UPCOMING EVENTS

Schedule of Classes

November 12: Last Day to Drop with a W

Events

November 7-9: Entomology External Review Committee Visit

November 8-10: Homecoming Weekend

November 11: Undergraduate Admissions Visit Maryland Day

November 14: Life Sciences Peer Mentors reception, 5 to 7 p.m. in the Baltimore Room, Stamp Student Union (for this College's fall 2002 freshman class)

November 19: Bioscience Research and Technology Review Day (www.bioscienceday.umd.edu)

November 21-23: Diversity Partners Visit

December 21: Life Sciences Commencement, 6:30 p.m., Memorial Chapel

December 22: Campus Commencement

February 18, 2003: Terrapin Pride Day in Annapolis

April 12, 2003: Alumni Association Gala Awards

May 16-18, 2003: The American Society for Microbiology - Education Section
10th anniversary meeting, co-sponsored by the College. Speakers will include
Dr. Rita Colwell, Director of NSF; Dr. Lee Shulman, President of the
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; Dr. Kenneth Nealson,
Director of the Center for Life Detection Jet Propulsion Laboratory; and Dr.
Eric Green, Chief of the Genome Technology Branch of the National Human
Genome Research Institute and Director of the NIH Intramural Sequencing
Facility.

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 FACULTY RECOGNITION

Dr. Alexandra Bely, a College of Life Sciences alumna who will become a faculty member of the Department of Biology January 1, and Dr. Gregory Wray of Duke University have an article about naidid worms in the October issue of Natural History magazine (pp. 30-33). When a naidid worm reproduces, it grows a new front for its back half and a new tail for its front. So before they split, the worm has two heads, with one in the middle.

Drs. Neil Blough and Daniel Falvey, Chemistry and Biochemistry, received a 2-year grant from the U.S. Department of the Navy totaling $360,000 to perform field, laboratory and model studies of chromophoric-dissolved organic matter. Dr. Falvey received an additional $156,000 grant from NSF to carry out chemical and spectroscopic studies of nitrenium ions.

Dr. Avis Cohen, Biology, and Shihab Shamma, Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), received an NSF 5-year award totaling $500,000. They plan to establish a new "virtual" Institute for Neuromorphic Engineering, an institute of colleagues from around the world. Among other plans, they will fund research that originates at the annual Telluride Neuromorphic Engineering Workshop and will visit lecture programs. Dr. Cohen is the project director.

Dr. Marco Colombini, Biology, received a 4-year grant for $300,000 from Children's Research Institute for "Molecular Basis of OTC Deficiency and Related Disorders."

The United States Patent Office has issued a patent to the University of Maryland for an invention described by Dr. Jeffery Davis, Chemistry and Biochemistry, and co-workers: "Self-Assembled Ionophores" (Jeffery Davis, Sampath Tirumala and Allison Marlow).

Dr. Catherine Fenselau, Chemistry and Biochemistry, was awarded a 3-year, $80,000 grant for "Applying Mass Spectrometry (MS) approaches to rapid detection of microbes in milk products." In addition, Dr. Fenselau will be attending the award ceremonies for the Nobel Prizes in Stockholm December 8 as the guest of Koichi Tanaka, 2002 Nobel laureate in chemistry.

Congratulations to Dr. Samuel O. Grim, Chemistry and Biochemistry, on his election to the rank of AAAS Fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He is being honored "for seminal research in the synthesis of novel organophosphorus ligands and their coordination compounds for phosporus NMR and structural studies of these compounds."

Dr. Sammy W. Joseph, CBMG, and Lewis E. Carr were awarded a 1-year, $220,000 grant for "Antibiotic Resistance in E. faecium and salmonella" by HHS - PHS/FDA.

Dr. Victor Muņoz, Chemistry and Biochemistry, and colleagues Maria Mar Garcia-Mira, Mourad Sadqi, Niels Fischer, and Jose Manuel Sanchez-Ruiz (of Departmento de Phisica-Quimica, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain) have received official confirmation from Science of the acceptance of their paper "Experimental Identification of Downhill Protein Folding."

