At Brown

Four in EEB receive major awards

Faculty members in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology have recently won a string of major awards.

Johanna Schmitt the Stephen T. Olney Professor of Natural History and professor of biology in the department, last month won a five-year $5 million National Science Foundation award to lead an international research project aimed at understanding how a common weed in the mustard family performs a complex task - turning cues of seasonal change into well-timed reproduction.

Researchers will use genomic tools to study how Arabidopsis thaliana combines information from a variety of seasonal signals, such as day length and temperature, to flower during favorable conditions. They will also examine how genetic variation in response to these signals is shaped by natural selection in different climates. Schmitt said the research should help scientists better understand how ongoing climate change will affect crops and wild plants and point out ways to conserve species.

The grant is part of the Frontiers in Integrative Biological Research program, one of NSF's premier biology programs. Schmitt's research team will include faculty and students from Brown, Kansas State University, North Carolina State University, University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Germany.

Marc Tatar, associate professor of biology, has earned an Ellison Senior Scholar Award in Aging. Run by the nonprofit Ellison Medical Foundation, the program is designed to support established investigators who conduct research in the basic biological sciences relevant to understanding aging processes and age-related diseases and disabilities.

Tatar's four-year award totals nearly $920,000. Beginning in November, the associate professor of biology will use the money to pursue experiments that will help answer a key question: How does a calorie-restricted diet slow aging? One explanation holds that when deprived, bodies are too busy maintaining cells to reproduce, keeping the body healthy until reproduction can be successful.

Tatar will provide the first molecular test of this theory by feeding fruit flies plentiful or restricted diets during different phases of life. The flies' food will be specially tagged so a mass spectrometer can trace how the flies acquire and allocate metabolites to reproductive and other body tissues. With this tagging technique, and through genetic manipulation, he hopes to identify the molecular systems necessary for diet restriction to extend lifespan - work with implications to modulate human aging.

Computational molecular biologist Molly Przeworski, an assistant professor of biology, won a coveted "no strings attached" grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Sloan Research Fellowship is a two-year $20,000 award to allow early-career scientists to pursue independent projects.

Przeworski will use the funds to pursue her research interest: adaptations in genes unique to humans. She has developed computational methods to identify those genes, which play a role in diseases such as HIV and malaria.

Jennifer Hughes won a five-year $750,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. The award, known as the Faculty Early Career Development Program, is the foundation's most prestigious award for new faculty members. The program recognizes and supports teacher-scholars who are most likely to become academic leaders.

An assistant professor of biology, Hughes is interested in the origin and maintenance of biological diversity and the consequences of this diversity for ecosystems as a whole. Hughes will use her award to study bacteria in coastal marshes, one of the most threatened ecosystems in the United States.

Hughes' project will uncover where key bacteria can be found in marshes and explore they play in the filtering process of these ecosystems, which protect fisheries from pollution. Hughes will study marshes in New England, the South and on the West Coast as well as in Denmark, Chile and Argentina. As part of the project, she will develop and teach a new project-based course integrating microbial ecology and environmental science.

Awards and Honors

Regina White, associate vice president of research administration, is one of the National Council of University Research Administrators' Distinguished Service Award recipients. She will receive the award at the organization's annual meeting on Nov. 1.

The award is given to individuals who have made sustained and distinctive contributions to the organization.

White has been a member of NCURA since 1982. In 2001 she served as its president. She has held a number of leadership positions at both the regional and national level. In 1992 and 1993 she served as the secretary of NCURA. She previously served as faculty for one of the organization's professional development programs - Fundamentals of Sponsored Projects Administration.

Roberto Serrano, professor of economics, is the recipient of the Fundacion Banco Herror Prize for Spanish Economists under 40. Serrano, 39, received the award in honor of the research he has conducted on economic policy.

On the Road

The following Brown faculty members participated in the annual meeting and exhibition of the American Political Science Association, held in Chicago Sept. 2-5:

Assistant Professor Scott Allard presented a paper titled "The New Urban Geography of Welfare Policy in the U.S."

Assistant Professor Peter Andreas presented a paper titled "Criminals, Air Workers, and Water Entrepreneurs: The Political Economy of the Sarajevo Siege."

Assistant Professor Melani Cammett presented a paper titled "Globalization and Business Politics in Protected and Semi-Open Economies" and participated on a panel titled "Strategies for Field Research in Comparative and International Politics."

Assistant Professor Ulrich Krotz presented a paper titled "Transnationalism, Europeanization, Denationalization? The Parapublic Underpinnings of Franco-German Relations as Construction of International Purpose."

Assistant Professor Jennifer Lawless presented two papers: "The Formation of Ideological Self-Designation: Political Sophistication and Policy Preferences of Ordinary Citizens" and "The Initial Run for Office: The Decision Dynamics of Entering Electoral Politics."

Associate Professor Pauline Jones Luong presented two papers: "Rethinking the Resource Curse" and "Political Competition and Property Rights in Mineral-Rich States."

Professor James Morone presented a paper titled "Storybook Truths about America: Culture, History, and Louis Hartz."

Associate Professor Wendy Schiller presented a paper titled "When Partisanship and Industrial Geography Collide: Explaining Differences between the House and Senate in U.S. Tariff Policy, 1883-1930." She also served as a discussant on a panel titled "Ideology Matters: New Perspectives on Legislative Voting."

Associate Professor Richard Snyder presented two papers: "Political Regimes in the Post-Cold War Era" and "Movements, Institutions, and Coca in the Andes: Bolivia's Movimiento al Socialismo in Comparative Perspective."

Professor Darrell West presented a paper titled "Global Perspectives on E-Government." He also served as a participant on a panel titled "Online Deliberation."

