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NEWS July 2001
"News
from the College of Life Sciences at the University
of Maryland, College Park"
NEWS
ITEMS
- The
Dean's Message
- Upcoming
Events
- Faculty
Recognition
- In
the News
- Staff
Recognition
- Student/Alumni
News
- BIO
MAP
- Assistant/Associate
Dean Search
- Multicultural
College and Career Conference
- Funding
Alerts
- How
to Post Your News Here
FROM
THE DEAN
I'm delighted
to announce that Dr. William Fagan will be joining
us as an Associate Professor of Biology in late spring
of 2002. Bill is a theoretical ecologist who works
in three major areas: how evolutionary and ecosystem
processes shape the development of ecological communities,
characterizing extinction risk among species, and
investigating how habitat edges change species interactions
in ecosystems. He is a member of several multi-investigator
projects funded by NSF and NASA and has just been
awarded a Guggenheim fellowship, a remarkable accomplishment
for an Assistant Professor. Bill comes to us from
Arizona State University, where he compiled an outstanding
record of accomplishment in less than four years.
He is a Maryland native and received a Honors B.A.
in Biology, summa cum laude from the University of
Delaware and a Ph.d from the University of Washington,
where his advisor was Dr. Peter Kareiva. He is a critical
addition to our ecology and evolution group.
I’m
also pleased to announce that University Relations
has recruited Ms. Christine Lambert to act as the
Development Officer for the College of Life Sciences.
Christine comes from a family of fund raisers, holds
an undergraduate degree in the social sciences from
the Johns Hopkins University and a law degree from
the Columbus School of Law at Catholic University,
and comes to us from University Development, where
she held the position of Assistant Director for Gift
Planning. Thanks to Albert Ades, Mike Raupp, Leslie
Coleman, Kathi Dantley Warren and Val Broadie, who
served on the search committee. Christine’s first
day with us will be August 13. You can expect the
College’s coffers to begin to swell immediately!
I am in
the process of recruiting a Committee of Visitors
for the College, which will meet twice a year to review
and provide advice and assistance to the College.
Members will have three year terms. The first meeting
will be early this fall. To date I have recruited
the following people: Paul Anderson (synthetic organic
chemistry, VP for Research, Dupont), James Battey
(molecular and cellular mechanisms of hearing, Director,
National Institute of Deafness and Other Communicative
Disorders), Gene Block (cellular studies of a biological
clock, Provost, University of Virginia), Victor Bloomfield
(physical biochemistry, Associate Dean of the Graduate
School and Vice Provost for Research, University of
Minnesota), Paul Fischer (President and CEO, GeneVec),
Wayne Hockmeyer (co-founder of MedImmune), Evan Jones
(President and CEO, DiGene) and Joel Kingsolver (evolutionary
biology and population ecology, Distinguished Professor
of Biology, University of North Carolina). I have
calls in to 2-3 other academics, following up on suggestions
made by faculty.
Ms. Rhonda
Brown has just joined us as Coordinator of Business
Affairs for grants and the Dean's Office accounts.
Rhonda worked previously with the engineering firm
of Greenhorne and O'Mara. Welcome, Rhonda!
Millie
Lindenberger is hitting her stride as Manager of Administrative
Services and our Human Resources expert. If you have
Human Resource issues, please get in touch with Millie
at x52384.
Two faculty members have agreed to continue to provide
faculty leadership in important areas of the College.
Irv Forseth will continue as chair of the Graduate
Council, and Art Popper has agreed to continue as
director of NACS through June 30, 2004. Their contributions
to the continuing vitality of the College are much
appreciated.
Two important
searches are in progress at the moment, the search
for a Director of Information Technology and the search
for an Assistant or Associate Dean for Undergraduate
Academic Programs (title to be determined based on
experience and credentials). These positions are posted
on the College web site. Richard Payne is chairing
the search for the Director of Information Technology;
Sara Via is chairing the search for the Assistant/Associate
Dean. Applications for the first position have closed;
those for the second will remain open until the position
has been filled. Since this is a critical position
for the College, I encourage all of you to encourage
friends and colleagues to apply.
