Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturers, 2006-2007
Abstracts
Each lecturer has designated his or her topic(s) for three different types of audiences. Where more than one level is shown, the lecture can be adjusted to the needs of the audience:
- P (Public)
Aimed at presenting scientific issues of general concern to a public audience.
- G (General)
Intended for a normal Sigma Xi audience of both scientists and other scholars representing a broad range of disciplines.
- S (Specialized)
Aimed at scientists and students in fields that are closely related to that of the lecturer.
Virginia L. Butler
Department of Anthropology
Portland State University
Portland, OR 97207
Phone: 503-725-3303
E-mail: butlerv@pdx.edu
Web: http://web.pdx.edu/~virginia/
Associate Professor, Portland State University
An associate professor in the Anthropology Department at Portland State University, Virginia Butler's primary interest is zooarchaeology, the study of animal remains from archaeological sites. She draws on evolutionary ecology to study predator-prey interactions, and considers human demography, technological change and independent changes in paleoenvironments that affect prey abundance. Most recently, she has compiled ~10,000 yr long fish records in the Columbia River system and Owens Valley, California. Species abundance fluctuates greatly, probably due to both climatic and human factors. Her work shows ways ancient animal records contribute to conservation biology, which often operates with limited knowledge of long-term biotic history. Her geographic focus is western North America and Oceania and she has published papers in American Antiquity, Antiquity, Journal of Archaeological Science, Ancient Biomolecules, and Quaternary Research.
Nicholas K. Coch
Queens College—City University of New York
School of Earth and Environmental Science
Flushing, NY 11367
Phone: 718-997-3326
Fax: 718-997-3352
E-mail: ncoch@qcunix1.edu
Nick Coch received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1965 and is a professor of geology at Queens College, CUNY. He has published studies in coastal and estuarine geology, and in lunar sedimentation, as a principal investigator in the NASA Lunar Program. He is especially interested in the causes of hurricane destruction and in damage mitigation, and has conducted ground and aerial studies of a number of major recent hurricanes. He is an expert on northern hurricanes and is a consultant to the New York City and State Emergency Management organizations as well as the insurance and risk management industry. His “Forensic Hurricanology” studies utilize present research, as well as historical records, to reconstruct the wind fields of the 17th–19th century hurricanes. His last study produced a dynamic computer model of the great 1635 "colonial" hurricane, that nearly wiped out early English settlements in New England.
American Meterological Society - Sigma Xi Lecturer Heidi Cullen
The Weather Channel Climate Expert
The Weather Channel
300 Interstate North Parkway
Atlanta, GA 30339
Phone: 770-226-2402
hcullen@weather.com
Fax: 770-226-2951
Dr. Heidi Cullen is the on-air climate expert at The Weather Channel and has the key responsibility of adding depth and perspective to climate stories for The Weather Channel network. Dr. Cullen received a B.S. in engineering from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in climatology and ocean-atmosphere dynamics at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. She most recently was a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO.