Dr. Kennedy T. Paynter, Biology, has been awarded a $28,000 grant from the University of Maryland/Maryland Sea Grant College for "In Situ Determination of Perkinsus marinus Transmission."

The latest book in the Springer Handbook of Auditory Research (SHAR) was recently published by Springer-Verlag. This volume, # 16 in a series developed and edited by Dr. Arthur N. Popper, Biology, along with Dr. Richard Fay of Loyola University of Chicago, is titled "Acoustic Communication" and is edited by Andrea Megela Simmons (Brown University) along with Drs. Popper and Fay. The Springer Handbook series is the definitive set of books on auditory neuroscience, and 10 more volumes are in various stages of preparation.

Dr. Paula Shrewsbury, Entomology, is the PI of two grants from the USDA. In one she will tackle the feasibility of implementing "least toxic" alternatives as components of an integrated pest management approach for public schools in the Northeast. The project is funded by the USDA's Northeast Region Integrated Pest Management Competitive Grants program. Dr. Shrewsbury's co-PIs will be Dr. Michael Raupp and Dr. Barbara Thorne, both professors of Entomology; Colin Stewart, Entomology research associate; Peter Dernoeden, professor of Natural Resource Sciences and Landscape Architecture; and Jennifer Grant, of the Community IPM Program at Cornell University. For the other grant, funded by the USDA's Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Competitive Grants Program, Dr. Shrewsbury and her team will develop tactics for the enhancement, implementation and evaluation of biologically based pest management for three key pests in production nurseries, in a move toward sustainability. Her team will include co-investigators Colin Stewart and Stanton Gill, regional specialist in the Cooperative Extension Service.

Dr. Anne Simon, CBMG, was awarded a 4-year NIH grant totaling $890,000 for pinpointing the elements required for replication of a model viral RNA. Dr. Lawrence Sita, Chemistry and Biochemistry, received a U.S. Department of Energy award from its Chemical Sciences, Geosciences and Biosciences Division, under the Nanoscale Science Program, for his project on ferrocene-based electronics. The 3-year award is for $367,000.

Dr. Lawrence Sita, Chemistry and Biochemistry, received a U.S. Department of Energy award from its Chemical Sciences, Geosciences and Biosciences Division, under the Nanoscale Science Program, for his project on ferrocene-based electronics. The 3-year award is for $367,000.

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STUDENT RECOGNITION

MEES student Michael Frisk has been awarded a Sea Grant/National Marine Fisheries Service Graduate Fellowship in Population Dynamics for his doctoral work under Dr. Tom Miller at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory. Mike's dissertation research involves geographic variation in life history traits and population dynamics of western Atlantic skates.

Peter Hibbs, a Ph. D. student in Entomology, won the prize for the best student poster at the International Congress of Diptera held recently in Brisbane.

Olaf Jensen, a MEES M.S. student advised by Dr. Tom Miller at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, has been awarded a DAAD Fellowship by the German Federal Government for research in Germany during winter 2002-2003. Olaf has also received a Sea Grant Knauss Fellowship for 2003. His thesis research involves the application of geostatistics to estuarine systems.

Taconya Piper, a MEES M.S. student advised by Dr. Roman Jesien, has been awarded a Sea Grant Knauss Fellowship for 2003. Her thesis research involves the fecundity of American shad in the Delaware and Hudson Rivers.

Congratulations to four College of Life Sciences undergraduate students who received awards for presentations given at the 5th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium in the Chemical and Biological Sciences at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County on October 19:

- Azize Sahin (Biochemistry): 1st Place Biological Sciences Oral Presentations
- Joseph Hickey (Chemistry): 1st Place Chemical Sciences Poster Presentations
- Elinor Lichtenberg (BEES): 1st Place Biological Sciences Poster Presentations
- Mitra Yousefi (Biochemistry): 2nd Place Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Poster Presentations

Azize and Mitra conducted their research at the National Institutes of Health. Joe and Elinor conduct research on campus with Dr. Douglas English, Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Dr. Gerald Wilkinson, Biology, respectively.