The University
has been encouraged by the Sloan Foundation to consider
submitting a proposal to create an institute to study
and support the biotech industry. The activities of
the institute would be multidisciplinary and would
involve faculty from Public Affairs, Business, BSOS,
Business and Engineering, as well as . We are
searching for someone who would be interested in developing
this proposal and possibly taking a leadership position
in the institute. If you are interested, or if you
know of a colleague who might be interested, please
let me know.
I have
just returned from BIO2001, a large (15,000 attendees),
international biotech conference in San Diego. It
was a great sacrifice spending a week in San Diego
in June, but since I knew it was important to the
College, I went! The quality of the science was excellent;
I heard the latest news on biotech approaches to treating
everything from global warming to pandemics. One of
the expected aspects of the meetings was the average
level of fitness of the attendees; I attribute this
to the large number of international attendees and
their relative youthfulness!
As you
will read in greater detail below, Sarah Tishkoff’s
recent Science paper on the evolution of resistance
to malaria has received a great deal of media attention.
Many congratulations to Sarah!
A piece of late-breaking news: the proposal which
Janice Reutt-Robey and colleagues submitted to NSF
for funds to purchase an X-Ray Photoelectron Spectrometer
has been funded! This is great news!
As we move into the height of the summer vacation
season, I wish all of you a very pleasant respite
for the rigors of the academic year. Have a great
vacation!
Norma Allewell
Dean
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of page
UPCOMING
EVENTS
Retirement
Celebration for Millie Lindenberger - July 25, 3:00-5:00
p.m. at the UM Golf Course Club House. For information
contact Gene Ferrick at gferrick@deans.umd.edu or
Linda Ringer at lringer@deans.umd.edu.
The New
Faculty Orientation will take place on Thursday August
23 in the Atrium of the Stamp Student Union. Please
ensure the attendance of new faculty, especially new
assistant professors. If you have questions call Rhonda
Malone at x56803.
Fall Classes
begin August 29.
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FACULTY
RECOGNITION
Dr. Zhongchi
Liu (Cell Biology & Molecular Genetics) received
a USDA grant of $133,000 for two years (2001-03) to
study "Regulation of Reproductive Organ Development
by the SEUSS (SEU) Gene."
Dr. Arthur
Popper (Biology) in collaboration with Dr. Richard
Fay (Loyola University) and Dr. Jacqueline Webb (Villanova
University) recently organized an international conference
on "Fish Bioacoustics: Sensory Biology, Behavior,
and Practical Applications" in Evanston, IL.
The conference, which included colleagues from Russia,
Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, and throughout
Europe and the US received support from NSF, ONR,
the Electric Power Research Institute, and the Minerals
Management Service (Dept. of Interior). Proceedings
will be published in a volume of the journal Bioacoustics
and in a volume to be published by Springer-Verlag.
Dr. Lawrence
Sita (Chemistry & Biochemistry) received a US
Department of Energy - Chemical Sciences, Geosciences
and Biosciences Division award under the Nanoscal
Science Program for his project "Ferrocene-Based
Electronics." The three-year award will total
$367,000.
Dr. Devarajan
Thirumalai (Chemistry & Biochemistry) received
a one year subcontract from Boston University of $157,000
for research on "Probing the Principles of Amyloid
Formation."
Top
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IN
the NEWS
On the
Nature Science Update website in an article titled
"Don't Frighten the Fish," Dr. Arthur Popper (Biology)
and company received some nice billing for their recent
work on ultrasound detection by clupeiform fishes.
http://www.nature.com/nsu/010614/010614-7.html
A paper
by Dr. Sarah Tishkoff (Biology) to be published in
the July 20 issue of Science has received much attention
in the press. Her paper is titled "Haplotype Diversity
and Linkage Disequilibrium at Human G6PD: Recent Origin
of Alleles That Confer Malarial Resistance." Sarah
was interviewed on NPR's "All Things Considered" and
by BBC Radio. Articles have been written about her
work in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times,
and the Washington Post. Congratulations, Sarah!
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STAFF
RECOGNITION
Mike Landavere
(Dean's Office) will make a presentation at EDUCAUSE
2001 in Indianapolis in October. His presentation
is titled "Incorporating Undergraduate Energy in Supporting
Faculty Technology in the Classroom." EDUCAUSE is
a nonprofit association whose mission is to help enable
change in higher education through information resources
and technologies in teaching, learning, scholarship,
research, and institutional management.
