Two University of Notre Dame faculty members have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in honor of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.

AAAS, founded in 1848 as a nonprofit association, is the world’s largest scientific society and the publisher of the prestigious journal Science. The new Notre Dame AAAS fellows are: Ani Aprahamian, professor of physics, and James J. McKenna, Rev. Edmund P. Joyce Chair in Anthropology.

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Prashant Kamat has recently published a feature article titled “Quantum Dot Solar Cells. Semiconductor Nanocrystals as Light Harvesters” which was featured on the front cover of the Journal of Physical Chemistry.

Kamat is a professor of chemistry and biochemistry and senior scientist at the Radiation Laboratory, and concurrent professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

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Congressman Joe Donnelly (IN-2) and his science staffer Paul Gether visited the Nuclear Science Laboratory at Notre Dame on Wednesday December 3, 2008. The Congressman was invited by Professor Umesh Garg of the Physics Department. The Nuclear Science Laboratory is one of the highest funded research enterprises in the state of Indiana and falls within the district of the congressman.

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Michael Ferdig, professor of biological sciences, has published two papers on drug resistance in Plasmodium falciparum, the most severe malaria parasite responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in sub-Saharan Africa. His pioneering work was published in PLoS Biology as well as in PLoS Genetics, which includes results from his collaboration with malaria biologist Tim Anderson from the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research.

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The Notre Dame QuarkNet Center was featured as the cover story in the November issue of Optics and Photonics News, a major journal for scientists and engineers in the field of photonics.  QuarkNet is a national education and outreach program that partners high school teachers and students with particle physicists.

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105 Jordan Hall of Science was packed with mostly underclassmen for the Undergraduate Research Internship Information Night (UGRIIN) on November 4.  Eager to learn about the research opportunities available to them, the science students attended the event which was co-sponsored by the College of Science and the Notre Dame Biology Club.  After an introduction by Professor T. Mark Olsen, attendees listened to presentations by Laura Flynn of the Career Center and five Notre Dame students who have participated in a variety of different research projects. 

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A groundbreaking ceremony for Harper Hall, the new home of expanded medical and cancer research initiatives at the Indiana University School of Medicine-South Bend (IUSM-SB) and the University of Notre Dame, will be held at 10 a.m. Friday (Nov. 21) at a site adjacent to Raclin-Carmichael Hall on the corner of Angela Boulevard and Notre Dame Avenue.

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Five individuals and five teams of high school students have been selected to compete Friday and Saturday (Nov. 7 and 8) at the University of Notre Dame in the regional of the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology, the nation’s premier science research competition for high school students.

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Laura A. Banaszynski, who earned her undergraduate degree in chemistry at Notre Dame in 2000, has won the 2009 Nobel Laureate Signature Award for Graduate Education in Chemistry from the American Chemical Society for her work with Dr. Thomas J. Wandless at Stanford University. The award, sponsored by Mallinckrodt Baker Inc. and approved by the Nobel Foundation, includes a plaque signed by Nobel laureates and a $3,000 honorarium for the student and another $3,000 for the advisor. Only one is granted each year. S. Alex Kandel, now a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, won the award in 2000.

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Physicists, says Randy Ruchti, are driven by the great questions.

The importance of fundamental science for us is in our bloodstream,the 31-year veteran of the University of Notre Dame physics faculty reflected last month during the earliest working days of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the massive new particle physics facility at the Center for European Nuclear Research (CERN) that straddles part of France and Switzerland.

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The University of Notre Dames Center for Astrophysics, Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA) and Department of Physics will host the 18th annual Midwest Relativity Meeting on Friday and Saturday (Oct. 24-25) at the Jordan Hall of Science.

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John Janovy Jr., Varner Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Nebraska, will deliver the first lecture in the University of Notre Dame College of Science’s new Innovations and Excellence in Science Teaching series at 7 p.m. Thursday (Nov. 20) in room 105 of the University of Notre Dame’s Jordan Hall of Science.

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GreeND, a University of Notre Dame student organization focused on energy and environmental issues, received an Energy Patriot award from Sen. Richard G. Lugar, R-Ind., who spoke on campus and toured the Universitys Energy Center on Oct. 8.

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Pre-med juniors Megan Rybarczyk, Greg Podolej, and Brennan Bollman will join Father Thomas Streit C.S.C. on Jan. 3 in Haiti to help with research projects that are aimed to rid the impoverished Caribbean country of LF, or lymphatic filariasis, as part of the overall goal for the Notre Dame Haiti Program.

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Astrophysicist Michael C. Wiescher has been named an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

The foundation was established by the Federal Republic of Germany to promote international cooperation in research.  This prestigious fellowship will allow Wiescher to study the nuclear reactions leading to the formation of an isotope of iron, 60Fe, which has been found in sediments on the deep-ocean floor. This isotope is thought to be and related to a supernova a few million years ago in our neighborhood of the Milky Way galaxy.

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Yesterday's announcement of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics also served as a reminder of the prominent role three University of Notre Dame researchers have played in the field of particle physics.

