University News

Royal Society Names 2007 Fellows and Foreign Members

On May 17, The Royal Society, the United Kingdom's national academy of science, elected forty-four new Fellows andeight Foreign Members from the fields of science, engineering and technology.

Fellows are elected for their contributions to science, both in fundamental research resulting in greater understanding, and also in leading and directing scientific and technological progress in industry and research establishments. A maximum of forty-four new Fellows, who must be citizens or residents of Commonwealth countries or Ireland, may be elected annually.

Fellows

• Professor William Bradshaw Amos: Senior Research Scientist, Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge
• Professor Peter John Barnes: Professor of Thoracic Medicine, National Heart and Lung Institute and Head of Respiratory Medicine, Imperial College London
• Professor Gillian Patricia Bates: Professor of Neurogenetics, Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics, King's College London
• Professor Samuel Frank Berkovic AM: Director, Epilepsy Research Centre, University of Melbourne
• Professor Michael James Bickle: Personal Chair, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge
• Professor Jeremy Bloxham: Mallinckrodt Professor of Geophysics, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University
• Professor David Vernon Boger: Laureate Professor, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Melbourne
• Professor Peter George Bruce: Professor in Chemistry, School of Chemistry, University of St Andrews
• Professor Michael Elmhirst Cates: Professor of Natural Philosophy, School of Physics, University of Edinburgh
• Professor (Frederick) Geoffrey Nethersole Cloke: Professor of Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex
• Professor Richard John Cogdell: Professor and Hooker Chair of Botany, Division of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Institute of Biomedical and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow
• Professor Stewart Thomas Cole: Director, Global Health Institute, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
• Dr George Coupland: Research Scientist/Director Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Cologne
• Professor George Francis Rayner Ellis: Emeritus Professor of Applied Mathematics and Honorary Research Associate, Department of Mathematics, University of Cape Town
• Professor Barry John Everitt: Professor of Behavioural Neuroscience, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge
• Professor Andre Konstantin Geim: Professor of Physics, Department of Physics and Astronomy, and Director of Manchester Centre for Mesoscience and Nanotechnology, University of Manchester
• Professor Siamon Gordon: GlaxoWellcome Professor of Cellular Pathology Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford
• Dr (Barbara) Rosemary Grant: Senior Research Scholar and Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University
• Professor (David) Grahame Hardie: Professor of Cellular Signalling Division of Molecular Physiology, College of Life Sciences, University of Dundee
• Professor William Anthony Harris: Head of the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience
• Professor Nicholas Higham: Richardson Professor of Applied Mathematics, School of Mathematics, University of Manchester
• Professor Anthony Arie Hyman: Institute Director, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden
• Professor Anthony James Kinloch: Professor of Adhesion, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London
• Dr Richard Leakey: Anthropologist and Conservationist
• Professor Malcolm Harris Levitt: Professor of Physical Chemistry, School of Chemistry, University of Southampton
• Professor Ottoline Leyser: Professor of Plant Developmental Genetics, Department of Biology, University of York
• Professor Paul Fredrick Linden: Blasker Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, San Diego
• Professor Peter Brent Littlewood: Professor of Physics, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge
• Sir Ravinder Nath Maini: Emeritus Professor of Rheumatology, The Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology Division, Imperial College London
• Professor Robert James Mair: Professor of Geotechnical Engineering and Head of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Master, Jesus College, University of Cambridge
• Professor Michael Henry Malim: Professor and Head, Department of Infectious Diseases, King's College London School of Medicine
• Professor Andrew Paul McMahon: Frank B. Baird Jr., Professor of Science, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University
• Professor (Edward) Richard Moxon: Action Research Professor and Head of Department of Paediatrics, John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford
• Professor John Andrew Peacock: Professor of Cosmology, Institutefor Astronomy, Universityof Edinburgh
• Professor Edwin Arend Perkins: Canada Research Chair, Department of Mathematics, University of British Columbia
• Professor Stephen Bailey Pope: Sibley College Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University
• Professor Daniela Rhodes: Research Scientist/Group Leader, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge
• Professor Morgan Hwa-Tze Sheng: Menicon Professor of Neuroscience, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Professor David Colin Sherrington: Professor of Polymer Chemistry, WestCHEM Graduate School of Chemistry, Department of Pure and Applied Chemistry, University of Strathclyde
• Professor Terence Chi-Shen Tao: Professor of Mathematics, Department of Mathematics, University of California, Los Angeles
• Professor Veronica van Heyningen: Head of Medical and Developmental Genetics Section, MRC Human Genetics Unit, Edinburgh
• Professor David Lee Wark: Professor of Physics, Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London and Science and Technology Facilities Council, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
• Professor Trevor Dion Wooley: Professor of Pure Mathematics, School of Mathematics, University of Bristol
• Professor Andrew Peter Zisserman: Microsoft/RAE Professor of Computer Vision, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford

Foreign Members

• Professor Wallace Smith Broecker: Newberry Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University
• Professor James Watson Cronin: University Professor Emeritus, Departments of Physics and Astronomy and Astrophysics, Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago
• Professor Stanley Falkow: Robert W. and Vivian K. Cahill Professor of Microbiology and Immunology and of Medicine, Department of Microbiology and Immunology and Medicine, Stanford University
• Professor Tom Fenchel: Professor of Marine Biology, Marine Biology Laboratory, University of Copenhagen
• Professor Jeremiah Ostriker: Professor of Astrophysical Sciences and Director, Princeton Institute for Computational Science and Engineering, Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University
• Professor Michael Oser Rabin: Thomas J. Watson Sr. Professor of Computer Science, School of Engineering and Applied Science, Harvard University
• Professor Gerald Mayer Rubin: Vice President and Director, Janelia Farm Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
• Professor Peter Guy Wolynes: Francis H Crick Chair in the Physical Sciences, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, San Diego

Honorary Fellow

• Baroness Onora O'Neill: President, The British Academy

The Royal Society was founded in 1660 to promote the natural and applied sciences.

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President Bush Announces the Recipients of the 2005 National Medal of Science

On May 29, President George W. Bush announced the recipients of the United States highest honor for science, naming the recipients of the 2005 National Medial of Science:

1. Jan D. Achenbach, Northwestern University
2. Ralph A. Alpher, The Dudley University
3. Gordon H. Bower, Stanford University
4. Bradley Efron, Stanford University
5. Anthony S. Fauci, National Institute of Health
6. Tobin J. Marks, Northwestern University
7. Lonnie G. Thompson, Ohio State University
8. Torsten N. Wiesel, The Rockefeller University

The National Medial of Science honors individuals for pioneering scientific research in a range of fields, including physical, biological, mathematical, social, behavioral and engineering sciences. The National Science Foundation administers the award, which was established by the Congress in 1959.

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T. Boone Pickens Foundation Makes its Largest Gifts

The T. Boone Pickens Foundation, the charitable organization formed late last year by oil and gas industry leader and philanthropist T. Boone Pickens, announced its largest gifts yet — $50 million each for two University of Texas health care institutions: UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Under unique agreements, the gifts will create special funds at the institutions, requiring that they grow to $1 billion ($500 million each) within 25 years from earnings on the original principal and/or from new outside donations solicited by the institutions. When the $500 million marks are reached, the institutions will be able to distribute the funds as they deem fit.

Pickens has supported hundreds of organizations and agencies nationwide and has inspired new, unconventional methods of giving, challenging organizations to leverage his dollars into significant capacity-building opportunities. His philanthropy has garnered great interest by many. His giving principles assure that organizations will have "ready money" when the next new discovery or advancement is needed.

The $50 million the foundation has earmarked for UT Southwestern, one of the country's leading academic medical centers, patient-care providers and research institutions, matches the largest single-sponsor gift in the institution's history. The gift is being made to Southwestern Medical Foundation, which will be responsible for managing the funds and distributing them to UT Southwestern after the $500 million goal is reached. In recognition of the landmark gift, a recently completed 800,000-square-foot medical research and education facility on the UT Southwestern campus will be named the T. Boone Pickens Biomedical Building.

The $50 million awarded to UT M. D. Anderson Cancer Center is the largest single philanthropic gift ever given to the cancer center. UT M. D. Anderson will name its new 21-story, 730,000-square-foot signature academic building the T. Boone Pickens Academic Tower. The tower, scheduled to open in spring 2008, will be the tallest structure at UT M. D. Anderson and include executive and faculty offices, classrooms and conference facilities. The top floor will feature a state-of-the-art cancer research library for UT M. D. Anderson, which is being designed to facilitate both independent study and group interactions.