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STUDENTS/ALUMNI
Allyson
Bissing has been awarded the Dr. Mabel S. Spencer
Dissertation Fellowship, a one-year dissertation-excellence
fellowship by the UM Graduate School. This annual
fellowship is presented to one doctoral candidate.
Allyson is a MEES doctoral student working with Dr.
Spencer Benson (CBMG).
Dr. Jannette
(Jenny) Boughman has been appointed Assistant Professor
of Zoology at University of Wisconsin, Madison. Jenny
was a student under Dr. Jerry Wilkinson (Biology).
Mike Egnotovich,
a MEES doctoral student co-advised by Drs. Andy Baldwin
(Bio Resource ENGR) and Robert Ulanowicz (UMCES),
was recently awarded a grant from the MD/DC Chapter
of the Nature Conservancy. The research award is for
use on his project titled "Evaluating Ecosystem
Health in Tidal Freshwater Marshes."
Mike Frisk,
a MEES doctoral student studying under Dr. Tom Miller
(UMCES), was awarded a three-year Fellowship in Population
Dynamics from the National Marine Fisheries Service
and Sea Grant. Two fellowships are awarded annually
from a nationwide competition and are intended to
provide direct experience of the use of population
dynamics in fisheries stock assessment.
Marina
Silva, a MEES doctoral student under Drs. Joseph Mihursky
and Victor Kennedy (both UMCES), has received a Fulbright
Scholarship and a scholarship from Portugal's Ministry
of Science and Technology. Her doctoral research will
involve coral reefs off Kenya, Africa.
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BIO
MAP
This
summer, ten students are participating in the BIO
MAP program that brings science students from local
community colleges to the University. The program
is designed to increase the number of disadvantaged
groups in the biomedical fields. Over the summer,
the participants accepted into the program will
complete a course related to their individual goals,
participate in a professional development seminar
and be paid to work with faculty mentors in research
laboratories on campus. At the end of the summer
the students will present their research. BIO MAP
is supported by an NIH grant. The following faculty
are participating as research mentors this summer.
Dr. Bruce Cushing (Biology)
Dr. James Hagberg (Kinesiology)
Dr. Jianghong Meng (Nutrition & Food Science)
Dr. Thomas Castonguay (Nutrition & Food Science)
Dr. Carol Pontzer (Cell Biology & Molecular
Genetics)
Dr. Elena Del Campillo (Cell Biology & Molecular
Genetics)
Dr. Dale Bottrell (Entomology)
Dr. Jin-Shan Hu (Chemistry & Biochemistry)
Assistant/Associate
Dean Search
The position
announcement for the Assistant/Associate Dean for
Undergraduate Programs has been posted and advertised.
You can find the announcement on the web.
http://www.life.umd.edu/employment/emp9.html
Share the
announcement with your colleagues who may be interested
in the position.
Top of page
Multicultural
College and Career Conference
On Saturday
June 30 in the Stamp Student Union, 165 prospective
students attended the Multicultural College and Career
Conference. The invited students were from Admission's
lists of first generation and minority students. The
thrust of the conference was to introduce the students
to the process of selecting and applying to college
with a focus on Maryland and what we have to offer.
According to Eden Garosi, Assistant to the Dean for
Admissions, the Conference was a smashing success.
The information fair was busy from start to finish.
Top
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FUNDING
ALERTS
Below is
the web site for the USAID-RFA on Biotechnology
and Bio-diversity Interface competitive grants program.
This is a five year program in bio-safety research
aimed at addressing the interface between the use
of biotechnology, particularly genetically engineered
crops, and natural bio-diversity as it occurs in developing
countries that are rich in bio-diversity. Dr. Tal
Shehata would be
happy to assist any faculty member who is interested
in submitting a research proposal. http://www.usaid.gov/ftp_data/pub/OP/RFA/mop011084/
Community
of Science Database of Funding - If you want information
about the Community of Science database of funding
sources go to the Office of Research Administration
and Advancement at http://www.umresearch.umd.edu/ORAA/.
List
of funding alerts
- Click here to see a list of funding alerts that
may be relevant to the Life Sciences.
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How
to Post your NEWS!
If
you would like to share your accomplishments or other
news, please send a note to Gene Ferrick at gferrick@deans.umd.edu.
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