The Nobel Foundation honored Yoichiro Nambu of the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic particles. Makoto Kobayashi of the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Tsukuba, Japan, and Toshihide Maskawa of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics at Kyoto University were recognized for their discovery of the origin of broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature.

Notre Dame physicists Ikaros Bigi, John LoSecco and Colin Jessop have joined Kobayashi and Maskawa in making key contributions to the understanding of how matter gained the upper hand over antimatter in the universe.

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Chicago has worn many nicknames throughout its history including the Windy City, the Second City,and the City of the Big Shoulders. However, if Chi-Town successfully adopts the recommendations of a climate report co-authored by Jessica Hellmann, a University of Notre Dame biologist, it may well be known as America's Greenest City.

Following completion of the report from a 26-member Chicago Climate Task Force that included Hellmann, Mayor Richard Daley recently unveiled a plan to reduce the city's emission of carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas, by 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.

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Sherri Smith has won a three-year post-doctoral fellowship at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. She is working under Nancy Guillén, studying the parasite Entamoeba histolytica. The research involves characterizing the immune response during infection with the amoeba and determining the role potential virulence factors play in the elicited immune response.

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Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Richard Taylor, has been appointed to the position of associate dean of the College of Science. In his position, Taylor directs the research and planning efforts of the College of Science, oversees grant management, engages faculty in multidisciplinary research and assists in forming strong collaborations across the University and with external research partners. He serves as the college’s primary liaison to the Office of Research and the Graduate School. Taylor also directs the Science Computing Facility.

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The massive Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which will smash together particles at nearly the speed of light in an effort to understand the makeup of the universe, began test operations Wednesday (Sept. 10) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, and University of Notre Dame particle physicists are key participants in what has been termed the largest experiment even conducted.

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Catherine Young grew up liking bugs.

Today she's a University of Notre Dame biologist whose area of expertise is medical entomology, the study of insects that cause disease in humans.

By contributing to research on major human health threats, she "gets to feel like she's saving the world," says Young, a biologist with the University's Eck Family Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, "but its really just an excuse to play with bugs," she adds with a smile.

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Modern coal-fired power plants achieve significant efficiencies by using supercritical water as a coolant.

But water that is superheated to its critical point undergoes dramatic transformation, not the least of which is that it becomes acidic.

Therein lies a dilemma that Notre Dame sophomore Patrick Holvey investigated as part of his research initiative this past summer on campus with Daniel Gezelter associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry.

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A team led by Prof. Shahriar Mobashery, the Navari Family Chair in Life Sciences, has documented how bacteria recycle their cell wall in the process of doubling, a critical step in understanding bacteria physiology. The team, using synthetic cell wall pieces and synthetic products of fragmentation, characterized an unusual chemical reaction that is a key to the process. A paper about the research, “Lytic Transglycosylase MltB of Escherichia coli and Its Role in Recycling of Peptidoglycan Strands of Bacterial Cell Wall,” will be published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society within the upcoming weeks.

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In early June, 15 high school physics teachers and a 14 high school students arrived at the Notre Dame QuarkNet Center for the summer physics Research Experience for Teachers (RET) Program and the Research Experience for High School students (REHS). Both groups came do physics research over an eight week period. The students who have finished their junior year in high school were chosen by their physics teachers to participate in the program. The teachers were chosen through an application and review process. They represented schools in the South Bend area as well as Florida, New York and New Jersey.

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Seven new faculty have joined the College of Science in the areas of chemistry and biochemistry, mathematics, physics, and biological sciences.

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A new paper by Shahriar Mobashery, Navari Family Professor in Life Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, and researchers in his lab provides important insights into promising new antibiotics aimed at combating MRSA.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a major global health threat that kills approximately 20,000 people in the U.S. alone each year.

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The Journal of the American Chemical Society will publish research led by Prof. Shahriar Mobashery on two drugs that are undergoing clinical trials to fight the highly resistant superbug called methicillin-resistantStaphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The broad-spectrum antibiotics from Cerexa, Inc. – ceftaroline (CPT), a cephalosporin, and ME1036 (ME), a carbapenem – show excellent efficacy in fighting the bacterium that has become a global health threat.

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The College of Science has named Bei Hu, professor of mathematics, as chair of the Department of Mathematics, and Gary Lamberti, professor of biological sciences, as chair of the Department of Biological Sciences, beginning July 2008.

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The College of Science welcomes Gregory Crawford as the new dean, effective July 1. Dean Crawford, who has also been appointed to the physics faculty, personifies the future of interdisciplinary and entrepreneurial collaboration—focused on solving problems and making a difference—toward which the College and the University as a whole are advancing.

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Francis J. Castellino, Kleiderer-Pezold Professor of Biochemistry and director of the W.M. Keck Center for Transgene Research at the University of Notre Dame, is the recipient of the 2008 WYETH-ISFP Prize for outstanding contributions to the field of fibrinolysis, proteolysis and thrombosis.

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