Richard J. Davidson
University of Wisconsin Madison
Department of Psychology
1202 W Johnson St.
Madison, WI 53706
Phone: 608-262-8972
E-mail: rjdavids@wisc.edu
Web: http://psyphz.psych.wisc.edu
William James and Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry; Director of the W.M. Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior, University of Wisconsin Madison
Richard J. Davidson is the William James and Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry and Director of the W.M. Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Psychology and has been at Wisconsin since 1984. He has published more than 150 articles, many chapters and reviews and edited 12 books. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his research including a National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Award, a MERIT Award from NIMH, an Established Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Affective Disorders (NARSAD), a Distinguished Investigator Award from NARSAD, the William James Fellow Award from the American Psychological Society, and the Hilldale Award from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He directs the NIMH-funded Wisconsin Center for Affective Science, the Center for Mind-Body Interaction and the NIMH Training program in Emotion Research. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society. He is currently the Founding Co-Editor of the new American Psychological Association journal EMOTION. Dr. Davidson is Past-President of the Society for Research in Psychopathology and of the Society for Psychophysiological Research. He was the 1997 Distinguished Scientific Lecturer for the American Psychological Association. He served as a Core Member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network in Mind-Body Interaction, is currently a Core Member of the MacArthur Foundation Mind-Brain-Body and Health Initiative and a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors, NIMH. In 2001-02 he served on the National Academy of Science Panel to evaluate the validity of the polygraph. He was the year 2000 recipient of the most prestigious award given by the American Psychological Association for lifetime achievementùthe Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award and in 2003 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Society for Risk Analysis - Sigma Xi Lecturer
Adam M. Finkel
Professor, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health
University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey
402 Robertson Hall, WWS
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
Phone: 609-258-4828
E-mail: afinkel@princeton.edu
Dr. Adam M. Finkel is Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) School of Public Health, and Visiting Professor at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He has 20 years experience in both government and academia analyzing risks to human health and implementing creative solutions to reduce them. Dr. Finkel has an unusually broad academic background, with a doctoral degree in environmental health sciences and a master's degree in public policy, both from Harvard University, and has written many articles in the medical, legal, economics, and statistical literature. For ten years (1995-2005) he was a senior executive at the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), serving as OSHA's national director of regulatory programs in Washington, D.C., and later as chief OSHA administrator in the six-state Rocky Mountain region, based in Denver, CO. He has pioneered methods to quantify and communicate the uncertainties in risk and cost estimation, and to explore the variation in environmental and medical risks individual citizens and patients face due to differences in susceptibility, exposure, and other factors.
Dr. Finkel's research has shown that traditional methods of risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis often underestimate risks and overestimate the economic costs of sensible interventions to reduce them, contrary to the "conventional wisdom" about these issues. He maintains, however, that when performed in a thoughtful and humane manner, risk assessment can point the way to more protective policies than can a "precautionary principle" that sidesteps analysis altogether. He has put these views into effect as designer of OSHA's most sophisticated health regulations, as well as the Agency's first "enforceable partnerships" that brought government, industry, and labor together to craft protections beyond what traditional regulation could offer. He has returned to academia after successfully forcing OSHA to establish a testing program to evaluate the problem of chronic beryllium disease among its own workers, and thus can speak to the clash of scientific integrity with contemporary politics.
James D. Franson
Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Lab
11100 Johns Hopkins Road
Laurel, MD 20723
Phone: 443-778-6226
E-mail: franson@jhuapl.edu
Professor, Johns Hopkins University
James Franson received a bachelors degree from Purdue University and a Ph.D in physics from Caltech. He is a member of the Principal Staff at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and Research Professor in the Johns Hopkins ECE department. His research activities include quantum optics, quantum cryptography, and quantum information processing. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America.
John R. Gersh
Principal Professional Staff
The Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory
11100 Johns Hopkins Road
Laurel, MD 20723
Phone: 443-778-5503 Fax: 443-778-6904 E-mail: john.gersh@jhuapl.edu
John Gersh is a member of the Principal Professional Staff of The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. His interests involve investigating the interactive depiction of an information-rich environment to decision makers and developing knowledge representations and software architectures to enable those interactions. He has also worked extensively in the area of human interaction with complex automation and autonomous systems. During his twenty-five years at JHU/APL he has participated in system development and led research teams in these areas in domains as diverse as airport operations, Navy shipboard systems, spacecraft autonomy, and intelligence analysis. He was instrumental in the development of an R&D program in cognitive engineering at JHU/APL. Mr. Gersh received S.B., S.M., and E. E. degrees in electrical engineering from M.I.T., and also studied philosophy at Harvard, which has turned out to be surprisingly useful in thinking about people interacting with information and with the world.
Diane Gifford-Gonzalez
Professor, Anthropology
Social Sciences 1 Faculty Svcs
University of California - Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
Phone: 831-459-2633 Fax: 831-459-5900 E-mail: dianegg@ucsc.edu
Diane Gifford-Gonzalez specializes in zooarchaeology, having done fieldwork in Kenya, Tanzania, Netherlands, and the western U.S. Current research includes NSF-funded work on animal and human paleoecology around Monterey Bay, ethnicity and animal use at a colonial New Mexican Pueblo, and early pastoralism in Niger and Kenya. She has taught graduate seminars at the Universities of Nairobi and Tromsø, and the Chinese Academy of Science, authored over 50 academic articles and book chapters.and received two distinguished teaching awards. She has served on editorial boards of major Africanist journals and governing boards of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists, the International Conference of Archaeozoology, Society for American Archaeology, and the Archaeology Division of the American Anthropological Association, and on the Academic Advisory Council of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. She is Curator of the Monterey Bay Archaeology Archives and serves on the board of the Cabrillo College Archaeological Technology Certificate Program.