Pickens has personally donated generously to both UT health institutions in the past. He also served on the UT M. D. Anderson's Board of Visitors from 1977 to 1986, including a term as chairman from 1983-1984.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy has recognized Pickens among the nation's most generous philanthropists for two years in a row.

[ FYI Index ]

Meinig Family Donate $25 Million to Cornell

Cornell President David Skorton has announced a $25 million gift from the family of Nancy ('62) and Peter Meinig ('61) to recognize and support outstanding, innovative faculty life sciences research at Cornell.

Peter Meinig is chairman of the Cornell Board of Trustees. His wife, Nancy, is a member of the Cornell University Council.

The announcement -- complete with champagne toast -- was made by Skorton at the trustees dinner in Duffield Hall's Baum Atrium May 25.

The Nancy and Peter Meinig Family Investigatorships in the Life Sciences will be highly competitive, taking into account the background, achievements, promise and proposed research agenda of faculty applicants. While the funding initially will be available to researchers at the Ithaca campus, it will be extended to researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College as matching funds become available.

Meinig Investigators will receive 50 percent salary support, direct research support (amounts to be individually determined) and graduate student/postdoctoral support. Each investigator will have access to approximately $300,000 per year for five years.

The Meinig Investigatorships will add an important new piece to the overall life sciences initiative, said Skorton.

Cornell's $650 million New Life Sciences Initiative aims to keep the university competitive in light of vast changes in genomics and interdisciplinary research. Some key pieces of the initiative include the Life Sciences Technology Building now under construction on Cornell's main campus; the creation of the Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology; and the hiring of the new institute's director, renowned biologist Scott Emr, who this month was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Faculty members will compete for the awards annually through a senior scientific advisory committee. To fund five or more investigators a year for five years, an initial investment of $50 million in endowment funds will be required.

The Meinigs are Foremost Benefactors of Cornell with a long history as university donors. They established the Meinig Family Professorship of Engineering and the Nancy Schlegel Meinig Professorship of Maternal and Child Nutrition. In 1998 the Meinigs provided program support for the Cornell National Scholars Program, which was renamed the Meinig Family National Scholars Program.

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UW Establishes Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center

In an effort to strengthen and sustain its leadership in the companion fields of stem cell research and regenerative medicine, the University of Wisconsin-Madison will establish a new Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center.

The announcement of the new center, to be made May 17 at a public lecture by famed developmental biologist Ian Wilmut, the creator of the cloned sheep Dolly, sets the stage for a critical central entity under which the UW-Madison campus can enhance and strengthen its programs of stem cell research, training and education.

The new center will encompass existing programs in regenerative medicine and an interdisciplinary stem cell post-doctoral training program, and will serve as a focal point for basic, pre-clinical and clinical research in stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, an emerging multidisciplinary field that seeks to develop technologies to repair or replace diseased or defective tissues or organs.

As many as 50 UW-Madison faculty are engaged to varying degrees in stem cell research and regenerative medicine. In addition to the much-publicized work with human cells on the UW-Madison campus, scientists whose work could be supported by the new center include basic scientists who study stem cells and development in other animals ranging from non-human primates to nematodes, a roundworm widely used in biomedical research.

The new center will serve as a focal point for research by helping to develop core facilities, a seed grant program, funding for post-doctoral fellows and educational and outreach programs. To begin with, the center will be a virtual one, with no building but with the administrative and support capacity to effectively fuel key areas of research and education.

his is especially important, the researchers note, as key campus projects such as the Interdisciplinary Research Center and the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery evolve.

The center will also serve as a focal point for fund-raising, advocacy and outreach, the researchers note.

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Professor Kim Nasmyth Awarded Gairdner International Award

Professor Kim Nasmyth, Head of the Biochemistry Department and Whitley Professor of Biochemistry at Oxford University, has been awarded the Gairdner International Award for achievements in medical research.

The Gairdner International Award is given annually for outstanding discoveries or contributions to medical science and is one of the most prestigious awards in the world.

