From the Dean
I greet you this month still reeling in the aftershock of the November 7 earthquake that reshaped our political landscape. If you revel in politics, like me, then perhaps you are experiencing election withdrawal. However, no matter what your political persuasion, the constituents spoke and the message was change. It doesn’t matter if you’re a RINO (Republican in Name Only) or DINO (Democrat in Name Only) or Blue Dog. . . the name-calling is over and the business of government continues.
I can’t help but wonder how this dramatic shift in leadership will affect our state and nation. . . and most especially our educational system. With luck, science education and national competitiveness will become dominant issues, and those who “just don’t get it” will be labeled as SINOs (scientists in name only)! After all, we in the academic world are not immune from politics. Henry Kissinger often chided, “There is no politics quite as vicious as academic politics . . . because in academia there is so little at stake!” While Kissinger’s words ring true at times, the fact remains that many factors influence decisions that are made in a university—whether the appointment of a faculty member or the selection of a new president—and they’re generally made competently and with much care.
If I had the opportunity to speak to Dr. Kissinger, I would politely disagree with his views on academia. It would be my pleasure to share the excitement happening in the College of Science at Purdue. I’d demonstrate the importance of academics by informing him of the discoveries we make and their impact upon helping our environment, keeping our homeland safe, and improving the quality of our health. Universities have changed since he uttered those words.
I’d also admit to Dr. Kissinger that we have much work to do. As the debate is waged about the relative merits of intelligent design and evolution, the foundations of modern biology and medicine are challenged. Scientists must assume a vigilant role in educating and informing the public. Scientific advancements are often highly technical and difficult to understand, yet all aspects of our lives have been changed by them. As scientific leaders and educators, we must accept the call to explain the nature of scientific inquiry and discovery so as to enable better decision making. That’s why I find the Science Laureates (http://www.sciencelaureates.net/) program we inaugurated in October so exciting. Stay tuned for next year.
If I managed to keep Dr. Kissinger engaged, I would ask him if he had any new ideas to offer on increasing our national and state funding for science and on attracting our children to pursue careers in science. I’d tell him that I was encouraged by the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation (http://www.futureofinnovation.org/), a group of leading organizations in industry and academia, which just released a new report called “Benchmarks of our Innovation Future II” (http://www.futureofinnovation.org/2006report/). I’d encourage him to read it, because it states,
“We believe our nation’s greatness lies in the creativity, entrepreneurship, and collaborative spirit of its people. These qualities, as well as the attraction they hold for the best talent from overseas, have made our nation the unquestioned global leader in science and research.”
The report cautions us, however, that our advantage is rapidly eroding. Our global competitors are nipping at our heels and may soon surpass us. I’d stress to Dr. Kissinger that the scientific research we do, today, will be the basis for the technological innovations and economic development for future decades. We must accelerate scientific development, and we have zero time to lose. For that reason, the Task Force report strongly endorses full funding of President Bush’s American Competitiveness Initiative (http://www.whitehouse.gov/stateoftheunion/2006/aci/), whose specific initiatives include
- spurring innovation by doubling the nation's investment in research in the physical and information sciences and engineering though agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy's Office of Science, and the National Institute for Standards and Technology;
- incentivizing industry R&D with research tax credits;
- sustaining innovation by ensuring that a broad and diverse population will enter science and engineering fields and teaching fields;
- strengthening K-12 math and science education; and
- attracting and retaining the best talent from abroad by reforming immigration policy.
These efforts are gaining bipartisan support, and I would ask Dr. Kissinger to encourage you to call or email your congressional representatives and senators in support. Please take a leadership role and be part of a resurgence in this country to our commitment to science. Each of us can choose not to be a SINO and instead be an advocate. I think Dr. Kissinger and I would both agree with Tip O’Neal, former Speaker of the House, whose adage was that all politics is local and every individual has a voice. Let’s make our voices heard!
In closing, as we near the end of the calendar year, let us reflect upon our many blessings, especially in a year so full of turmoil around the world. Please keep the young men and women in the armed forces in your thoughts and prayers. They will be far from their loved ones and the comforts of home. On behalf of the College of Science at Purdue, I wish you all a peaceful holiday season and all the best for 2007.
Happy holidays!
Jeff Vitter
Boiler up for the Champs Sports Bowl
Pack up and head south with the College of Science, as we join the throngs of fans, supporting the Purdue football team at the Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando, Florida.Kickoff for the game is scheduled for 8:00 p.m. EST, December 29 at the Florida Citrus Bowl Stadium. The game will be televised by ESPN.
College of Science alumni and friends can get information and updates related to the Bowl events by visiting www.science.purdue.edu.