Joany Jackman
9004 Devilbiss Bridge Rd
Laurel, MD 21793
Phone: 443-778-8501
E-mail: joany.jackman@jhuapl.edu
Senior Scientist, The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
In 1980, Dr. Jackman received a B.A. in American Studies, Brandeis University; B.S. in Biological Sciences, University of Connecticut in 1981; and a Ph.D., Program in Cell and Molecular Biology, University of Vermont in 1990. In 2000, she joined the staff at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Dr. Jackman held a Cell Biology Research Fellowship at the University of Vermont in 1986, and a National Institute for Environmental Health Science Graduate Fellowship from 1987-1990. She was a post doctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health before becoming an assistant professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine where she investigated the role of cell cycle control and apoptosis in cancer progression. Dr. Jackman began working in the area of infectious disease at US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease in 1997. The focus of this work was to develop novel methods of rapid pathogen identification and diagnosis of infection using mass spectrometry and microarray methodologies. Dr. Jackman joined the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in 2000 where she has continued her work in rapid pathogen identification and advises in biocontainment facility design and operations. In 2003 she received the Christopher Columbus Homeland Security Award in the area of Emergency Response. Dr. Jackman is developing methods to analyze breath for novel markers of infection. This technology uses proteins and lipids secreted by the host in response to pathogens in the lungs to detect signs of infection prior to the appearance of symptoms. The technique is non-invasive and rapid. Analysis is carried out using mass spectrometry of exhaled breath. Both the pattern of secreted proteins and the chronology of their production are used to identify infected individuals prior to the appearance of signs and symptoms.
Gretchen Kalonji
Director of Intl. Strategy Development
University of California Office of the President
1111 Franklin St. #11118
Oakland, Ca 94607
Phone: 510-987-0250
E-mail: Gretchen.Kalonji@ucop.edu
Gretchen Kalonji joined the University of Washington in 1990, where she holds the Kyocera Chair in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and is an active member of the African Studies faculty. Before moving to Seattle, Kalonji served as Assistant and Associate Professor at MIT, from 1982-1990. Her areas of materials research include the theory of defects in crystalline solids, atomistic computer simulation techniques, and phase transitions and microstructural evolution. Kalonji has a long-term commitment to innovations in international science and engineering, as well as to equity and access in higher education. While at MIT, she served as the Co-Director for the Computer Science and Electronics Program at the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College, a school in Tanzania run by the African National Congress to serve the needs of the South African exile community. Between 1991 and 1997, she held various leadership roles in ECSEL, the NSF-sponsored Engineering Coalition of Schools for Excellence in Education and Leadership. Since 1997, Kalonji's attention has focused on developing new, project-based approaches to integrating international education and research. Kalonji currently directs an initiative called UW Worldwide, which brings teams of faculty and students together across national boundaries to work collaboratively on common pressing practical challenges, such as environmental issues, public health, and the quality of education itself. UW Worldwide's flagship project is a joint research-based undergraduate curriculum with Sichuan University on challenges to the environment in the US Pacific Northwest and Southwest China. Kalonji also leads a new collaborative doctoral program involving institutions in China, Japan, New Zealand, Vietnam, South Africa, Namibia and Mozambique, and funded through the NSF's IGERT program. Kalonji received a Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1984, the George Westinghouse Award from the ASEE in 1994, and the NSF Directors Award for Distinguished Teaching Scholar in 2001. She holds distinguished visiting faculty positions at Tsinghua University, in Beijing, and Sichuan University, in Chengdu.