Since 1957, when the awards were founded by the late Toronto businessman James Gairdner, 65 Gairdner winners have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.

Professor Nasmyth, a Fellow of Trinity College, is being honored for his discovery of the mechanism of chromosome segregation during cell division, which has profound implications for the understanding of chromosome non-disjunction in human cancer and other genetic diseases.

Mitosis, the process by which a cell duplicates its chromosomes and splits into two, generating two identical ‘daughter cells, is fundamental to all life. The process is complex and highly regulated, involving a number of phases including the duplication of chromosomes and their separation to form new cells. The Gairdner Foundation observed that ‘proper chromosome segregation during mitosis is essential for all life, and has been one of the outstanding problems in cell biology for over 100 years. Nasmyth has dominated the field of mitotic regulation with a series of incisive discoveries.

The awards ceremony will take place in Toronto in October 2007.

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Berkeley Nanotechnology Pioneer to Receive $500,000 Waterman Award

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has chosen Peidong Yang, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, to receive the 2007 Alan T. Waterman Award. A nanotechnology expert, Yang has pioneered research on nanowires, strings of atoms that show promise for a range of high-technology devices, from tiny lasers and computer circuits to inexpensive solar panels and biological sensors.

The annual Waterman award recognizes an outstanding young researcher in any field of science or engineering supported by NSF. Candidates may not be more than 35 years old, or 7 years beyond receiving a doctorate and must stand out for their individual achievements. In addition to a medal, the awardee receives a grant of $500,000 over a 3-year period for scientific research or advanced study in their field.

In a relatively short time, Yang has created one of the nation's leading laboratories for the study of nanowires. Like nanotubes, nanowires are filaments only molecules wide with nearly miraculous properties, yet nanowires lack a hollow core and are proving generally easier to create and manipulate. Yang's research team has developed novel, efficient ways to create particularly sophisticated nanowires and complex nanowire arrays.

By controlling the self-assembly of the wires and their orientation, Yang and his colleagues have created devices such as a wire only a hundred nanometers (billionths of a meter) wide that fires ultraviolet laser light; a patchwork of oriented nanowires that shows promise for shrinking the next generation of computer chips; and a nanowire array that has properties akin to solar panels but could potentially cost far less and is manufactured using an environmentally friendly process.

Peidong Yang was born and raised in the Chinese city of Suzhou, leaving to study chemistry at the University of science and Technology of China in Hefei in 1988. Earning his Ph.D. degeree from Harvard in 1997, Yang then traveled to UC, Santa Barbara in 1997, and arrived at UC-Berkeley in 1999. In a short time, Yang has established himself as a rising star, publishing widely and receiving such awards as the NSF CAREER Award, the Alfred P. Sloan research fellowship, the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Young Investigator Award, the MRS Young Investigator Award, the Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics, and the American Chemical Society's Pure Chemistry Award.

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David F. Dinges Awarded NASAs Distinguished Public Service Medal

David F. Dinges, PhD, has been awarded the 2007 Distinguished Public Service Medal from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). This is the highest award the agency bestows upon non-government personnel whose distinguished accomplishments contributed substantially to the NASA mission. Dr. Dinges is Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry, Chief of the Division of Sleep and Chronobiology, and Director of the Unit for Experimental Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

An internationally recognized expert in the biological limits of human performance relative to sleep need and circadian biology, Dinges currently serves as scientific Team Leader for the "Neurobehavioral and Psychosocial Factors Team" of the NASA-supported National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI), where he is concerned with developing preventing and countering behavioral problems that develop during prolonged human habitation in space.

The citation reads, in part, that the award is granted to those individuals whose "…contribution must be so extraordinary that other forms of recognition would be inadequate."

Dinges is the author of more than 200 publications and during the past 30 years his research has been continuously supported by grants from Federal agencies including the NIH, NASA, DOD, DOT, and the Department of Homeland Security. His laboratory, located in the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, performs a wide range of experiments involving intensive physiological and behavioral monitoring of humans undergoing performance stressors and acute or prolonged perturbations sleep and circadian neurobiology.

His scientific focus is on identifying and validating behavioral, biological and technological countermeasures that improve performance, and then transitioning these to operational settings for NASA and other agencies. He is currently directing an experiment supported by NASA and the National Space Biomedical Institute (NSBRI) on NEEMO-12 astronauts living in the Aquarius facility on the ocean floor.

