Polytechnic and The University of East Anglia, where he obtained his PhD from the School of Education and Lifelong Learning in the Faculty of Social Sciences. Dr Greatrix has been Deputy Registrar at Warwick since April 2006.
His career within another leading Russell Group institution has been wide ranging. It has included work in strategic planning, commercial activity, academic and student affairs, student services, and coordination of the Research Assessment Exercise. As a senior leader in his organisation, he was awarded a Leadership Foundation Fellowship to develop the relationship between the University and its Student Union.
Keith Jones has served The University of Nottingham as its Registrar since 1998 and continues to fulfil the role with expertise and great distinction. He will retire from his post at the end of December 2006.
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MIT's Senior Counsel Named Vice President of University of Florida
Jamie Lewis Keith, MIT's senior counsel and managing director for environmental programs and risk management since June 1999, has been named vice president and general counsel of the University of Florida starting in October.
Ms. Keith, who has a background in both private practice, as a junior partner at Hale and Dorr (now Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr), and in government as general counsel of a major state agency in Massachusetts Gov. William Weld's adminstration, came to MIT to establish the Senior Counsel's Office, which was MIT's first primary inside counsel's office. The office serves the senior officers and provides a broad range of Institute-wide legal services.
Ms. Keith's accomplishments have included the creation of MIT's first unified Environment, Health and Safety Office and the filing of the Institute's amicus brief in the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court cases regarding affirmative action in admissions. She has also been closely involved in the establishment of major international and inter-institutional research and education collaborations.
At the University of Florida, Ms. Keith will be responsible for all legal matters for the university, its board of trustees and its affiliated organizations. She will oversee a General Counsel's Office of 12 attorneys.
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Baluch Named Princeton’s SHARE Director
Suraiya Baluch, a psychologist who most recently served as associate director of counseling services at Barnard College, has been appointed director of Princeton's Sexual Harassment/Assault Advising, Resources and Education (SHARE) office.
The SHARE office, which is part of University Health Services, serves students, faculty and staff who have experienced verbal and physical sexual harassment, relationship violence, sexual assault or harassment based on sexual orientation. Its services include individual and group therapy, confidential consultation on disciplinary and legal options, educational programming and referrals to on- and off-campus support services.
Baluch's appointment was effective July 11.
At Barnard, the women's college affiliated with Columbia University, Baluch joined the counseling center in September 1999 as a staff psychologist and was named associate director in February 2004. She also served as a clinical supervisor for Columbia and Barnard's Rape Crisis/Anti-Violence Support Center and as an adviser to Columbia's Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Program.
Before joining the Barnard staff, Baluch was a staff psychologist and coordinator of disability services at Pace University's counseling center. She also was an instructor in Brooklyn College's graduate program in guidance and counseling.
Baluch holds bachelor's degrees in psychology and religion from Rutgers University, a master's degree in psychological counseling from Columbia and a Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Fordham University.
