IN THIS ISSUE: Broadcasting |Engineering | FAA | LAS | medicine | mothers assn | social work
broadcasting
Three WILL Radio programs, along with a video made by WILL-TV’s VideoWorks for the UI department of computer science, were honored in the international Communicator Awards Competition.
In the arts/cultural division, “Classically Black: Florence Beatrice Price,” part of WILL-FM’s “Classically Black” series by Roger Cooper, received an Award of Excellence. WILL-FM’s series “Vivaldi for All Seasons,” produced by Vic Di Geronimo, also received an Award of Excellence.
“The 20th Century Exodus: The Triumphant Life and Journey of the Jewish in Our Community,” a documentary on the Champaign-Urbana Jewish community produced by WILL-AM’s Dave Dickey and students from University Laboratory High School, received an Award of Distinction in the student category.
WILL-TV’s VideoWorks media production unit won two Communicator Awards for “Aviation Security: Researching the Risk,” a video it made last year for Sheldon Jacobson, a professor of computer science. The video received an Award of Excellence in two categories, “video news release” and “college or university.” The video, produced by Steve Drake with videography by Jeff Cunningham, highlighted research being done in Jacobson’s Simulation and Optimization Laboratory and explored how he is developing ways to improve baggage- and passenger-screening procedures at airports.
The Communicator Awards is an international awards program recognizing creative excellence in the communication field.
engineering
Kenneth Christensen, professor of mechanical science and engineering, received a 2007 National Science Foundation CAREER Award. The award will provide five years of funding for Christensen to study coupled roughness/pressure-gradient effects and reduce the complexity of highly irregular roughness in wall turbulence. The CAREER Award recognizes and supports the activities of scholars early in their careers. Awardees are often considered to be emerging leaders in their respective fields.
William King, professor of engineering and the Kritzer Faculty Scholar, received a 2007 Young Investigator award from the Office of Naval Research. The award, which honors academic researchers early in their academic careers, will help fund King’s proposed research on “Nanoscale Measurements of Temperature and Thermal Properties for Applications in Thermal Management and Energy Harvesting.” Recipients of the award are selected based on the significance and impact of previous research, publications and professional activities; the creativity of their research proposals, and the long-term commitment their institutions have to them.
King’s current research includes micro- and nanoscale heat transfer and thermal processing, atomic force microscopy, microelectromechanical systems, micro- and nanofabrication and self-assembly. Such work may ultimately play a role in making nanomanufacturing a practical reality.
D. Scott Stewart, professor of mechanical science and engineering, was awarded a National Academies Fellowship, Senior Research Award. The National Academies includes the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council, which is administering Stewart’s fellowship in conjunction with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. The internationally competitive program provides opportunities for highly qualified scientists and engineers to work on research programs of their choice in federal laboratories. Stewart will pursue research at the Air Force Research Laboratory/Munitions Directorate at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, in collaboration with Horie Yasuyuki. In Stewart’s study, he will investigate issues of complexity related to the ignition of energetic materials, with a focus on mechanisms and collective behaviors of reactive sites at the microscale, and will develop a basis for new sub-models for explosive particle interactions.
Yuanyuan Zhou, professor of computer science, received a 2007 Sloan Foundation Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The awards, which consist of $45,000 in research support, are intended to enhance the careers of young faculty members in specified fields of science. These fellowships are awarded annually in chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience and physics.
fine and applied arts
David Hays, professor of landscape architecture, received a 2007-08 fellowship at a research branch of Harvard University located in Washington, D.C. Dumbarton Oaks houses the foremost garden and landscape history research center in the U.S. This fellowship will support Hay’s final research and completion of a book project on Paolo Bürgi and his work at La Cardada, a mountain in the Ticino region of Switzerland.
Anne Hedeman, professor of art history and of medieval studies, was invited by the Courtauld Institute in London to give the International Center of Medieval Art at the Courtauld Lecture on March 15. The lecture, “Visual Translation in 15th-Century France: Laurent de Premierfait and Boccaccio,” explored the role played by visual imagery in aiding the linguistic and cultural translation from Latin to French and Italy to France of one of Giovanni Boccaccio’s most popular medieval texts, the “De Casibus Virorum Illustratum.”
Eduardo Diazmuñoz, artistic and music director and principal conductor of the Opera Division and the New Music Ensemble at the UI, was named to the five–member jury for the third Eduardo Mata International Conducting Competition. The competition is sponsored by the State Government of Oaxaca and the National Autonomous University of Mexico through a program called Instrumenta Oaxaca that seeks to develop musical distinction in four different areas: education, creation, performance and the preservation of musical heritage. The conducting competition helps to fulfill the educational part of the group’s initiative and will take place in Mexico City Sept 4 –9.
The competition is open to young orchestral conductors who are evaluated through a panel of internationally renowned conducting professionals.
liberal arts and sciences
Scott Denmark, professor of chemistry, was selected by the Organic Chemistry Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology to receive the 2007 Prelog Medal. The medal will be given in recognition of his pioneering work in chemical synthesis. The medal, awarded annually to a person who has made fundamental contributions in stereochemistry, will be presented Oct. 29 in Zürich.
Jim Kaler, professor emeritus of astronomy, was named president of the board of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. The society is one of the world’s oldest astronomy organizations and is an international leader in astronomy education. For more information on the society, go to www.astrosociety.org.
Chad Rienstra and Christina White, professors of chemistry, received 2007 Sloan Foundation Fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. These awards, which consist of $45,000 in research support, are intended to enhance the careers of young faculty members in specified fields of science.
Rienstra was recognized for his broad-based program to develop solid-state NMR spectroscopy as a tool for the structure determination of large biomolecules and biomolecular assemblies, and White for the discovery of fundamentally new reactions, including C-H oxidations.
medicine
Jennifer Bloom, associate dean of student affairs in the College of Medicine, was elected president of the National Academic Advising Association. Bloom will begin her term at the end of the association’s annual conference in October and serve until October 2008.
Bloom will be responsible for serving as the chief executive officer of the association and will chair the board of directors. She also will advocate for the role of advising in the success of students to the higher education community internationally.
mothers association
Geneva Belford, professor emeritus of computer science, will receive the Mothers Association Medallion of Honor, the most prestigious annual award given by the Mothers Association at Illinois.
The annual award – to be presented at the 2007 Mom’s Weekend annual banquet on April 13 – recognizes a woman who has used her talents to enrich the lives of others through example and service. Belford will be honored for these qualities, as well as her great enthusiasm and continual encouragement of her students and colleagues.
Belford’s affiliation with the UI began as a student in the mid-1950s. She joined the faculty in the 1970s, and now serves the department of computer science as coordinator of graduate education and advisement.
social work
Steven G. Anderson, director of the Ph.D. program of the School of Social Work, was named as a new Advisory Committee member of The Gabe W. Miller Memorial Foundation. Gabe Miller died in 2005 while an MSW student at the University of Denver. He inspired those around him to make the most of their lives and careers. The foundation, inspired by his memory, strives to help social workers and the institutions that educate and support them.
The foundation, an Illinois not-for-profit corporation, raises money from the public for distribution without ethnic, geographic, university-specific or subject matter limitations.