Purdue fans should purchase their Champs Sports Bowl tickets from the Purdue Intercollegiate Athletics Ticket Office or by calling 800-497-7678, (765)494-3194 or online at www.purdue.edu/bowl/tickets.shtml. Tickets cost $60 each. For up-to-date bowl news, including information about Purdue bowl merchandise, check the Purdue Boilermaker Bowl Hotline at (765)496-6300 or toll free at (800) 927-4177. For the most current information, check the Purdue Intercollegiate Athletics website, http://purduesports.cstv.com/. Details on official Bowl tours can be found by visiting the Purdue Alumni Association: http://www.purduealum.org/.
Gabor Csathy, assistant professor of physics
Gabor Csathy joins the Purdue physics faculty and the nanotechnology COALESCE area after spending two years on the research staff at Princeton University. His research interests include new physics in 2D electrons (new phases in the low density and low temperature regime), BCS-like pairing of composite fermions, non-abelian statistics and possible applications for quantum computing, solid phases in electronic systems, spin physics in low dimensional semiconductors, and spectrally enhanced chemical detection with nanotube transistors. Gabor received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics from the University of Bucharest in Romania. He earned his doctorate from Pennsylvania State University in 2005.
Jian Zhang, assistant professor of statistics
Jian Zhang joins Purdue’s massive data COALESCE area after earning both his doctorate and master’s degree in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University. His thesis used a probabilistic approach to study how to learn many things at once, which is called multitask learning. He began his higher education in physical oceanography at the Ocean University in China. Jian’s research interests lie in Bayesian models, computational statistics, information retrieval, machine learning, massive data, and nonparametric regression/density and models.
Joseph Fargione, assistant professor of biological sciences and forestry and natural resources
Joe Fargione comes to Purdue with a joint appointment in biological sciences and forestry and natural resources. He spent the last two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of New Mexico. He received his PhD in ecology from the University of Minnesota. His overarching research interest is to understand how and why plant communities structure themselves. Joe is currently working in desert grassland communities at the Sevilleta Long Term Ecological Research, where his research includes projects on the effect of climate changes on plant community structure and the relationship between plant functional traits, competitive ability, abundance, and invasion.
Bañuelos invited to speak at Rice’s diverse scholars lecture
Rodrigo Bañuelos, professor of mathematics, addressed a Rice University audience for the President’s Lecture Series of Diverse Scholars at the university. His research focuses on probability and its connections to harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, spectral theory, and geometry. He is a strong believer that scientists and academics have responsibilities beyond the boundary of pure scientific and academic research. He has been active in many efforts—local and national—designed to increase the number of minority students in sciences and engineering. In 2004, he was honored with the Blackwell-Tapia Prize for his career and contributions to encouraging ethnic minority students to study and pursue mathematics careers. Full Story
National associations name three faculty Fellows
Sabre Kais, professor of chemistry, and Gabriele Giuliani, professor of physics, were selected as Fellows of the American Physical Society. This honor is limited to the top 0.5 percent of the organization’s membership.
Mikhail Atallah, a distinguished professor of computer science, was named a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery.Durbin joins APS policy committee
Steve Durbin, professor of physics, was appointed to the Physics Policy Committee of the American Physical Society. The committee is charged with “addressing those science policy issues that affect the development of physics, the health of the institutions in which physics is practiced, the resources available to physics, and the balanced use of these resources for the nation’s scientific and technological needs.” Steve has policy in his blood; his uncle Dick Durbin is U.S. Senator from Illinois. Steve’s term begins in January and runs for three years.
Science is a Glimcher family affair
Laurie and Melvin Glimcher are something of a rarity at Harvard: a father-daughter pair who both hold named chairs in their respective fields. The Glimchers carry on a fruitful collaboration that is illuminating the intersection of immunology and osteology—the study of bones—in an emerging field called osteo-immunology. Melvin Glimcher earned his BS in physics and mechanical engineering from Purdue in 1946 while in the military and then went on to get his medical degree from Harvard, where he has excelled on the faculty ever since. Laurie’s son—Mel’s grandson—is now a medical student at Harvard. Full Story
CS professor speaks in Hong Kong
Computer Science Professor Sunil Prabhakar gave a keynote speech on October 25 at the 2006 International Conference on Cooperative Internet Computing (CIC) in Hong Kong. Sunil's research focuses on the development of advanced database management systems with an emphasis on modern applications such as scientific databases, moving-object and sensor databases, and multimedia. His work addresses modeling, performance and privacy issues. He is currently involved in the development of Orion—a database management system that provides native support for uncertain or imprecise data. Full Story
CS Student Earns IEEE Best Paper Award
Ashish Kundu, a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science, received an award for the Best Student Paper at the 10th IEEE International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference (EDOC 2006) held in Hong Kong, China, on October 16–20, 2006. Full Story
Distinguished alumnus nominated for prestigious fellowship
Don Bilderback, a College of Science Distinguished Alumni Award recipient in 2001, was named a fellow of the American Physical Society, Division of Condensed Matter Physics for his contributions to synchrotron x-ray physics in the field of x-ray optics and to the development of cryogenic cooling.