Todd R. Klaenhammer
Distinguished University Professor and William
Neal Reynolds Professor
Department of Food Science
Box 7624
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695
Phone: 919 515 2972
Fax: 919-513-0014
E-mail: klaenhammer@ncsu.edu
Todd R. Klaenhammer obtained degrees in Microbiology (B.S), and Food Science (M.S. & Ph.D) from the University of Minnesota. In 1978, he joined North Carolina State University and currently holds faculty appointments in the Departments of Food Science, Microbiology, and Genetics and serves on the Biotechnology and Genomics training programs. For 27 years he has directed a research program on food bioprocessing and the genetics of lactic acid bacteria and their bacteriophages. His group has published nearly 200 articles in journals and books, and filed a number of patents in bacterial genomics and on mechanisms by which bacteria resist viruses Todd is Fellow in the American Academy of Microbiology, the Institute of Food Technologist, and the American Dairy Science Association. In 2001, he was elected into the National Academy of Sciences and currently serves on their Committee for Scientific Programs and co-chairs the German-American Frontiers of Science Program.
National Academy of Engineering - Sigma Xi Lecturer
Louis J. Lanzerotti
Distinguished Research Professor
Center for Solar Terrestrial Research
Department of Physics
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Newark, NJ 07102
Phone: 973-596-5343
Fax: 973-596-3617
E-mail: ljl@njit.edu
Louis J. Lanzerotti is a Distinguished Research Professor, Department of Physics, New Jersey Institute of Technology. He is also a consultant at Lucent Technologies' Bell Laboratories, where his career spanned 37 years of science and engineering research related to space plasmas and the effects of solar-terrestrial processes on technical systems. He has served as principal investigator or co-investigator on a number of NASA interplanetary and planetary space missions and has conducted geophysical research in the Antarctic and the Arctic since the 1970s, directed toward understanding of EarthÆs upper atmosphere and space environments. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering and the International Academy of Astronautics, and is a Fellow of the IEEE, the AIAA, the AGU, the APS, and the AAAS. He was nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate in 2004 to a six year term on the National Science Board.
Clark Spencer Larsen
Department of Anthropology
244 Lord Hall; 124 West 17th Avenue
The Ohio State University
Columbus, OH 43210-1364
Phone: 614-292-4117
E-mail: Larsen.53@osu.edu
Web: http://anthropology.ohio-state.edu/bioarch/index.htm
Distguished Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Chair, The Ohio State University
Clark Spencer Larsen is the Distinguished Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at The Ohio State University. He received his B.A. in anthropology from Kansas State University (1974), and holds an M.A. (1975) and Ph.D. (1980) in physical anthropology from the University of Michigan. Larsen taught previously at the University of Massachusetts, Northern Illinois University, Purdue University, and the University of North Carolina, where he was the Amos Hawley Distinguished Professor of Anthropology. He has an appointment as Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History. He is the former president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. He has served on various editorial boards, and is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, the leading research journal in physical anthropology.
Larsen is an internationally known authority on bioarchaeology, the study of human remains from archaeological settings. His research is primarily focussed on biocultural adaptation in the last 10,000 years of human evolution, with particular emphasis on the history of health, well-being, and lifestyle in native and non-native populations in the Western Hemisphere. With Richard Steckel, Paul Sciulli, and Phillip Walker, Larsen is the co-director of the Global History of Health Project, an international collaboration involved in the study of ancient skeletons from all continents in order to track health changes since the late Paleolithic. He is the author of numerous scientific articles and has authored or edited 25 books and monographs, including Bioarchaeology: Interpreting Behavior from the Human Skeleton (Cambridge University Press), Skeletons in Our Closet: Revealing Our Past through Bioarchaeology (Princeton University Press), and Bioarchaeology of Spanish Florida: The Impact of Colonialism (University Press of Florida).
Gary S. May
Professor and Steve W. Chaddick School Chair
Georgia Institute of Technology
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
777 Atlantic Drive NW
Atlanta, GA 30332-0250
Phone: 404-894-2901
Fax: 404-894-4641
E-mail: gary.may@ece.gatech.edu
Dr. Gary S. May is the Steve W. Chaddick School Chair of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In this role, he is the chief academic officer of the school, providing leadership to over 100 faculty members and 1,500 students.
