Physics graduate student Stephanie Lyons was asked byStewardship Science, the SSGF Magazine (published annually by the Krell Institute for the NNSA Office of Defense Science’s Stewardship Science Graduate Fellowship program) to comment on what drew her to science and why stewardship is important. Lyons is a recipient of the Graduate Fellowship from the Krell Institute. Lyons says, “To lead the way, scientists should give back to the community through communication and outreach.”

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An efficiency retrofit currently being installed in the Jordan Hall teaching labs will enable faculty to save $45,000 annually, simply by pressing a button.

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Joseph O’Tousa, professor of biological sciences, and Kristin Hager, associate teaching professor of biological sciences, were named National Academies Education Fellows in the Life Science for the 2011-2012 academic year. O’Tousa and Hager participated in the 2011 National Academies Summer Institute in Biology at the University of Wisconsin in June, where they were among teams from 16 US research universities.

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Joseph O’Tousa, professor of biological sciences, and Kristin Hager, associate teaching professor of biological sciences, have been named National Academies Education Fellows in the Life Science for the 2011-2012 academic year. O’Tousa and Hager participated in the 2011 National Academies Summer Institute in Biology at the University of Wisconsin in June, where they were among teams from 16 US research universities.

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The Northern Indiana Science, Mathematics and Engineering Collaborative (NISMEC) is hosting workshops this summer for local intermediate and high school science teachers, focusing on best-practice approaches to science education and the new Indiana science standards that take place this fall. Led by Notre Dame faculty and the South Bend Community Schools Corporation, NISMEC received two grants totaling more than $600,000 to support the workshops.

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Kristin Lewis, associate professional specialist, is among 13 biologists participating in the first yearlong Assessment Residency of the American Society for Microbiology/National Science Foundation Biology Scholars Program. The scholars attended the Measuring Student Learning Initiative in Washington, D.C., in June. Lewis designs undergraduate courses to provide real-world research experience to students including preprofessional students in general biology laboratories.

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9:30a.m., Saturday, July 16, 2011 at the College Football Hall of Fame

Enshrinement Festival Grand Parade featuring Greg and Renate Crawford

Show your support for Dean Greg Crawford and his wife Renate, who rode their bikes 2,200 miles from Boston, MA to Dallas, TX to raise awareness and funds for Niemann–Pick Type C disease research.

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Four members of the Notre Dame faculty have been named Fellows of the American Chemical Society. Seth Brown, Greg Hartland, Prashant Kamat, and Anthony Trozzolo are the first Fellows from Notre Dame since the ACS board of directors started the program in 2008 to recognize members for outstanding achievements to science, the profession and the society. They will be honored at a ceremony during the ACS annual meeting next month, and their names will be published in the August issue of Chemical & Engineering News.

Brown, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, came to Notre Dame in 1996. He won the 2008 Shilts/Leonard Teaching Award, the College of Science’s top teaching honor. In 2009, he received The Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

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Jianguo Cao: January 25, 1960—June 23, 2011 GRANGER – Jianguo Cao, of Granger, Indiana, passed away on June 23, 2011, 2011 at the Center for Hospice Care in South Bend after a courageous battle with liver cancer. Cao was a professor in the Mathematics Department at the University of Notre Dame.

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A new study by a team of University of Notre Dame researchers offers a wealth of information about the rhythmic nature of gene expression in Anopheles gambiae, the mosquito species that transmits the malaria parasite from person to person. Each year, roughly 250 million people suffer from malaria and that results in one million deaths, mostly pregnant women and children under five years of age.

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Paul Bohn, who came to Notre Dame five years ago in the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, has been appointed to a joint position between the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Department of Chemical and Bimolecular Engineering, advancing opportunities for interdisciplinary research. The arrangement means that graduate students in both chemistry and chemical engineering can bring their complementary expertise together in research, he says.

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Jacek Furdyna, the Aurora and Thomas Marquez Professor of Information Theory and Computer Technology in the Department of Physics, was invited to present a plenary lecture entitled “Exchange Coupling in Magnetic Semiconductor Superlattices and Multilayers” at the European Conference on the Physics of Magnetism 2011, held in Poznan, Poland June 27 to July 1, 2011.

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A collaborative research program involving faculty, graduate students, undergraduates and high school teachers and students is working to develop low–tech field tests for chemicals, with numerous applications in developing countries. The effort is led by six Notre Dame faculty members — Marya Lieberman, Holly Goodson, and Graham Lappin of Chemistry and Biochemistry; Patrick Flynn of Computer Science and Engineering; and David Go of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering — with collaborators Toni Barstis at Saint Mary’s College and George Twaddle at Ivy Tech Community College. The project is affiliated with the Advanced Diagnostics and Therapeutics Initiative and the Eck Center for Global Health.

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James Clancy, a Notre Dame graduate student in the Biological Sciences, is attending the annual  Nobel Laureate meeting in Lindau, Germany, from June 26 through July 1.

The 2011 meeting is focusing on medicine and physiology. During the meeting, the Laureates lecture on topics of their choice related to medicine or physiology in the mornings and participate in less formal, small group discussions with the students in the afternoons and some evenings.