A corresponding member of the International Academy of Astronautics, Dinges also currently serves as President of the World Federation of Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine Societies, and Editor in Chief of SLEEP, the leading scientific journal on sleep research and sleep medicine in the world. He has been President of the Sleep Research Society and served on the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the National Sleep Foundation. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2004 Decade of Behavior Research Award from the American Psychological Association.

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University of Chicagos Bruce Cumings Receives Important Award from South Korea

Bruce Cumings, a leading East Asian historian at the University of Chicago, has received South Koreas first Kim Dae Jung Academic Award for Outstanding Achievements and Scholarly Contributions to Democracy, Human Rights and Peace. The award recognizes outstanding scholarship, and engaged public activity regarding human rights and democratization during the decades of dictatorship in Korea, and after the dictatorship ended in 1987.

The award was made at a ceremony on May 21 at Chonnam University in Kwangju in South Korea. The award, which is named in honor of Nobel Peace Prize winner and former President of South Korea Kim Dae Jung, includes a prize of $10,000. Kwangju is near Kim Dae Jungs hometown and was long part of his political base.

Cumings had a conversation with President Kim at his home in Seoul on May 22. They discussed the North Korean nuclear program, the Korean-American relationship, and what can be done to improve Korean attitudes toward the United States.

Cumings, an internationally respected scholar of East Asian political economy and international history, is the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History and the College at the University of Chicago. In February 1985 he was a member of a foreign delegation that accompanied and sought to protect Kim Dae Jung when he returned from exile in the U.S. This was in the aftermath of the murder of Filipino dissident Benigno Aquino on the Manila tarmac when he also had returned from political exile in the U.S.

Cumings research focuses on 20th-century international history, U.S.-East Asian relations, modern Korean history and American foreign relations. He is interested in the multiple ways in which conceptions, metaphors and discourses are related to the political economy and relationships between Eastern and Western powers.

He is the author of a number of books, including the two-volume set, The Origins of the Korean War (1981, 1990), War and Television (1993); Koreas Place in the Sun: A Modern History (1997), Parallax Visions: American-East Asian Relationships at the End of the Century (1998), North Korea: Another Country (2003) and was co-author of Inventing the Axis of Evil (2004).

Cumings has recently finished a book entitled Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power, whichwill be published by Yale University Press next year.

In 1983, Cumings received the John. K. Fairbank Prize given by the American Historical Association for the best book in modern East Asian history; he was recognized for The Origins of the Korean War.

Cumings received a B.A. in 1965 from Denison University and a Ph.D. in 1975 from Columbia University. Before joining the Chicago faculty, he served on the faculties of Swarthmore College and the University of Washington.

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New Journal to Examine Common Aspects of Risk Across Board Array of Venues

The University of Texas at Dallas School of Management launched a new quarterly, the Journal of Risk and Decision Analysis, at a conference on the topic.

The first issue of the Journal of Risk and Decision Analysis, to be published by IOS Press before years end, will feature findings presented at the conference by international scholars and practitioners. UT Dallas Distinguished Professor Dr. Alain Bensoussan, director of the universitys International Center for Decision and Risk Analysis and former head of the European Space Agency, will serve as co-editor-in-chief of the journal.

The other editor-in-chief will be Dr. Charles Tapiero, the Morton L. Topfer Chair and Distinguished Professor of Financial Engineering and Technology Management at Polytechnic University of New York.

The field of risk analysis has grown rapidly in the last decade and today is considered a vital tool for developing generic approaches to managing risks confronted by governments and many industries.

The Decision and Risk Analysis Conference, featuring some of the worlds leading experts in the relatively new field, is focused on analysis and advanced methods of dealing with risks confronted by industries, ranging from banking to health care, and by governments, ranging from natural disasters to terrorism.

The Journal of Risk and Decision Analysis, which will publish theoretical and applied advances by academics and practitioners, seeks to emphasize synergies between disciplines and new concepts and methods, while bridging risk analysis theory and practice.

Some of the areas that will be covered in the journal include national security, supply chain risk management, financial risk management and energy and natural resources.