Dr. May's field of research is computer-aided manufacturing of integrated circuits. He has authored over 200 technical publications and contributed to 14 books on that topic. He has also participated in the acquisition of over $49 million in research funding, and he has graduated 13 Ph.D. students. In 1993, Dr. May was named Georgia Tech's Outstanding Young Alumnus, and in 1999, he received Georgia Tech's Outstanding Service Award. Dr. May has won two Best Paper Awards from IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing (1998 and 2000). In 2000, Dr. May was selected by the National Academy of Engineering to participate in Frontiers of Engineering Conference as one of "the nation's top 100 engineers between the ages of 30-45." In 2004, Dr. May received Georgia Tech's Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award, as well as the Outstanding Minority Engineer Award from the American Society of Engineering Education.
Dr. May created the Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering/Science (SURE) program, for which he has been granted $1.9M from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Through SURE, he annually hosts minority students to perform research at Georgia Tech in the hopes that they will pursue a graduate degree. Nearly 90% of SURE participants enroll in graduate school. Dr. May is the also creator/director of the Facilitating Academic Careers in Engineering and Science (FACES) program, for which he has been granted over $10M from NSF to double the number of African American Ph.D. recipients produced by Georgia Tech. Over the duration of FACES, 138 minority students have received Ph.D. degrees in science or engineering at Georgia Tech - the most in such fields in the nation. Dr. May is a member of the National Advisory Board of the National Society of Black Engineers. Dr. May received his B.S. in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech in 1985 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1988 and 1991, respectively.
Jon McCammond
Associate Professor of Mathematics
Department of Mathematics
University of California Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Phone: 805-893-2060
E-mail: jon.mccammond@math.ucsb.edu
Jon McCammond is currently an associate professor of mathematics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of California Berkeley in 1991 and bachelor's degrees in Mathematics, Physics and German in 1988 from Bethel College in Kansas. Before arriving in Santa Barbara in 2002, he was an assistant professor at Texas A&M University and a community college instructor at Chabot College in Hayward, California. His recent research has ranged in area from geometric group theory to low-dimensional topology to geometric combinatorics. A constant theme underlying this wide range of areas has been the constructive aspects of various geometrically defined constructions. When he is not researching mathematics through the use of colorful pictures and hand-held manipulative devices (i.e. toys), he enjoys reading, cooking, ocean kayaking and watching lots of films.
John H. McMasters
23924 115th Ave. SW
Vashon, WA 98070
Phone: 425-965-4312
E-mail: john.h.mcmasters@boeing.com
Technical Fellow, The Beoing Company
A twenty-eight year veteran of The Boeing Company, Dr. McMasters is currently a program manager for the Ed Wells Initiative, a joint program between Boeing and the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace charged with enhancing the technical excellence of the SPEEA represented Boeing technical workforce. He also has served since 1990 as an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the University of Washington in Seattle.
His professional and avocational interests run together over a broad range of topics including: low-speed/high lift aerodynamics, airplane design, the biomechanics of flight, paleontology, and engineering education. He has authored over 100 publications and technical papers, and has lectured to a broad range of university, government and professional society audiences, in all these topic areas. He holds a configuration patent for an airplane designed under a NASA contract circa 1993-5, and was awarded the Air Force Commendation Medal in 1965 for work on an air-to-air guided missile he conceived and helped develop through initial flight testing while on active duty in the USAF. An Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, he served as an AIAA Distinguished Lecturer for two years (1992-94) and again in 2002-05.
Prior to joining Boeing in 1976, Dr. McMasters held faculty positions at Arizona State University and Purdue. His strong interest in engineering education has continued and in addition to teaching airplane design courses at Boeing and the University of Washington, he has been a member since 1994 of what has become the Boeing Company Offices level University Relations Process Council. In this connection he has been instrumental in establishing and conducting the Boeing-Welliver Faculty Summer Fellowship, Boeing Fellow on Campus, and Boeing Outstanding Educator Programs. He was also one of the original architects of the Boeing initiated Industry-University-Government Roundtable for Enhancing Engineering Education (IUGREEE). In addition, he served for five years on the Vashon Island, Washington School Board and is a member of the External Advisory Board of the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Dr. McMasters hold B.S. (1961) and M.S. (1962) degrees from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Ph.D. (1975) from Purdue University, all in Aeronautical Engineering.