Science Kudos
The College of Science congratulates the following faculty and staff for their awards this month:
- Chemistry advisor Beatriz Cisneros was awarded the College of Science Outstanding Advisor for 2006–07.
- Alan Welch is chairing annual National Conference on Academic Advising.
- Physics K–12 Outreach Coordinator Julie Conlon has been nominated to the American Association for Physics Teachers’ Committee on Physics in Pre-High School Education. Her appointment will run for three years.
Jesica Webb is the new Communications and Media Coordinator
Jesica Webb is the new Communications and Media Coordinator in the College of Science. She started her career at Purdue in 1999, working for Purdue
Convocations and the University News Service, where she has been
employed for the past five years. Prior to her career at Purdue, she
worked at the Indiana Trial Lawyers Association and served on many
high-profile political campaigns, as a manager, writer and fundraiser. Jesica graduated from Purdue in 1988, with her degree in
Professional Writing from the English Department and is currently
pursuing a master's degree in English. She serves on the Board of
Directors for the Tippecanoe County Humane Society and volunteers for
the Lynn Treece Boys and Girls Club and the Indiana Horse Rescue. She
and her husband, Chris have two daughters, Christine, 17 and Sydney,
15. They reside in the country with their 12 pets.
A one-stop shop for University-wide research
The variety and strength of Purdue’s researchers have made the University a one-stop shop for many organizations seeking research expertise. Now, a new Purdue database makes finding these researchers even easier. The Purdue University Research Expertise database (PURE) allows users to find any Purdue researcher, regardless of discipline, who is working in a given area or on a certain problem. PURE makes researchers, both on and off campus, more accessible with one another. Faculty working on current issues like energy, climate change, and healthcare span many disciplines and solutions to these big problems in Science will come from cross-disciplinary collaborations. Stay tuned next year for a statewide version of PURE that is under development with academic institutions around Indiana. Visit PURE
Student Council expands its “Science Discovery” program
More high school students will get to experience the “Science Discovery” program thanks to a grant from Purdue. The program is co-run by students from the Purdue Science Student Council and coordinators from the College of Science K–12 Outreach Program. “Science Discovery” focuses on enrichment for grade school students through the use of science demonstrations. “We hope that with an expanded program, we will be able to offer more consistent events and focus on older students as well, such as by holding discussions with high school students in AP courses,” says PSSC president Henry Chou.
Getting to the root of doomsday climate change predictions
Current climate change impact models that consider only one weather variable, such as increasing temperature, sometimes spawn unsubstantiated doomsday predictions, according to research by a group including Dev Niyogi, an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences and agronomy and Indiana state climatologist. Full Story
Students have a field day with math
Approximately 70 eighth grade students from Wainwright Middle School in Lafayette and Benton Central Junior High in Benton County took a break from the classroom on Wednesday, November 15, for Purdue’s first Math Field Day. Full Story
Brainstorming for biotechs
More than 1,000 business leaders, academics, and industry experts were on hand to compare notes and share ideas at Techpoint's ninth annual Indiana Tech Summit in Downtown Indianapolis. In one seminar entitled “Brilliant Minds, Powerful Technology & Life Sciences: Pushing the Frontiers of Knowledge for Indiana,” professors and researchers from Indiana University, Purdue University, and IU-Purdue Indianapolis—led by Fred Regnier, Law Distinguished Professor of Chemistry—discussed their partnership with the National Cancer Institute to find and perfect cancer-marking proteins. Regnier stressed the need to identify proteins that can find and help fight cancer. He said they’re just not being discovered fast enough; we lack the technology to do it—yet.. Full Story
Regional computer grid
Packets will be hopping in northwest Indiana, thanks to congressional authorization of $5 million to support a computer grid for the area. The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration will award the funding for the Northwest Indiana Computational Grid, bringing federal investment in this project to $6.5 million. The grid links Purdue West Lafayette, Purdue Calumet, and Notre Dame with high-speed, high-bandwidth fiberoptic connections and shared scientific resources such as a supercomputer, data storage, and visualization tools. The grid also enables researchers at those universities to connect to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory. Businesses will be able to tap into this resource through industrial partnerships. Full Story
Computing advances power physics experiment
Advances in grid computing will allow Purdue physics researchers including Norbert Neumeister, assistant professor of physics, to participate in an international physics project. The CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment is being run at CERN in Switzerland, but Purdue will help store and analyze data. The grid computing will enable researchers at universities around the world to access and analyze CMS experiment data from Purdue. The experiment is expected to produce data at a rate of 100 megabytes per second. This tremendous amount of data requires a sophisticated and highly capable computing system to enable the data transfers to other universities. Full Story
Nobel laureate inaugurates new Purdue center to study science, math education
Purdue’s colleges of Education and Science are collaborating on a new center focused on developing strategies to improve the way students from preschool through high school learn math and science. The Center for Research and Engagement in Science and Mathematics Education, known as CRESME,
will provide support for faculty, staff and students involved in science and mathematics education and research. The interdisciplinary center is being funded evenly by the two colleges and will work closely with Discovery Park’s Discovery Learning Center. It is headed by co-directors Eric Riggs and John Staver.