Professor Alan Zuckerman presented two papers: "The Social Logic of Political Behavior: A Conceptual and Theoretical Analysis of Research Trends" and "The Social Logic of German Partisanship: A Comparison of West Germans, East Germans, Guest Workers, and Ethnic German Immigrants."

The following political science graduate students also participated at the meeting:

Jennifer Fitzgerald presented a paper titled "Social Context and Young Adults' Extreme Political Orientations in Western Europe."

Eduardo Gomez presented two papers: "The Origins of Centralized Social Welfare in America" and "History, Politics, and AIDS Policy Reform in America and Brazil."

Melissa Labonte presented a paper titled "Frustration or Facilitation? Peacebuilding Ownership in Sierra Leone and the Reproduction of Social Inequalities."

Caroline Nordlund presented a paper titled "Pastors, Parishioners, and Pews."

People

The John Carter Brown Library, an independently administered and funded center for advanced research in history and the humanities located at Brown, has awarded fellowships to 32 scholars from around the world for the 2004-2005 academic year.

Each will conduct research in the library's collection of primary materials relating to the European discovery, exploration, settlement and development of the New World, the African contribution to the development of this hemisphere, and indigenous responses to the European conquest.

The fellows, their current institutional affiliations, and the titles of their projects are:

Luiz Felipe de Alencastro, University of Paris IV, Sorbonne, "The South Atlantic System: Portuguese America and Portuguese Africa"

Antonio Barrera, Colgate University, "The Atlantic World and the Scientific Revolution"

Kristen Block, Rutgers University, "Faith and Fortune: The Politics of Religious Identity in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean"

Richard Bourke, University of London, "Edmund Burke and the American Crisis"

Javier G. Bravo, Fundacion Mapfre Tavera, Spain, "Rebellion and Independence: The Role of Local Governments in New Granada and Brazil"

Edmund Campos, Swarthmore College, "Translating the New World: England, Spain and the Americas"

StŽphanie Chaffray, Laval University, Canada, "Representations of the Amerindian Body in New France Travel Literature during the First Half of the Eighteenth Century"

Ranjan Chakrabarti, Jadavpur University, India, "Merchants of New England in the Indian Ocean, 1780-1860"

Maike Christadler, University of Basel, Switzerland, "Ethnographic Illustration and Scientific Discourse: The Construction of European Identity in Images of the 'Other'"

Carol Delaney, Stanford University, "The Transatlantic Crossing and Transformation of Columbus's Millennial Vision"

Patricia L. Don, San Jose State University, "The Bonfires of Culture: The Indian Inquisition in Early Mexico, 1536-1543"

Judith Farberman, Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina, "Sorcery and Aboriginal Societies under Spanish Control: The Border between Tucuman and Chaco in the 16th through 18th Centuries"

Sylvia R. Frey, Tulane University, "Cultural Migrations: A Family Odyssey from Saint-Domingue to New Orleans"

Paul E. Hoffman, Louisiana State University, "The Imperial Crisis during the Early Years of Philip III: Some American Aspects"

Vicki Hsueh, Western Washington University, "Hybrid Constitutionalism: Negotiating Constitutions and Cultures in the Proprietary Colonies, 1625-1690"

Alejandra Irigoin, The College of New Jersey, "Revisiting the Role of the New World in Global History: Spanish American Silver Bound for China on North American Vessels and the Expansion of Global Trade, after the 1780s"

Carina L. Johnson, Pitzer College, "Categorical Denials: Redefining Aztecs, Ottomans and Culture in Sixteenth-Century Europe"

Marjoleine Kars, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, "The Slave Rebellion in Berbice, Suriname, in the 1760s"

Andrea Lepage, Brown University, "Arts of the Franciscan Colegio de San Andres: A Process of Cultural Reformation"

Frederick Luciani, Colgate University, "Ceremonial Convent Theater in Colonial Mexico"

Christopher C. Lund, Brigham Young University, "Portuguese Allegories of Salvation"

Esther Mijers, University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom, "American Colonies, Scottish Entrepreneurs, and British State Formation in the 17th Century"

Matthew O'Hara, New Mexico State University, "A Flock Divided: Race, Religion and Community in Mexico City, 1749-1832"

Rachel O'Toole, Villanova University, "'The Slave of All': Indians, Africans and the Discourse of Casta in Colonial Peru"

Jose P. M. Paiva, Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal, "The Portuguese Episcopate, 1495-1777"

Osvaldo F. Pardo, University of Connecticut, Storrs, "Between Law and Religion: Honor in Early Colonial Latin America"

Karen Racine, University of Guelph, Canada, "Nuestra Gran Causa: Patriotic Civic Culture and the Invention of Spanish American Identity 1808-1826"

Silvia Sebastiani, European University Institute, Italy, "Ideas of Human Diversity and Progress across the Atlantic in the Late XVIIIth Century"

Simon Smith, University of York, United Kingdom, "Richard Poor (Poor Richard?): Business Networks and Capitalist Ethics Centered on Barbados, 1680-1750"

Barbara Sommer, Gettysburg College, "Negotiated Settlements: Native Amazonians and Portuguese Policy in Par‡, Brazil, 1758-1798"

Linda L. Sturtz, Beloit College, "Gender and the Construction of 'Whiteness' in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica"

Karen Weyler, The University of North Carolina, Greensboro, "Public Identity and the Power of Print in British North America and the Early Republic"

The John Carter Brown Library houses one of the world's outstanding collections of early and rare Americana, covering the area from Greenland to Patagonia. Its more than 45,000 volumes dating from before ca. 1825 include, for example, European accounts of voyages by explorers, literature on the growth of the colonies, accounts of the American Indians, religious writings and literature on the colonial wars and wars for independence. The library also has an extensive collection of maps dating from 1477 to the mid-19th century.