John Meier
Department of Mathematics
Lafayette College
Easton, PA 18042
Phone: 610-330-5570
E-mail: meierj@lafayette.edu
Web: http://www.cs.lafayette.edu/~meierj/
Professor of Mathematics, Lafayette College
John Meier earned his PhD from Cornell University and immediately took up a position at Lafayette College where he is a Professor of Mathematics. He has also held visiting positions at Columbia, Cornell, Ohio State and the University of California-Santa Barbara. His research interests are in the liminal area between algebra, topology and geometry. More specifically he studies how geometric conditions influence cohomological properties of infinite groups. His research publications and various grants (including a Centennial Fellowship from the American Mathematical Society) are nicely complemented by teaching awards and publications relating to pedagogy. He is also actively involved in Lafayette's Research Experiences for Undergraduates program in mathematics, funded by the NSF, and has held various positions in the Mathematics Association of America.
Albert J. Paul
Physicist
National Institute of Standards and Technology
101 Bureau Drive, Bldg: 223, Mailstop: 8522
Gaithersburg, MD 20899
3019756004 (voice)
Fax: 301-975-3445
E-mail: albert.paul@nist.gov
Albert Paul is a physicist in the Electronic and Optoelectronic Materials Group within the Ceramic Division. He has been a member of the research staff in the Material Science and Engineering Lab at N.I.S.T. since 1990. Albert received a B.A. in physics from the University of the District of Columbia in 1980 and a Ph.D. in applied physics from Howard University in 1988. While in graduate school and at the University of California at Davis, Department of Chemistry; his research focused on studying the dynamics in the dissociation of small molecules. He used polarized lasers to dissociate parent gas molecules and Polarized Laser Induced Fluorescence(PLIF) techniques to probe the internal and external energy states of the fragments formed before . This work included the use of second and third harmonic ultraviolet light generation with doubling crystals and in inert gases, to generate higher dissociation energies.
While at N.I.S.T., Albert has done research on a number of projects relating to the characterization of wide-bandgap materials. He began by measuring the distribution of species produced in the laser evaporation of ceramic targets(that produce thin films), by using mass spectrometry and has modeled the laser-evaporation process with finite-element and Monte Carlo simulations.
Albert is a member of a N.I.S.T. research team that is charged with developing the first composition standards for an Aluminum Gallium Arsenide compound semiconductors. He uses photoluminescence spectroscopy(PLD) to measure direct and indirect emission energies as a function of Al composition. In another project, he used microRaman and PLD to measure the shift in vibrational and emission energies, respectively, with changes in Al composition and a calibrated applied stress. In still another project, He used microRaman spectroscopy to study the local residual stress in thermally cycled Yttrium stabilized Zirconia thermal barrier coatings. He also used PLD to study the formation and changes in an aluminum oxide layer formed at the interface between the thermal coating and a metallic bond coat with increased cycling.
Albert is currently working on developing` a prototype of a strain standard for strained silicon that will be used to calibrate equipment used insitu during the manufacturing process. He is using ultraviolet Raman spectroscopy to measure the Raman shift in vibrational spectra as a function of the strain in ultra thin strain silicon films.
National Cancer Institute - Sigma Xi Lecturer>
Vito Quaranta
Co-Director, Center for Matrix Biology
Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
446B PRB, 2220 Pierce Avenue
Nashville, TN 37232
Phone: 615-936-2868
Fax: 615-936-1190
E-mail: vito.quaranta@vanderbilt.edu
Dr. Vito Quaranta, MD, is a Professor of Cancer Biology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, TN, since May 2003. He is Director of the Vanderbilt Integrative Cancer Biology Center, and Co-Director of the Center for Matrix Biology at Vanderbilt. Dr. Quaranta obtained a Medical Degree and a Hematology Board from the University of Bari School of Medicine, Bari, Italy. He passed the Board examination of the United States Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates and moved to La Jolla, California, in 1977. He received post-doctoral training and later held academic positions, including tenure, at the Department of Cell Biology of The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA for twenty-five years. He achieved honors from the Leukemia Society of America, the American Cancer Society and the Italian-American Medical Education Foundation.
