“Mathematical Excursions to the World’s Great Buildings” by Alexander Hahn, professor of mathematics, has won the 2012 PROSE Award in the architecture and urban planning category. The book was published by Princeton University Press in 2012.
Oncologist Rudolph M. Navari, M.D., Ph.D., FACP, associate dean and director of the Indiana University School of Medicine-South Bend and an adjunct professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Notre Dame, has received a $2.1 million grant for a national study to address chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV).
Richard D. Connell (Ph.D. Chemistry 1989), Vice President of External Research Solutions, Global Research and Development, Pfizer Inc., has been named the Graduate School’s 2013 Distinguished Alumnus.
Senior Patrick O’Hayer has co-authored a paper in the Journal of Neuroscience titled, “Tumor Necrosis Factor-Alpha Is Produced by Dying Retinal Neurons and Is Required for Müller Glia Proliferation during Zebrafish Retinal Regeneration.” The paper was published in the April 10 issue of the journal.
Brian Baker, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry and director of graduate studies for the department, has been selected as an associate editor for Journal of Immunology. The journal publishes peer-reviewed articles in all areas of experimental immunology, which includes both basic and clinical studies. All editors of the bi-monthly journal are practicing scientists and the publication is cited more often than any other immunology journal.
Prashant Kamat, The Rev. John A. Zahm Professor of Science, has been named a 2013 Langmuir Lecturer. Kamat will deliver a plenary lecture in a special session of the Colloid and Surface Chemistry Division program at the 246th ACS National Meeting in Indianapolis in September.
At the annual Dooley Society meeting on April 20, representatives of Cleveland Clinic Innovations (CCI) presented about the Healthcare Innovation Alliance, which the University of Notre Dame joined early last year. The alliance includes centers across the United States, including the Innovation Institute of California, North Shore-LIJ Health System of New York, MedStar Health, and Ohio State University.
The 2013 Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award, which is given annually by the Notre Dame Graduate School and the Notre Dame Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning, honors graduate student instructors and teaching assistants whose teaching demonstrates excellence in the classroom or laboratory.
Talk Science is a monthly seminar series hosted by Scientia, the Undergraduate Journal of Scientific Research for the College of Science. The seminars are held in Jordan Hall of Science and provide an enriching, yet informal, setting for College of Science undergraduates and faculty to build camaraderie and to share the advances in different areas of science. Junior applied and computational mathematics and statistics (ACMS) major Michael Vella and Rebecca Wingert, Elizabeth and Michael Gallagher Family Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, both gave presentations on their research at the most recent Talk Science seminar on Thursday, April 18.
Researchers for the first time have identified Earth-sized planets within the habitable zone of a Sun-like star. Images of the star taken by University of Notre Dame astrophysicist Justin Crepp rule out alternative explanations of the data, confirming that five planets orbit Kepler-62, with two located in the habitable zone. The results were published in Science magazine today.
“A five-planet system with planets of 1.41 and 1.61 Earth-radii in the habitable zone of a K2V star has been detected with the Kepler spacecraft and validated with high statistical confidence,” the paper reports. Those two, named Kepler-62 e and f, are the outermost of the five observed planets and receive a solar flux from the star similar to that received from the Sun by Venus and Mars. Their size suggests that they are either rocky, like Earth, or composed mostly of solid water.
The Global Adaptation Index (GAIN)—the world’s leading Index showing which countries are best prepared to deal with the droughts, super-storms and other natural disasters that climate change can cause—is moving to the University of Notre Dame. GAIN, which ranks countries annually based on how vulnerable they are to climate change and how prepared they are to adapt, was formerly housed in the Global Adaptation Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit.
Six University of Notre Dame science students and four alumni have received National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Program (GRFP) Fellowships. The NSF GRFP was created to enhance the scientific and engineering workforce in the United States. The fellowship provides three years of support for the graduate education of students who have demonstrated the potential for significant achievements in science and engineering research. Past NSF Fellows include individuals who have made significant breakthroughs in science and engineering research, as well as some who have been honored as Nobel laureates.
“Spark,” a student-run conference focusing on University of Notre Dame research, commercialization and entrepreneurship, will take place Tuesday (April 16) in the Jordan Auditorium of the Mendoza College of Business.
The organizers of Spark hope to demonstrate the possibilities of research at Notre Dame and to highlight projects that have the potential to become viable businesses. They hope to “spark” intellectual curiosity in all Notre Dame undergraduates and present them with opportunities and tools to get them involved in these projects in the future.
The event features 12 speakers delivering 15-minute lectures from 2 to 6 p.m. A reception will take place from 6 to 8 p.m.