Clancy, who is a member of Prof. Crislyn D’Souza–Schorey’s laboratory, is a recipient of the Lilly Presidential and GLOBES fellowships at Notre Dame. He also holds an Indiana Clinical Translational Sciences Institute predoctoral fellowship.

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Professors of physics Ani Aprahamian and Michael Wiescher gave invited talks at the celebration of the Brazilian Physical Society’s 45th anniversary celebrations. The meeting took place in Iguassu Falls, Brazil at a joint meeting of the Brazilian societies of Plasma, Materials and Condensed Matter, Particles and Fields, Nuclear, and Applied Physics. The meeting was attended by nearly 3,000 physicists including a number of Nobel laureates from all over the world.

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One of the oldest, continually–funded Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs in the country, the Physics REU at the University of Notre Dame is marking its 25th year of National Science Foundation funding this summer.

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The first Michael, Marcia, and Christa Parseghian Scientific Conference for Niemann–Pick Type C Research at the University of Notre Dame drew researchers, clinicians and families from around the world. The conference, permanently endowed by the Ara Parseghian Medical Research Foundation, was held June 9–11 in the Jordan Hall of Science.

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Umesh Garg was elected the Vice Chair of the next Gordon Research Conference in Nuclear Chemistry at the 2011 meeting held during June 12–17, 2011, at the Colby Sawyer College, New London, NH. He will become Chair of the subsequent Conference.

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Morris Pollard, professor emeritus of biological sciences and director of the University of Notre Dame’s Lobund Laboratory, died Saturday (June 18) at Memorial Hospital in South Bend. He was 95 years old.

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Patricia Clark, the Rev. John Cardinal O’Hara, C.S.C. Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Notre Dame and Bonnie Berger, professor of applied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have published a paper this week describing the development of a computer algorithm that accurately predicts which parts of protein sequences help prevent the proteins from aggregating. Protein aggregation leads to numerous human diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases.

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The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) has announced that the 2011 Paul Zitzewitz Excellence in Pre–College Physics Teaching Award winner is Stacy McCormack, a high school physics teacher at Penn High School in Mishawaka, IN. This award is in recognition of contributions to pre–college physics teaching and awardees are chosen for their extraordinary accomplishments in communicating the excitement of physics to their students.

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University of Notre Dame astrophysicist Peter M. Garnavich and a team of collaborators have used observations from the Hubble Space Telescope to provide new insights into the evolution of a nearby supernova, “SN 1987A,” the nearest supernova to the Earth in 300 years.

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Gregory P. Crawford, dean of the College of Science at the University of Notre Dame, and his wife, Renate, will for the second consecutive year set out on a remarkable bicycle ride this summer to support research seeking treatments and a cure for Niemann-Pick Type C (NPC), a rare and deadly neurodegenerative disease that primarily strikes children before or during adolescence.

The Crawfords will depart June 13 on “Road to Discovery,” a 2,200-mile ride from Boston to Dallas, with stops to visit NPC researchers and families, as well as Notre Dame alumni clubs, along the way.

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Shari Herman of the Department of Physics has been selected to receive the 2011 Graduate Administrative Assistant Award. In making the announcement, Dean of the Graduate School Greg Sterling emphasized, “as with the Director of Graduate Studies award, there were several nominees worthy of the honor; however, the selection panel was impressed with the excellence of Shari’s achievements in all aspects of Physics graduate students’ experience. We learned that Shari is involved in such diverse activities as helping to design and produce a recruiting poster; building a data base for Physics’ 500 Ph.D. alumni; and organizing a Thanksgiving Day celebration for international students to teach them about American culture.”

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University of Notre Dame astronomer David Bennett is co-author of a new paper describing the discovery of a new class of planets — dark, isolated Jupiter-mass bodies floating alone in space, far from any host star. Bennett and the team of astronomers involved in the discovery believe that the planets were most likely ejected from developing planetary systems.

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Marcus Hedahl, who graduated from Notre Dame with a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1995, has won a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Hedahl, a doctoral candidate in philosophy at Georgetown University, is one of 21 Fellows selected from 585 applicants. His dissertation, Owing It to Us: Duties Directed to One’s Own, deals with the duties that individuals owe to groups of which they are a member.

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Dean Gregory Crawford is among nine local celebrities in a "Dancing with Our Stars" benefit for the Center for the Homeless in South Bend. The event pairs stars with professional dancers, and fans pay $39 a vote—the cost of supporting one guest for one day at the Center—to support their favorite star.

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Research in the laboratory of Shahriar Mobashery in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry has led to further understanding of how a bacterial cell wall cross-links, an event that penicillin and other antibiotics disrupt, a step in the maturation of a cell wall that is critical for the survival of bacteria.

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Tim Trippel, a Marian High School senior who works with Matthew Champion, research assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, won Top Young Scientist honors at the Hoosier Science and Engineering Fair. Trippel and Champion developed a low-cost electroporator, a key component in DNA transformation. Trippel won $10,000 and will advance to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Los Angeles in May.

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Five College of Science faculty members are among 20 winners of the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. Theses faculty have had a profound influence on undergraduate students through sustained exemplary teaching. Xavier Creary and Jeffrey Peng of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Anthony Hyder of the Department of Physics, Charles Kulpa of the Department of Biological Sciences and Anne Pilkington of the Department of Mathematics received the award.…

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