His fields of interest have been oncology and matrix biology for over twenty years. His favorite research topic is cancer invasion and metastasis. He authored several relevant chapters in numerous medical books and over a hundred scientific articles in the field of cancer biology. He has been and invited lecturer in numerous international congresses and distinguished conferences on cancer biology, including the American Association for Cancer Research, the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research, the American Red Cross, the National Cancer Institute, the Metastasis Research Society, the Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cancer Biology. For over 15 years he held advisory positions in scientific institutions including Special Emphasis review member at the National Cancer Institute and ad hoc member of several Study Sections at the National Institute of Health. He is associate editor of two well recognized scientific journals (Journal of Cellular Physiology and Cancer Research) and regularly reviews for prestigious professional journals.
Recently, Dr. Quaranta has focused on systems biology approaches to cancer invasion. With substantial funding from the National Cancer Institute, he has started and directs the Vanderbilt Integrative Cancer Biology Center, where he is implementing a cutting-edge interdisciplinary effort melding mathematics, engineering, computation and biology, in order to solve the problem of cancer invasion and metastasis.
Diana Rhoten
Social Science Research Council
810 7th Avenue, 31st Floor
New York, NY 10019
Phone: 212-377-2700 ext. 605
E-mail: rhoten@ssrc.org
Program Director, Knowledge Institutions and Innovations
Diana Rhoten is Director of the Knowledge Institutions and Innovation Program at the Social Science Research Council. Using quantitative and qualitative techniques of social network and fieldwork analysis, Dr. Rhoten's research focuses on the social and technical conditions of interdisciplinary research and the practices and processes of integrative graduate education and training. In addition to publishing in this area, Dr. Rhoten works with various organizations on the design and development of new modes and methods of knowledge production and innovation. She is particularly interested in how the emergence of collaborative research strategies, the growing significance of virtual communities, and the shifting influence of non-academic versus academic opportunities are changing institutions of education, training, and research. Prior to coming to the Social Science Research Council, Dr. Rhoten served as an assistant professor at the Stanford University School of Education and as the Research Director of the Hybrid Vigor Institute (2001-2003).
Dan Rockmore
Department of Mathematics
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH 03755
Phone: 603-646-3260
E-mail: rockmore@cs.dartmouth.edu
Web: http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~rockmore
Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, Dartmouth College
Dan Rockmore is a Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Dartmouth College, where he has taught since 1991. He received his A.B. in Mathematics from Princeton University in 1984 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1989. In 1995 he was one of only 15 scientists to receive a five-year Presidential Faculty Fellowship from the White House for excellence in education and research. He has held visiting positions at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Santa Fe Institute (where he is also a member of the external faculty) and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He has served as a member of the IDA/Darpa Defense Sciences Study Group and remains a consultant to IDA. He is a member of the scientific advisory boards of Poindexter Systems and InSiteOne. He has authored and co-authored numerous scientific articles and three technical books mainly around the topic of the theory and application of efficient algorithms for data analysis. He has applied his work in to climate modeling, image and signal processing and the design of robust communications schemes. He is a co-founder of the (NSF/Keck-funded) fMRI Data Center, a publicly accessible database of neuorimaging data. His research is supported by the NIH, NSF, and the Keck Foundation. Rockmore has also become a nationally recognized expositor of mathematics. His writings have appeared in newspapers and magazines and some of his mathematically inspired essays can be heard on Vermont Public Radio, His popular book "Stalking the Riemann Hypothesis" (Random House) is scheduled to appear in the spring of 2005. He is also a co-producer of the NSF-funded documentary, "The Math Life", distributed by Films for the Humanities and Sciences, and his film on the new math of the life sciences, "Living Math", is slated for completion in the fall of 2005.