David Hyde, The Rev. Howard J. Kenna, C.S.C., Memorial Director of the Zebrafish Research Center and professor of biological sciences, has received the 2013 Father James. L Schilts, C.S.C./ Doris and Eugene Leonard Teaching Award. He will receive this award at the annual Dean’s Award Luncheon on May 17. Hyde received several glowing recommendations from faculty and students for this teaching award.
The University of Notre Dame announced today that it has committed $80 million in internal financial resources in support of two phases of integrated research initiatives.
The commitment of tens of millions of institutional dollars comes in the wake of the University receiving more than $90 million in external research funding in the past year.
Each year, several graduating seniors conduct year-long thesis projects by working one-on-one with a faculty member or graduate student to make an intellectual contribution to their chosen field of study. The topic can be tailored to the student’s individual interest and may be done in the form of a paper, narrative nonfiction essay, creative writing project, journalistic article, documentary film, or museum exhibition. The senior thesis project is the perfect opportunity for students to showcase the research, analysis, writing, and presentation skills they have developed as undergraduates.
Michael Sinclair, a physics teacher at the Kalamazoo Area Math and Science Center and teacher in the Notre Dame QuarkNet program, has received a Kennedy Center/Stephen Sondheim Inspirational Teacher Award for 2013.
Peter M. Garnavich, professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame, and Brian Hayden, a physics graduate student, are members of the CANDELS+CLASH Supernova Project that recently discovered a supernova that exploded more than 10 billion years ago. The Type Ia supernova, part of a class used for measuring the expansion of space, is the farthest yet found by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Garnavich and Hayden are co-authors of a paper announcing the discovery, which has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.
Since 2010, Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 has surveyed faraway Type Ia supernovae to determine whether they have changed over the 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang. The Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS) and the Cluster Lensing and Supernova Survey with Hubble (CLASH) have studied thousands of galaxies.
Wolfgang A. Herrmann, president of the Technical University of Munich, will present the Nanovic Forum at 5 p.m. April 9 (Tuesday) in the Jordan Hall of Science at the University of Notre Dame. The lecture, titled “What is an Entrepreneurial University? A Case Study,” is free and open to the public. Gregory Crawford, William K. Warren Foundation Dean of Notre Dame’s College of Science and professor of physics, will present the introduction.
Under the direction of Herrmann, the Technical University of Munich has dramatically increased student enrollment, the number of full-time female professors and the levels of external funding. Germany’s Excellence Initiative has recognized the Technical University of Munich twice in the last decade as a University of Excellence.
The University of Notre Dame’s Division of Student Affairs recognized seven students with awards at the annual Student Leadership Awards Banquet on Wednesday (April 3). One of the awards was the John W. Gardner Student Leadership Award, given to a graduating senior who has exemplified the ideas of the University through outstanding community service beyond the University community. Emily B. Conron received the award.
Entrepreneur Pamela Reilly Contag, Ph.D., chief executive officer of Cygnet Biofuels and founder of four venture-backed start-up companies, will address the challenges faced by scientists, engineers and physicians as they balance work/life responsibilities during a panel discussion at 7 p.m. Sunday, April 14 in 101 Jordan Hall of Science.
Scientists from the University of Notre Dame, The Nature Conservancy and Central Michigan University have presented their findings of Asian carp DNA throughout the Great Lakes in a study published in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.
“The good news is that we have found no evidence that Asian carp are widespread in the Great Lakes basin, despite extensive surveys in Southern Lake Michigan and parts of lakes Erie and St. Clair,” said Christopher Jerde, the paper’s lead author and a scientist at Notre Dame. “Looking at the overall patterns of detections, we remain convinced that the most likely source of Asian carp DNA is live fish.”
Jessica Hellmann, associate professor of biological sciences, accepted an invitation to become an associate editor for the ecology domain in the journal, Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene. Elementa is a new, nonprofit, open access journal that was developed based on the concept that basic knowledge can foster sustainable solutions for society.
University of Notre Dame researchers have successfully created three-dimensional anatomical models from CT scans using 3-D printing technology, a process that holds promise for medical professionals and their patients. A paper by the researchers, “3D Printing of Preclinical X-ray Computed Tomographic Data Sets,” was published in the Journal of Visualized Experiments this week.
The strategy was initiated last spring by then-freshman Evan Doney, a Glynn Family Honors student in the laboratory of W. Matthew Leevy, research assistant professor at the Notre Dame Integrated Imaging Facility. “It’s a very clever idea,” Leevy said. “He did a lot of it independently. He figured out how to convert the tomographic data to a surface map for editing and subsequent 3-D printing.”
Zoltán Toroczkai, professor of physics and concurrent professor of computer science and engineering, has co-authored a paper in March 26 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper, “The role of long-range connections on the specificity of the macaque interareal cortical network,” was written in collaboration with a group of neuroanatomists from Lyon, France.