Carl Wieman, who received the Nobel Prize in physics in 2001, gave the keynote address at the CRESME kickoff on November 6. In his talk, “Science Education in the 21st Century,” Wieman discussed some innovative teaching ideas and underscored the importance of engaging students in their education.
Now available: summer fellowship opportunities for students
Summer fellowship and internship opportunities are now available for both undergraduate and graduate students in the sciences. The Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program seeks to train PhD scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background and the technical, professional and personal skills needed to address the global questions of the future. Visit IGERT
Purdue enhances classroom podcasting with Apple’s iTunes University - Full Story
Congressman Visclosky wins award from Science Coalition - Full Story
Purdue announces 2006 Old Masters lineup - Full Story
Director named for Purdue nanotechnology center - Full Story
New companies at Purdue Research Park take it to next level - Full Story
Science alumni: We want to hear from you! Update your information and share your professional news as well as your personal and family milestones with your classmates and the Science community. Click here.
Science Kids Club blasts off
The Science Kids Club is off and running! Since we launched the club in October, nearly 150 kids have joined! Enroll the special kids in your life in the Science Kids Club for Science fun for kids of all ages. More information.
Stay connected!
Join the Purdue Web Community and stay connected to your alma mater. This interactive site will help you keep in touch with your Purdue family—your friends, faculty and staff, and fellow alumni. Sign up and get started.
Increase your reach: Support Science by joining the Purdue President’s Council!
The President's Council is a unique group of alumni and friends who contribute generously to the future of Purdue University. Working closely with the president, these leaders volunteer to support the University in ways that are very personal and meaningful to them. Through special events and programs, members build strong and lasting relationships with one another—relationships that enhance their experiences and change their lives. Join online!
Make the most of your gift!
The newly passed Pension Protection Act of 2006 contains a two-year IRA Charitable Rollover provision that will allow people age 70½ or older to exclude up to $100,000 from their gross income for a taxable year for direct gifts from a traditional or Roth IRA to a qualified charity. To talk about how you can take advantage of this opportunity to increase your giving power, read on!
December 1: Felix Haas Hall dedication. 11a.m. LWSN Atrium
December 5: Department of Mathematics Seminar, Professor Bruce Berndt, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 4:30 p.m. MATH 175
December 6: Biology seminar Julian P. Whitelegge, The Pasarow Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, The Jane & Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA. 1:30p.m.–2:30 p.m. LILY 1-117
December 6: Mathematical Statistics Seminar, Professor Anirban DasGupta, Department of Statistics, Purdue University. 3:30 p.m.–4:30 p.m. BRNG 212
December 6: Tessman Lecture: Peter Christie, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, University of Texas – Houston Medical School. 4–5 p.m. PFEN Dean’s Auditorium
December 6: VIGRE Seminar, Professor Kristofer Jennings, Department of Statistics, Purdue University. 4:30 p.m.–5:30 p.m. UNIV 101
December 6: Defense Related Research and Development Workshop. 9:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m., Stewart Center, Room 218 A–C.
December 7: EAS Seminar, Cari Johnson, 3:30 p.m. CIVL 1252
December 7: Physics General Colloquium, PHYS 223Dr. John Tranquada, Condensed Matter Physics & Materials Science Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory. “Seeing Stripes in High Temperature Superconductors.” 4–5 p.m. (Refreshments at 3:30 p.m., PHYS 242)
December 7: Statistics Research Colloquium, Professor A. Keith Dunker, Director Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Indiana University School of Medicine. 4:30 p.m.–5:30 p.m. MATH 175
December 17: Winter Commencement. Elliott Hall of Music, 2:30 p.m.followed by a reception for graduates and their families jsilotto@purdue.edu for reception info.
January 16: EAS Alumni Gathering. San Antonio, TX. Check www.purdue.edu/eas for more information.
February 6: Faculty and Staff Awards Luncheon. PMU, East/West Faculty Lounge.
.
Science alumni: We want to hear from you! Share your professional news and your personal and family milestones by clicking here.
Past
issues of
Insights, the College of Science Magazine
Scientific Notation, a publication by Purdue Science Student Council