Sue V. Rosser
Dean and Professor
Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, Dean's Office
Georgia Institute of Technology
781 Marietta Street
Atlanta, GA 30332
Phone: 404-894-1728
Fax: 404-894-8573
E-mail: sue.rosser@iac.gatech.edu
Sue Rosser received her PhD in Zoology from the University of Wisconsin--Madison in 1973. Since July 1999, she has served as Dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech, where she is also Professor of History, Technology, and Society. From 1995-1999, she was Director for the Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida--Gainesville. In 1995, she served as Senior Program Officer for Women's Programs at NSF. From 1986 to 1995, she was Director of Women's Studies at the University of South Carolina, where she was also a Professor of Famly and Preventive Medicine in the Medical School. She has edited collections and written appproximately 115 journal articles on the theoretical and applied problems of women, science, technology and women's health. She has authored 9 books, including Re-engineering Female-Friendly Science (1997, Teacher's College Press), Women, Science, and Society: The Crucial Union (2000, Teacher's College Press, and most recently, The Science Glass Ceiling: Academic Women Scientists and the Struggle to Succeed (2004, Routledge). She currerntly serves as co-PI on Georgia Tech's $3.7 million ADVANCE NSF grant and has held several other grants from NSF. During the fall of 1993, she was Visiting Distinguished Professor for the University of Wisconsin System Women in Science Project.
Daniel H. Sandweiss
Dean and Associate Provost for Graduate
Studies
Professor of Anthropology and Quaternary & Climate Studies
120 Alumni Hall
University of Maine
Orono, ME 04469
Phone: 207-581-1889
Fax: 207-581-1823
E-mail: dan.sandweiss@umit.maine.edu
Web: http://www.ume.maine.edu/iceage/Directory/
people/Sandweiss.html
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Quaternary and Climate Studies, and Associate Director of the Climate Change Institute, University of Maine
Dan Sandweiss is an archaeologist interested in climate change and maritime adaptations in Latin America. Most of Sandweiss's research has been carried out on the desert coast of Peru, but he has also worked in Central America and Cuba. He has excavated the earliest known fishing site in the New World as well as fishing sites of other epochs including the Inca Empire. He directed excavations for three years at Túcume, Peru's largest pyramid center as part of a project coordinated by Norwegian explorer and scientist Thor Heyerdahl. Sandweiss also has a particular interest in the prehistory of El Niño, a global climatic perturbation first recognized in Peru and now known to affect weather throughout the world, and he has developed a variety of techniques for identifying ancient El Niño activity. Sandweiss was President of the Scientific Committee for FERCO (Foundation for Research and Exploration on Cultural Origins), a Canary Island foundation, from 1998-2002; he is the founder and editor of Andean Past (Cornell University Latin American Studies Program); and he is Chair-Designate of the Society for American Archaeology's Committee on the Americas. Sandweiss has published frequently in Science as well as in other journals, and he is the author and editor of several books and monographs. Sandweiss received a B.A. in Archaeology from Yale University in 1979 and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Cornell University in 1989.
Alison P. Williams
Lecturer, Department of Chemistry
Frick Labs
Princeton University
Washington and William Street
Princeton, NJ 08544
Phone: 609-258-6289
Fax: 609-258-6746
E-mail: alisonw@princeton.edu
- Ion Effects on the Physical Behavior of DNA (G,S)
- Time Resolved UV Resonance Raman Studies of Nucleic Acids (G,S)
- Lessons from the Lab: An African-American Woman's Journey from Manure to DNA (P,G)
- Who Will Do Science in the 21st Century? (P,G)
Alison Williams began her scientific career in high school working at the Ohio State Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster, Ohio. She received her undergraduate degree in chemistry from Wesleyan University and her M.S. and Ph.D. in biophysical chemistry from the University of Rochester where she was a NSF graduate fellow. She taught at Swarthmore College and Wesleyan University before joining the faculty of the chemistry department at Princeton University in 2003. Her research focuses on thermodynamic and kinetic properties of nucleic acids. Most recently her work emphasizes the role of ions in shaping the physical properties of oligonucleotides. She currently is an NSF ADVANCE Fellow. Dr. Williams has also received numerous recognitions for her teaching, outreach and mentoring activities for scientists of all ages.