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STAFF RECOGNITION

The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry would like to thank those who made possible the conference attended by 115 high-school chemistry teachers from every county in the state on Friday, October 4. These people include:

Bob Harper, who really rose to the occasion far above the call of duty, and somehow managed to be in several places at once with constantly changing AV and computer needs! Charles Jenkins, Kathleen Crowley and John Shaibu, for not only preparing solutions and equipment, but for helping one of the presenters find everything needed. George Helz, who substituted for a cancelled speaker at the last minute and saved the day. Cathy Rosenfelder, who managed to keep it all together for us. Thanks to all!

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FACULTY AND ALUMNI IN THE NEWS 

Dr. Charles Delwiche, CBMG, accuses North Carolina State's JoAnn Burkholder of a failure of scientific method. Burkholder rallied for conservative bans following the 1997 outbreak of Pfiesteria, a fish-killing microbe that caused a hubbub engulfing politicians, farmers and researchers. Check out Chronicle of Higher Education, October 25 (Password needed) http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i09/09a01501.htm

The Department of Agriculture, which relied heavily on the research of Dr. Galen Dively, Entomology, issues a final report on the perceived threat of Bt genetically engineered corn to the monarch butterfly. National Products Insider, October 3
http://www.naturalproductsinsider.com/hotnews/2ah315058.html

Dr. Catherine Fenselau, Chemistry and Biochemistry, comments to three of the nation's largest newspapers on the Nobel Prize in Chemistry won by John Fenn of Virginia Commonwealth University, Koichi Tanaka of the Shimadzu Corporation in Japan and Kurt Wuthrich of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the Scripps Research Institute. Fenselau is associate editor of the journal Analytical Chemistry and past president of the American Society of Mass Spectrometry.
Washington Post, October 10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3314-2002Oct9.html
New York Times, October 10 (Free password needed) http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/09/science/09CND-CHEM.html
Los Angeles Times, October 10 (Free password needed) http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-nobel10oct10.story?null

Earthwatch volunteers spend their summer vacations working on one of the most extensive wildflower studies on record, under the guidance of Dr. David Inouye, Biology. Memphis Commercial-Appeal, October 6
http://www.gomemphis.com/mca/travel/article/0,1426,MCA_532_1458926,00.html

Twice this fall, CONS alumna Dr. Ellen Paul, now Executive Director of the Ornithological Council of North America, has been called upon to comment on issues in the news in Science magazine. Check out "Infectious Disease: Bird Advocates Fear That West Nile Virus Could Silence the Spring" and "Ornithology: High-Flying Science Seeks to Reduce Toll at Towers."

Dr. Gerald Wilkinson discusses reciprocal altruism in blood-sucking vampire bats in BBCi online (http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/morals/morescience_morals.shtml). This phenomenon involves healthy bats nursing starving bats back to health by regurgitating blood into their mouths, expecting someday that those bats will return the favor.

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ALUMNUS RAY DAVIS WINS NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS

After receiving the National Medal of Science earlier this year, College of Life Sciences Alumnus Raymond Davis Jr. won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics in October. He shares half of the prize with Japanese scientist Masatoshi Koshiba; both were honored for work that has led to an understanding of how the sun generates energy. The other half of the prize went to Riccardo Giacconi of the Associated Universities, Inc. of Washington, D.C., for work that laid the foundation for x-ray astronomy.

Davis was the first scientist to detect solar neutrinos, the result of nuclear fusion reactions happening in the sun's core. Davis, who has won numerous other scientific awards and who is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, earned a B.S. from the University of Maryland in 1937 and an M.S. from UM in 1940.
Newsday, October 9
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-hsphys092958560oct09.story
Baltimore Sun, October 9
http://www.sunspot.net/news/printedition/bal-te.nobel09oct09.story

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